The Twisted, Convoluted Iraq War "Justification"

By: KathyinBlacksburg
Published On: 12/2/2008 4:22:07 PM

As the House of Cards that was the justification for war with Iraq, a country which did not attack us and was not involved in the 9-11 attacks, crumbled, pro-war Kool-Aid drinkers asserted another supposed justification.  And they continue to use this:  That justification was the gassing of the Kurds back in the 1980s.  It was such an atrocity, they asserted, that we must wage war all thos many years later. The long delay didn't make sense.  
After all, the gassing of the Kurds happened during a Republican administration.  The hegemons couldn't say they "had to wait" until a Republican was in office.  Besides, when it came to flexing his missile muscle, Bill Clinton was no slouch.  Indeed, when it came to another of the nation's enemies, Osama Bin Laden, it could be argued that Bill Clinton tried harder to catch him than George W. Bush did.

Those of us who asked how such a long-ago ordeal, heinous as it was, could be used so many years later were scorned; mocked; called inhumane; or, worse, traitors.  We also pointed out that during the Reagan and Bush presidencies, the US was trying to make inroads into dealings with Iraq.  The Rumsfeld photo (the infamous handshake) traveled the internet.  

As a side note, I also always thought that the reason we thought Saddam had had WMD in 2001-2003 was because we, the British or other European allies of the US had likely sold them either the bio-weapons themselves or the components of such.  How else would our government have known of any alleged discrepancies between what Iraq supposedly had and what it was attesting to?

But I digress.

With respect to the gassing of the Kurds, two articles on CNN are relevant.  These articles  hereand herepoint to once-classified documents which show the duplicity of administration leaders claiming motives of redressing that decades-ago admittedly horrific crime.

According to the first article:

Declassified U.S. government documents show that while Saddam Hussein was gassing Iraqi Kurds, the U.S. opposed punishing Iraq with a trade embargo because it was cultivating Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a market for U.S. farm exports.

According to Peter Galbraith, then an idealistic Senate staffer determined to stop Hussein from committing genocide, the Reagan administration "got carried away with their own propaganda. They began to believe that Saddam Hussein could be a reliable partner."

The only problem with that is, as most of us here at RK have known for some time, that the US turned a blind eye to Saddam's crime back then.  Indeed the Reagan and bush administrations continued to seek stronger relationships with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  So when folks like Bush, Cheney, McCain and the assorted disengenuous bloggers trot out theat reason for the war being t

Previously secret documents reveal that the US sat idly by as Sadam Hussein gassed the Kurds, nad did so for commercial benefit.

CNN reveals

Here's the pdf file.

Here's another document showing the long-term view concerning Iraq at that time (March 1988).

Hat tip: Sabra's Journal at DU here.

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