U.S. President "Betrays" Arab Uprising-Again (Part 1)

(A rewrite of the blog I had earlier posted under this title--splitting it in half--to make it easier to digest for my readers--as well as to draw more attention to the question--raised in Part Two--about Saddam's possible use of CW in 1991, which the U.S. may have chosen to ignore). 

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An American president calls for the downfall of an Arab dictator. The people rise up. The revolt spreads across the country. The rebels ask for help from the American president…who, no longer a fan of revolution, turns his back and----as the rebels see it—betrays them.

Could be Syria September 2013. Could also be Iraq 1991, when an uprising of Shiites and Kurds threatened to topple Saddam Hussein.

There are, of course, differences, between the two calamities. Still what happened in Iraq back then, provides tragic perspective to the continuing cataclysm in Syria today.

In Syria, in 2011, in the wake of a popular revolt, Barack Obama called on Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad to step down. That was followed by a lot of encouraging talk, a trade embargo, and some clandestine aid from America, though no serious supply of arms. Mea

nwhile, America’s supposed allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, provided funds and some weapons to the rebels.

Now, after the flurry of negotiations over Assad’ chemical weapons, no one know—including probably Obama himself--what kind of support (if any) the U.S. will be giving to the rebels going forward.  They feel, understandably, left in the lurch. Their country meanwhile is a bloody basket case.

As for Iraq, in February 1991, as American forces were driving Saddam's troops out of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush, called for the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the dictator.

Despite subsequent denials from the U.S., that message was repeatedly broadcast across Iraq. [You can actually hear it on the excerpt of the documentary I did in 2003] It was also contained in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force.

Eager to end decades of repression, the Shiites arose. Their revolt spread like wildfire; in the north, the Kurds also rose up. Key Iraqi army units joined in. It looked as if Saddam's days were over.

But then George H. W. Bush blew the whistle. Things had got out of hand. What Bush had wanted was not a messy popular uprising but a neat military coup -- another strongman more amenable to Western interests. The White House feared that turmoil would give the Iranians increased influence, upset the Turks, wreak havoc throughout the region.

But the Bush administration didn't just turn its back on the revolt; it actually aided Saddam to suppress the Intifada.

When Saddam's brutal counter-attack against the rebellions began, the order was given to American troops already deep inside Iraq and armed to the teeth not to assist the rebellion in any way -- though everyone knew that they were condemning the Intifada to an awful defeat. Thanks to their high-flying reconnaissance planes, U.S. commanders would observe the brutal process as it occurred.

At the time, Rocky Gonzalez was a Special Forces warrant officer serving with U.S. troops in southern Iraq.  From their base, Rocky and his units watched as Saddam's forces launched their counterattack against the rebels. Thousands of people fled toward the American lines, said Gonzalez. “One of the refugees was waving a leaflet that had been dropped by U.S. planes over Iraq. Those leaflets told them to rise up against the regime and free themselves."

"They weren't asking us to fight. They felt they could do that themselves. Basically they were just saying 'we rose up like you asked us, now give us some weapons and arms to fight.'"

The American forces had huge stocks of weapons they had captured from the Iraqis. But they were ordered to blow them up rather than turn them over to the rebels.In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf, without giving details, alludes to the fact that the American-led coalition aided Saddam to crush the uprising

Indeed, Saddam's former intelligence chief, General Wafiq al-Samarrai, later recounted that the government forces had almost no ammunition left when they finally squelched the revolt.

Iraqi survivors of the Intifada also told my French reporter associate, Michel Despratx, that U.S. forces actually prevented them from marching on Baghdad. "One of the American soldiers threatened to kill us if we didn't turn back," he said. Another Shiite leader claimed that the U.S. even provided Saddam's Republican Guards with fuel. The Americans, he charged, disarmed some resistance units and allowed Republican Guard tanks to go through their checkpoints to crush the uprising.

"We let one Iraqi division go through our lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse," said Middle East expert Wiliam Quandt.

U.S. officials declined even to meet with the Shiite rebels to hear their case.

In other words, the U.S. position back then was not that different from the fear in the Obama administration that radical forces, linked to Al Qaeda, will take power if Assad were to fall.  

Continued in part two.

U.S. President "Betrays" Arab Uprising-Again (Part 2)

Did the U.S. in 1991 help cover-up Saddam’s CW?

Continued from part 1

In 1991, after first exhorting Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein, President George H.W. Bush, became fearful that the Shiites, whose rebellion had spread like wildfire, were too closely tied to Iran. He ordered American troops then in Iraq to refuse any aid. He also continued to allow Saddam’s military to fly their deadly helicopter strikes.

Bush’s decision turned the tide. Saddam, who had been on the brink of defeat, unleashed fearsome attacks against the rebels. What has not been reported is that those attacks may also have included the use of chemical weapons-- according to Rocky Gonzalez an American soldier I interviewed for a documentary on the subject, who was stationed just a few miles away.

"You could see there were helicopters crisscrossing the skies, going back and forth," he told me. "Within a few hours people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns. “' We were guessing mustard gas. They had blisters and burns on their face and on their hands, on places where the skin was exposed," he said. "As the hours passed, more and more people were coming.”

Indeed, one of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm had been that Saddam would unleash his WMD. U.S. officials repeatedly warned Iraq that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered -- or so the Bush administration led the world to believe.

Rocky's suspicion that Saddam did resort to them in 1991 was later confirmed by the report of the U.S. Government's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and concluded that Saddam no longer had any WMD. Almost universally ignored by the media, however, was the finding that Saddam had resorted to his WMD during the 1991 uprising. The "regime was shaking and wanted something 'very quick and effective' to put down the revolt."

They considered then rejected using mustard gas, as it would be too perceptible with U.S. troops close by. Instead, on March 7th, 1991 the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. "Dozens of sorties were flown against Shiite rebels in Kerbala and the surrounding areas," the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.

Because of previous U.S. warnings against resorting to chemical weapons, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk, but the Coalition never reacted.

The lingering question is why? It's impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. There were repeated charges from Shiite survivors that the Iraqi dictator had used chemical weapons. Rocky Gonzalez said he heard from refugees that nerve gas was being used. He had also observed French-made Iraqi helicopters -- one of which was outfitted as a crop sprayer -- making repeated bomb runs over Najaf. Gonzalez maintained that, contrary to what the ISG report said, many of the refugees who fled to U.S. lines were indeed victims of mustard gas. "Their tongues were swollen," he said, "and they had severe burns on the mucous tissue on the inside of their mouths and nasal passages. Our chemical officer also said it looked like mustard gas."

Gonzalez suggested that local Iraqi officials, desperate to put down the uprising, may have used mustard gas without permission from on high. "A lot of that was kept quiet," he said, "because we didn't want to panic the troops. We stepped up our training with gas masks, because we were naturally concerned."

Gonzalez's unit also passed their information on to their superiors. There were other American witnesses to what happened. U.S. helicopters and planes flew overhead, patrolling as Saddam's helicopters decimated the rebels. Some of those aircraft provided real-time video of the occurrences below.

On March 7th, Secretary of State James Baker warned Saddam not to resort to chemical weapons to repress the uprising. But why, when the U.S. was notified that the Iraqi dictator actually had resorted to chemical weapons, was there no forceful reaction from the administration of the elder Bush? One plausible explanation--denouncing Saddam for using chemical weapons would have greatly increased pressure on the U.S. President to come to the aid of the Shiites.

As James Baker put it—in Kissingerian terms--“We don’t want to see a power vacuum in Iraq.”

Instead, the American decision to turn their backs on the Intifada gave a green light to Saddam Hussein's ruthless counterattack. The repression when it came was as horrendous as everyone knew it would be. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were massacred. In the North, however, because of media coverage, the U.S. was finally obliged to decree a no-fly zone, thus protecting the Kurds. In the South, however, where there were no TV cameras, the slaughter of the Shiites continued

Meanwhile, anonymous government figures, wise in the ways of Realpolitik, were making statements such as, "It is far easier to deal with a tame Saddam Hussein than with an unknown quantity." [One can imagine the same sentiments today from American editorialists and statesmen]

Imagine if, instead of blocking the Intifada, George H.W. Bush had given a green light -- without even sending American troops to Baghdad -- just sent the needed signals: met with rebel leaders, ordered Saddam to stop flying his helicopter gunships.
Indeed, some in the Bush administration, like Paul Wolfowitz, were recommending that he do just that: support the revolt he had called for.

They were overruled.

Granted, if the revolution had been successful, there would have been a period of tumult. The Kurds might have achieved an autonomous or semi autonomous state, which is what they will wind up with. The Iranians would have certainly increased their influence through their Shiite allies, but no more than they have today.

There would also have been no American invasion and disastrous occupation of Iraq in 2003.

And, without that sorry backdrop, it’s also likely that the Obama administration would have been much more open to aiding the rebels in Syria-- early on in 2011, before more radical elements became involved.

And that could have made all the difference. 

Barry Lando is author of the mystery novel, “The Watchman’s File” about Israel’s most-closely guarded secret (it’s not the bomb.) Available at Amazon.

Why Did Syria Want CW Anyway?

An air of inanity pervades the debate about Syria—obscuring the underlying fears and motives, the real forces behind a surrealistic, blood-soaked drama worthy of Kafka, Ionesco, or Pinter.

It’s evident, for instance, that the 800-pound guerrilla hovering behind the debate is Israel and its American backers, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.

What has not been made clear is that, lurking in the background, is another shadowy hulking presence: Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity, which—as I’ve previously blogged--Israel has never officially acknowledged and most U.S. administrations have done their best to ignore. As have the mainstream press and the gaggle of statesmen, commentators and “experts” with weighty proposals on how to resolve the current crisis.

For instance, Senator Joe Manchin III, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, would give Bashar al-Assad 45 days to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention and begin ridding the country of its weapons stockpiles. Only if Assad refuses would the American president be authorized to take military action.

“We need some options out there that does something about the chemical weapons,” Mr. Manchin said. “That’s what’s missing right now.”

That proposal, however, comes across as hopelessly naïve when you understand why Syria’s leaders opted for chemical weapons in the first place.  

It was not with the intention of deploying CW against their own people. It was instead an attempt to develop an affordable and meaningful deterrent to Israel’s daunting military might, particularly to Israel’s nuclear capability.

That’s the bottom line of several serious studies of Syria’s weapons program, done over the past few years by American and other experts. As a study published by the European Union’s non-proliferation consortium in July 2012, concluded, “Syria’s CWs are not tactical or battlefield weapons, but rather a strategic deterrence against Israel’s conventional superiority and its nuclear weapons arsenal.IWhile Israeli leaders have always portrayed their country as an embattled David, confronting an existential threat from an Arab –and now,Iranian—Goliath, Syria’s perspective has been totally different.  

As the rulers in Damascus have seen it, Israel, thanks to its sophisticated industrial base,  and unwavering financial and political support from the United States, has been able to develop by far the most powerful military forces in the region—with its own nuclear trump card.  

The Syrians, on the other hand, have suffered one humiliating setback after another, from the failure to defeat Israel in 1948, to Israel’s on-going occupation of the Golan Heights, which they took in 1967, to Israel’s repeated forays into South Lebanon.

The Syrians, however, came to realize they could never equal Israel’s military might.  They opted instead for a practical alternative: chemical weapons. If not strategic parity, CW would at least give Syria, if the chips were down, a fearful enough weapon to brandish against Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

As the European Union’s study said, “With meager resources, an inadequate military culture and a weakening, less-than-reliable Soviet patron, Syria was in no position to maintain its policy of conventional parity. That became amply clear at the turn of the 1990s, when Syria approached economic bankruptcy, witnessed the collapse of the USSR and had to adapt to rising US influence in the region.”

Syria’s determination to maintain its chemical arsenal could only have increased after 2007 when Israeli planes bombed what was apparently a Syrian attempt to construct a nuclear reactor.

One Israeli analyst claimed that  CWs and associated delivery systems became, for lack of better options, the ‘core’ of Syria’s security strategy, a ‘wild card’ that would create enough uncertainty in the minds of Israeli decision makers to prevent an escalation of an existential nature.

Another analyst who has a unique view of Syria’s CW strategy is  M. Zuhair Diab, an international security analyst now living in London. From 1981 to 1985 he was a diplomat with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As he put it in a study in 1997.

“Syria seeks to neutralize Israel’s ability to employ nuclear blackmail to coerce it into accepting unfavorable conditions for a peace settlement. Syria’s increased bargaining leverage with Israel as result of its CW capability has been demonstrated by Israel’s inability to dictate its terms in the peace negotiations between the two sides. Indeed, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized that a condition ofstrategic stalemate had emerged between Israel and Syria.”

Syria has not signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. Whenever the issue comes up, Syria’s leaders have invariably cited Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the fact that Israel refused to sign the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In other words, Syria is not going to unilaterally lay down its most potent weapon.

Think what you will of the men governing Syria, but how can Israel or its American backers, answer that argument? Particularly if they still refuse to admit officially that Israel even has nukes?

The analysis of Syria’s CW program by the former Syrian diplomat, was written in 1997, 14 years before the outbreak of the civil war which is currently ripping apart his country. At that time, according to him, there were only two realistic scenarios for Syrian tactical use of CW. They both involved defending against Israel.

“1) if Israel launches an offensive involving first use of CW, forcing Syrian units to retaliate in-kind; or 2) if the defensive perimeter of Damascus, the Syrian capital, (italics added) collapses as a result of an Israeli incursion through the Golan Heights or a flanking maneuver through the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.”

With the existence of the Assad regime now at stake, the Syrian military’s doctrines on whom they might target with CW may have changed. But not the trip wire that might provoke them to unleash CW: a serious threat to the Syrian capital.

What is striking about the study from the former Syrian diplomat I’ve just cited is the fact that, according to some sources, the reason that Syrian military units may have resorted to CW on August 21, was as a desperate measure to drive rebel forces from a strategically key suburb of Damascus.

Jon Stewart on Obama's red line.

In case you missed it, check out Jon Stewart's take on Obama and Syria...Much more incisive than Noam Chomsky or Vladimir Putin. 

Jihadists fear they may also be in Obama's cross-hairs!

Fascinating speculation from Janes on who U.S. missiles might also be directed against if Obama gives the go ahead. 

Jihadists apparently worried they'd also be on the target list--already taking precautions. 

Syria and Iraq: On Drawing Lines in the Sand

There’s a certain irony to British Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision—dictated by the British Parliament and public—not to join President Obama’s coalition of the willing.

Though the American President may still order an attack on Syria in retaliation for the horrific chemical attack last week,  Cameron’s surprise move has at least slowed Obama’s militant momentum.

What’s ironic about this situation is that, 23 years ago, it was another British Prime Minister—Margaret Thatcher—who played a major role in the disastrous decision of another American President—George H.W. Bush--to deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to the Gulf after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  

Common to both of those fateful events was the failure of American presidents to establish and maintain a clear policy line. And their ultimate resolve to maintain the image of U.S. power.

In August 2012, Barack Obama seemed intent on clearly warning Bashar al-Assad that the U.S. would act if the Syrian dictator unleashed his chemical weapons. In fact, as I blogged yesterday, Obama’s warning was far from clear, nor well thought out.

Furthermore, according to the British, since that warning, Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons several times in smaller doses, with only the most tepid reaction from Obama.  So what was Obama’s policy?

There was a similar question of American resolve in1990, as Saddam Hussein grew more belligerent in negotiations with Kuwait. To ascertain how the U.S. would react if he were to invade his Gulf neighbor. Saddam called in American Ambassadress April Glaspie, who told him quite clearly, “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

Later, Glaspie would take the fall for making Saddam think the U.S. had given him the green light. In fact, though, as I wrote in my history of that period, ‘Web of Deceit”, Glaspie was only one of several top American officials who declared publicly that the U.S. had no defense pact with Kuwait and would not react militarily to an invasion.

Indeed, according to a former top official in Iraq’s foreign ministry, the person most responsible for giving that benign impression to Saddam was President George H.W. Bush himself, who had written a letter on July 27th to the Iraqi dictator- a letter so bland and conciliatory--that Paul Wolfowitz, attempted—unsuccessfully--to have it cancelled. 

As Congressman Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee told me in a documentary I did on the subject, , ‘Saddam Hussein looked on Kuwait as if it were a province of Iraq. He was looking for an excuse to go in, and I think he did not understand clearly, unambiguously that the United States would oppose any effort by Iraq to move into Kuwait. We did not draw a firm line in the sand. It’s not difficult. What is clear to me is at the highest levels of the U.S. government we did not convey strongly and clearly to Saddam Hussein that we would react militarily if he went across that border.” 

Incredibly, however, during the same period, General Norman Schwartzkopf, then  American commander for the Gulf region, was urging Kuwaiti officials not to back down in their negotiations with Saddam.

The U.S., he said, would support them. As the New Yorker’s Milton Viorst later wrote. “I was convinced in the spring of 1990, the Kuwaiti government felt itself free to take a dangerous position in confronting Iraq…the Kuwaitis played their tricks because Washington, deliberately or not, had conveyed the message to them that they could.”

Indeed, Saddam’ August 2 invasion caught President Bush flat-footed. He scrambled for some kind of response. Though he condemned the invasion, the president told a reporter  “We’re not discussing intervention.”

One of the key leaders who urged Bush to react--convincing him that military force was required--was British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who met Bush on August 2nd at a conference at Aspen.

According to Bob Woodward’s account, Thatcher took Bush by the arm, “You must know, George, he’s not going to stop.” She said, referring to the possibility that Saudi Arabia would be Saddam’s next target.

Saddam, she insisted, had to be expelled from Kuwait, his threat permanently destroyed.

Bush’s subsequent decision--to deploy hundreds of thousands of American troops to the Gulf--was probably the most disastrous decision that any American leader ever took.

It would ultimately lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the rise of Osama Bin Laden, the attacks of 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and, it could be argued, at least partially continues to fuel the on-going turmoil across the region—including the tragic situation in Syria. 

Along that sorry way, another British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was the major foreign cheerleader for the President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

This time around, however, under the wary eye of Parliament and the British public, the British Prime Minister is bowing out.

Syria-Perilous Precedent

The issues in Syria we are told by the Obama administration and its allies, are clear -cut. America has no choice but to act. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The current face-off between the U.S. and Syria is the product of blurred rhetoric, diplomatic double talk, and shocking miscalculations from both sides. The upshot: the U.S. and a few of its allies are ready—once again to unleash a volley of sophisticated weapons against another Middle East dictator, with no solid legal basis nor any realistic goals in mind.

For example, one of the questions many are asking is: knowing how devastating the U.S. response would be, why would Assad risk using chemical weapons?

The answer is that Assad didn’t know what the U.S. response would be.

Indeed, President Obama was less than precise when he made his statement at a press conference August 20, 2012 that the introduction of chemical weapons in Syria., might change his decision not to order a U.S. military engagement.

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.  That would change my calculus.  That would change my equation.

Furthermore, we are told that many of Obama’s aides were taken aback by that new and vague policy declaration, the President in effect painting himself into a very imprecise corner.  

Just the same, after Obama had issued that warning. why would Assad have risked  using chemical weapons in the horrific this past week, killing hundreds of his own people.

One part of the answer is that Assad’s forces had apparently already used chemical weapons, in much smaller doses over the past few months, triggering little more than a tepid response from America and its allies, Obama declaring a vague intention to arm the rebels---though such arms have yet to get through.

Another part of the answer is that the August 21 chemical attack may have been a dumb miscalculation on the part of one or more of Assad’s commanders, rather than the result of an order from Assad himself. That, according to Foreign Policy magazine, was the conclusion that U.S. intelligence drew after listening to intercepts as “an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people.”

Thus, it is not at all clear that the slaughter was not the work of one or more Syrian officers overstepping their bounds. “Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? "It's unclear where control lies," one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. "Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?" 

It was thus revealing when the New York Times reported today that

“American officials said Wednesday there was no “smoking gun” that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack, and they tried to lower expectations about the public intelligence presentation…But even without hard evidence tying Mr. Assad to the attack, administration officials asserted, the Syrian leader bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of his troops and should be held accountable.

“The commander in chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership,” said the State Department’s deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf — even if, she added, “He’s not the one who pushes the button or says ‘go’ on this.”

Of course, using that same doctrine—others might argue—as they often do--that American Presidents, like George W. Bush, or yes, even Barack Obama, should be held responsibility for the atrocities committed in the field by their forces.

But that’s probably not something the White House would like to discuss at this time.

Foreign Policy Confirms my U.S. aiding Saddam charges

Foreign Policy Magazine today published an "exclusive" new report, breathlessly relating how the U.S. helped Saddam as he was gassing his own people. Same thing I wrote years ago in Web of Deceit and have blogged several times over the past few years. Same thing also recounted in my documentary on The Trial of Saddam Hussein. Check out foreign policy , then read again my previous blog below, and take a look at the excerpt of the documentary.

When U.S. ignored Mideast Chemical Atrocities

America's outrage over the use of chemical weapons by Arab dictators depends on which dictator did the gassing, and when they did it. The current situation in Syria is a perfect example.

Bolstered by horrific images of hundreds of white shrouded corpses, there is a growing belief that chemical weapons were used in rocket attacks by the Syrian government on a Damascus suburb earlier this week.

If that belief proves to be true, then U.S. President Barack Obama, who had warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons would “constitute a red line for the United States,” faces a terrible choice.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have long been  outraged by charges that the Assad government was using chemical weapons.  Their feelings are understandable -- right? How could any U.S. administration stand by as an Arab dictator gassed his own people?

But the fact is they did: Republican President Ronald Reagan not only turned his back on such ruthless attacks, though they were substantiated by grisly video evidence, but continued to aid the tyrant who was ordering the savagery.

The dictator in question was Saddam Hussein. That of course was before the invasion of Iraq ten years ago when the George W. Bush acted to topple the tyrant he compared to Hitler.

It was in the 1980's when the U.S. secretly backed Saddam after he invaded Iran. (Along with Michel Despratx from Canal + I did a  TV documentary on America's complicity with Saddam which also covered this subject.)

When word first broke in 1983 that Iraq was using mustard gas against Iranian troops, the Reagan administration (after an verbal tap on the wrist delivered by then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld) studiously ignored the issue. Saddam, after all, was then the West's de facto partner in a war against the feared fundamentalist regime of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

Saddam's chemical weapons were provided largely by companies in Germany and France (these days, of course, France is also outraged that Assad may be using chemical weapons).

For its part, the United States provided Saddam with, among many other things, vital satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions.

U.S. support for Saddam increased in 1988 when Rick Francona, then an Air Force captain, was dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency. His mission: to provide precise targeting plans to the Iraqis to cripple a feared a new Iranian offensive. Shortly after arriving, Francona discovered that the Iraqis were now using even more deadly chemical weapons -- nerve gas -- against the Iranians. He informed his superiors in Washington.

The response, he said, was immediate.

"We were told to cease all of our cooperation with the Iraqis until people in Washington were able to sort this out. There were a series of almost daily meetings on 'How are we going to handle this, what are we going to do?' Do we continue our relations with the Iraqis and make sure the Iranians do not win this war, or do we let the Iraqis fight this on their own without any U.S. assistance, and they'll probably lose? So there are your options -- neither one palatable."

Francona concluded, "The decision was made that we would restart our relationship with the Iraqis... We went back to Baghdad, and continued on as before. "

This policy continued even after it was discovered that Saddam was using chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurds of Halabja.

Fourteen years later, in March 2003, attempting to justify the coming invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush repeatedly cited the Halabja atrocity. "Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky," he said. "The chemical attack on Halabja provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit."

But President Bush never explained the assistance that the United States had given Saddam at the time.

When news first broke about the atrocity in 1988, the Reagan administration did its utmost to prevent condemnation of Saddam, fighting Congress' attempt to impose restrictions on trade with Iraq.

President George W. Bush's father was then vice president. Another key administration figure involved in the fight was Reagan's national security advisor, Gen. Colin Powell.

A few years later, with their former ally in the Gulf now their targeted enemy, George W. Bush (assisted by Colin Powell) brushed this history of complicity with real weapons of mass destruction under the rug---while using nonexistent WMD as a reason for war.

Could the issue of chemical weapons propel the U.S. into yet another bloody Middle Eastern conflict?

Upside-down world! Egyptian Army Calls People to the Streets!!

Five cents to anyone who can recall when the leader of an army that was once considered brutal and corrupt by many, opted to call the people to take to the streets!! Even more mind-binding: they are calling for the masses to support them against a group--the Muslim Brotherhood-- that was once considered the standard bearer of popular opposition to decades of tyranny by the military . 

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