Exactly! Iraq is our mess to clean up. Doesn't it make you proud of Bush to know that he risked a second term to be so responsible? Clinton didn't do that. Neither did GHWB, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, or Eisenhower. The United States has been sustaining the hillbilly mobster Saddam since the day I was born. It's nice to see the boomer generation finally leaving something better than it found it.

If the U.S. had been supplying the Iraqi army with arms and munitions, then we would expect to have seen Abrams and Bradleys and M-16 rifles in the Iraqi army's inventory. Yet we faced Soviet T-72 tanks, Chinese AK-47's and French artillery and rockets. We even found French Mirage jets buried in bunkers in Iraq.

Also, I remember something about an Iran-Contra scandle where we were supposedly shipping arms to Iran. It doesn't make sense that we'd be selling arms to Iran if we were trying to help the Iraqis defeat them. Sorry, but the allegations of the article don't seem to add up.

For what it's worth, I also found this graph:

http://www.command-post.org/archives/002978.html

Don't confuse Amy with facts, nash - you'll make her head hurt.

Goddammit Alkon! Your bugmenot.com is off the air!

Fuck.

Hello? Are you people really this dimwitted?

The US played BOTH SIDES in the Iraq/Iran matter.

This is old, old news.

The US also supported Saddam with arms and weapons up until a month before the Kuwait invasion, long after the Iran-Iraq war was over.

Dick Cheney, when he was a congressman, BLOCKED a measure to stop sending arms to Iraq. The measure was originally proposed because both Democrats and Republicans were outraged by Saddam's use of poison gas. But Dicky said NO, we MUST continue selling them arms! Dicky got his way!

Look at Craig Unger's book "House of Bush, House of Saud" -- there are fookin' pictures of Dicky Rumsfeld with his buddy Saddam, fer cryin' out loud! (There is also a picture in the book of Georgie W. Bush with his good buddy in Florida in 2000, who just happens to be a Palestinian Terrorist.)

Get your heads out of the sand, people!

VOT, you're right! Here's the handshake:

http://images.google.com/images?q=saddam+rumsfeld+shake

Of course they don't shake hands anymore, do they? American foreign policy has CHANGED. It's amazing that all these other liberals are upset about that... I've been waiting for it my whole life.

Everyone who's saying the Iraqis neither want nor deserve freedom is basically saying we're going to have to maintain Saddam-esque proxy regimes to subdue the local populations. I think that sucks. I'm proud that we're finally insisting that Iraq go about its business in a capitalist manner, instead of just dealing with the local crime family.

Rumsfeld's not shaking Saddam's hand any more, is he? Nice to see an old dog learn a new trick.

Capitalism in Iraq? Hmmm. I thought it was cronyism.

Crid, why did we give it over to OPEC again?

So what you're saying, Crid, is that it's okay Rumsfeld, Bush Sr., et al armed and supported Saddam, including giving him WMDs, because they've CHANGED their minds?

That's they're defense? They know better now?

They made a booboo, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Kurds were killed, but now they're "thinking right" because they've CHANGED their minds.

Hey, we've changed, so we're darn okay now! Hug us and love us! We supported a genocidal thug before, and looked the other way when he gassed thousands of people, but now we're okay because we've CHANGED our foreign policy.

We're okay because we're supporting different tyranical thugs now!

Venus, we got it wrong before, we're doing it right now. Isn't that what you want?

If you have insight on the "tyranical thuggery" of the nascent Iraqi government, we'd love to hear about it... But I suspect you made that up because it seems cleverly suspicious.

And if you'd care to describe what you wanted for the Iraqi people in 2004, BEFORE WE INVADED, that would be welcome too.

> I thought it was cronyism.

Nope, that was what we did over there for your whole life. This is something new.

> ...why did we give it over to OPEC again?

Give what?

OPEC is a US/western political construction through which oil prices were raised, flooding the gulf states with sturdy western currency so that they could afford to buy arms (mostly from the west) to repel invading commie hoards.

Remember the "oil crisis" of '73? I guess you could say it worked.

>we're doing it right now

And where's the proof of that?

So Bush's disbanding of the Iraqi army without disarming them first, thus allowing them to take home their weapons, which they're using now to kill US soldiers...

WAS RIGHT?

The production of Iraqi oil will be controlled by the OPEC cartel. This cartel is of course controlled by Saudi Arabia.

If this were truly capitalism, Iraqi oil would flow unimpeded. Any yes I know that world wide production is near max, but this doesn't alter that we handed the control of the Iraqi peoples sole asset into the hands of Saudi Arabia, unless you think that Iraq can out influence the House of Saud at the Opec meetings.

A pretty good bargain considering it is really only Americans (and of course thousand of Iraqis) who are dying. Plus the Saudis got to go on record as supporting their Arab brothers against the invading American hordes! Psych!

Finally, I thought the oil crisis of 73 was more about Israel, but that is another story....

> And where's the proof of that?

Your use of the work "proof" is suspiciously snotty, like maybe your mind is made up for November and beyond... OK! Not a problem!

> their weapons, which they're using now to
> kill US soldiers... WAS RIGHT?

I'll put up with a HUGE, and I mean HUGE number of mistakes from my country when we invade another. I'm glad someone's taking notes... But this is not something I want us to do with practiced, Olympic precision. Remember, we gave the world Bird and Miles... We can improvise.

> The production of Iraqi oil will be
> controlled by the OPEC cartel. This
> cartel is of course controlled by
> Saudi Arabia.

W's administration has done so much to change the rules in that region, ESPECIALLY for Saudi Arabia (that was the point!) that I'm not worried about it. Saddam was not into civic or commercial engineering in any respect: When Iraq *IS* pumping oil at full speed, they'll handily outperform the Saudis for light, sweet crude. Sorry this can't happen over the holiday weekend, but it's been thirty years since anyone over there changed an O ring on a valve. Our downtown hot dog carts get better maintenance.

> only Americans (and of course thousand of
> Iraqis) who are dying.

Never forget that Europe gets 85%-90% of its oil from the middle east, while the States gets about 15%-20%. In other words, don't forget who we're fighting for (again). I hate dying for the French, but we can't pretend that Saddam wasn't our mess to clean up. The death dial in Iraq continues to spin backwards compared to Saddam's metric. During the war, most casualties were foreigners (ringers) and abject monsters. One problem with this war is that it was so surgical that no one can seem to understand that's it's a new day.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'm for freeing the slaves, m'self.

Crid -- I like the "Saddam was our mess to clean up" angle. Did you make that up? It's really brilliant. Reminds me of one of Barbara Kruger's photo/text pieces:

It's a Small World (but not if you have to clean it)

> Did you make that up?

Wish I had the decency, but someone had to explain it to me.