posted by nynalleyvee
Why don't we hear about it anymore except for the body burnings. What if your kid were stationed there and it was treated as nothing unless the Americans screw up. Have we all forgotten why we are over there???
Well yes you seem to have. Maybe if the west hadn't supported and financed the taliban in the first place they might not have gotten in to power in the first place.
Have you read the 911 commission report?
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/
I find it difficult how anyone reading such reports or doing the most basic research on western policy in the middle east does not get angry at the whole situation. I say the west cos it is not just americans that are culpable in this. Now US and British soldiers are getting killed sorting out a mess politicians created.
posted by far rider
I will not forget. Say it. Don't stop saying it. When you boil it all down, what we fight for again and again is the right of a free people to self rule. In my opinion, no matter what nation, group, or people, ALL have that right.
In that case maybe if in the past that hadn't been changed to any government they want so long as it suits the west. Don't you ever question why the US government helped the taliban in the first place?
Iraq acquired all the techology for it's chemical, biological and nuclear programmes from the US, Britain, France and Germany. The US in particular supplied Iraq with weapons grade biological material originating from Fort Detrick, and from the American Type Culture Collection Company, in Maryland. These shipments were approved by the Pentagon, the US Department of Commerce and the US Treasury. It additonally supplied them with hundreds of tons of unrefined Sarin, the agent used in chemical warfare, and did so AFTER the Iraqi gas attack on Halabja, March 16th 1988.
[Source: 'THE FATHER OF ALL DESPOTS' - article by Said K. Arburish, THE GUARDIAN supplement, January 2000]
In 1994 a US Senate Committee reported that from 1985 onwards, and probably much earlier, through to 1989, US companies supplied Iraq with biological materials capable of weapons grade use, including 'Bacillus anthracis' and 'Clostridium botulinum', causing Anthrax and Botulism respectively. The US additionally supplied at least 5 other weapons capable bacteria strains, none of which were weakened or had their capacity for reproduction affected. The committee reported: "These micro-organisms exported by the United Satets were identical to those the United Nations [weapons] inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program." The report also noted that US exports to Iraq also included pre-cursors for chemicals warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, even chemical warhead filling equipment.
[Source: 'ROGUE STATE' by William Blum, ZED BOOKS, 2001]
Britain also continued to sell weapons to Iraq after the Halabja attack. Exiled Kurds staged a hunger strike outside the UN building in New York to draw attention to the massacre, but the US took no action whatsoever. Kurdish leaders made a direct appeal to then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleading for her support. Instead the Export Credit Guarantee Department used £340 MILLION of British taxpayers money to underwrite further arms sales. (By the outbreak of the Gulf war, British taxpayers had underwritten £670 MILLION of export credit to Iraq which Saddam Hussein defaulted on.)
[Source: 'DISTANT VOICES' + 'HIDDEN AGENDAS' both by John Pilger, Vintage Books 1992 and 1998 respectively]
All these countries flagrantly defied the international ban on weapons sales to Iraq, and no UN Security Council resolution was ever tabled to condemn Iraq's invasion of Iran, nor their use of chemical weapons. America helped Saddam Hussein acquire weapons of mass destruction and develop his nuclear programme in violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, whilst simultaneously protecting Israel’s nuclear programme, which was illegal under the US' own Foreign Aid Act which bars financial aid to any country involved in clandestine nuclear weapons development.
In 1989 Iraqi scientists were invited to attend a conference entitled 'The Physics of Detonation', sponsored by 'US Nuclear Weapons Laboratories', and held in Portland, Oregon. Britain also allowed Iraqi scientists to train at 'Hadland Photosonics', a Hertfordshire based company that specialised in flash x-ray photography used during the analysis of nuclear explosions.
[Source: 'THE SCOURGING OF IRAQ' by Geoff Simons, MacMillan Press, 1996]
The same year saw Britain co-sponsor the 'Baghdad Arms Fair'.
[Source: David Steele, former British MP, BBC 'QUESTION TIME' January 1991
If you want to support your troops stop calling anyone who questions your government unpatriotic, saying they support terrorism, and dismissing criticism out of hand. Perhaps take a critical look at what you are told by GW and his cronies and stop blindly assuming that he can do no wrong. Go after terrorists by all means but don't add to their support base while you are at it.
