We don't say a thing when they gassed the Kurds in 1988 and now we are destroying their country for it. What gives?
2006-08-23 10:25:53 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Military
They were not secret allies. Their alliance was quite overt. They supplied the Iraqi's with all "ALL" their ordinance including the gas used on the Kurds. The USA used the Iraqi's as a proxy to attack Iran. The whole mess blew up when Saddam decided he had paid enough dues to the USA(about a million dead on the Iraqi side) so that he could take back what the Iraqi"s refer to as the 13th province, Kuwait. The great thing is that Saddam told the USA what he was going to do but the idiot appointee to Iraq didn't understand and Saddam thought he had the go ahead. The rest is, as they say, is history.
2006-08-23 16:42:06 · answer #1 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Do people really not know that there was an 8 year war between Iran and Iraq in the 80's? When it began in 1980 Iran was still holding Americans hostage. Saddam became the enemy of our enemy and we were willing to look the other way as he committed atrocities so long as he didn't challenge our interests. If conservatives have a problem with this they can't blame Clinton. They have to look to the guy they have deified for 20 years...Reagan.
2006-08-23 10:44:45 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Reagan and Bush were overt allies of Saddam Hussein back then because he was at war with Iran. The enemy of an enemy is your friend.
It was, ironically, the British government that actually suggested that Saddam gas the Kurds.
2006-08-23 10:35:03 · answer #3 · answered by Dawgface420 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, they were not partners. We did not do anything about the Kurds for the same reason we did nothing about China invading Tibet. Neither has control over oil.We protected Kuwait because of the oil.
We invaded Iraq because Saddam tried to have Bush senior assassinated. We invaded Panama to protect our interest in the canal.
Vaya con DIOS
2006-08-23 11:00:09 · answer #4 · answered by chrisbrown_222 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hell, they were the ones that gave Saddam the gas in the first place. However, the gas was meant for the Iranians, not the Kurds.
Nothing was said at the time, for fear of opening Pandora's box.
There does appear to be a double standard present, but Saddam's sins went far beyond the killing of Kurds, he killed anyone who opposed him.
2006-08-23 10:41:31 · answer #5 · answered by briang731/ bvincent 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You must be young. The US/Iraq alliance was never a secret. Iraq was considered an ally against two larger threats: the Soviet Union and Iran. At the time, Iran was trying to acquire Soviet weapons to build up an army to spread the Islamic revolution. Iraq also resisted Soviet attempts to penetrate further into the Middle East and seize our strategic oil fields. It was an "enemy of my enemy" scenario. Once the Soviets were removed as a threat, Hussein decided he should control the oil in the Middle East and became an irritant to the US.
2006-08-23 10:35:28 · answer #6 · answered by Crusader1189 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Rumsfeld shook Saddam's hand in 1983.
Saddam took the blame for gassing the Kurds. Others probably carried out the grisly attack. Turkey never liked the Kurds, for example.
2006-08-23 10:29:23 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
I don't think we were secret allies, but I will agree that it is terrible what happened in 1988. Look at Bosnia, Rwanda etc. At the time it just wasn't politically correct to "police the world", it was only a couple of decades earlier we were in Korea, Viet Nam and even parts of Cambodia. People do not easily forget that. It doesn't justify ignoring genocide, but it is a factor.
2006-08-23 10:44:41 · answer #8 · answered by frogspeaceflower 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, they were not secret allies of Saddam, they were open about their alliance with Saddam. See, we needed Saddam there at that time to counter the percieved Iranian threat so we ignored a lot of things that Saddam did at that time. Besides, we really didn't ignore it, we quietly rebuked him through diplomatic channels.
2006-08-23 10:41:30 · answer #9 · answered by Jim T 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
why weren't the liberals in an uproar about it? Where was the U.N.?
Are you not glad that we finally took a man capable of doing that out of power?
As i have said a thousand times here, it seems you liberals can't comprehend that there were a variety of reasons we went to iraq. You guys seem to focus on one at a time, and say, "that is not a reason...". If you put them all together, I would like to see you say we shouldn't have gone.
2006-08-23 10:34:28 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋