Dead Men Tell No Tales: Especially Against The US

[michael_ital]

Yet another brilliant column by Eric Margolis, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Enjoy.

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U.S BURIES TRUTH

Saddam's execution eliminates main witness against accomplices
By ERIC MARGOLIS

On my first visit to Iraq in 1976, so-called "Israeli spies" were being hanged in front of my Baghdad hotel.

While covering Iraq just before the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's secret police threatened to hang me as an American/Israeli spy.

I always considered "President Hussein," who was hanged Friday, a sadistic bully and a loathsome megalomaniac.

No one can accuse me of sympathy for Saddam or his fellow thugs who terrorized Iraq. But I was thoroughly disgusted and ashamed by the kangaroo court created and stage-managed by the U.S. that condemned Saddam.

It was a disgraceful farrago of Soviet-style show trial and judicial circus. Washington, which claimed to be bringing the fruits of democracy to the benighted Arab World, put on a sinister legal farce worthy of, ironically, Saddam's courts.

Iraq's deposed president, whom Osama bin Laden called "the worst Arab despot" should have faced real justice at an international legal tribunal like the UN Hague Court. That would have served warning to other despots who violated human rights and committed aggression.

The United States did right to hand over Serb tyrant Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague. But Saddam had to be silenced before he told the world about his long collusion with the United States. Dead men tell no tales.

Saddam's biggest crime was not killing rebellious Kurds or Shia. As ruler of the unnatural, British-created Frankenstein state Iraq, Saddam was forced to keep putting down rebellions.

Saintly Winston Churchill authorized the RAF to bomb Iraq's rebellious Kurdish tribesmen with poison gas -- exactly as Saddam later did. Saddam's most brutal repression of Kurds and Shia occurred when they revolted during Iraq's wars with Iran and the U.S.

Saddam should have faced trial for his unprovoked 1980 aggression against Iran that ended up causing one million dead and wounded.

But in this crime, Saddam was covertly backed by his principal accomplices, the U.S. and Britain. Donald Rumsfeld even went to Baghdad to offer Saddam arms, finance and intelligence. Hanging Saddam eliminated the main witness.

Saddam was helped into power by the CIA, which stood by while he slaughtered Iraqi communists and Nasserites.

The U.S. and Britain, as I discovered in Baghdad in 1990, supplied Saddam with poison gas and germs to make battlefield weapons (these were not "weapons of mass destruction." The germs were never successfully weaponized).

So long as Saddam was killing and torturing people America and Britain did not like, he was "our SOB."

But when Saddam grew too big for his britches and invaded Kuwait, he went from being the West's regional bullyboy to devil No. 1.

Once he touched the West's oil in Kuwait, he was marked for death.

Some of the tame U.S. media have been spinning Saddam's execution as a justification for the Bush/Cheney administration's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, without ever asking why Saddam was an ally in 1988 yet a devil in 1991 and again in 2003.

Nor has there been much reporting that under Saddam, Iraq became the Arab world's most industrialized nation, a leader in women's rights, medical care, education, and public projects.

Back in 2003, I predicted that once the U.S. got rid of old pal Saddam, it would look for another Saddam-clone to replace him. The mutant state of Iraq and its feuding peoples can only be ruled by an iron fist. Saddam's greatest error was believing he had frightened Iraqis into a national unity that would support invasions of his neighbours. He was dead wrong.

There are plenty of other brutal regimes that rival Saddam's Iraq for nastiness. Most are close U.S. allies. As Henry Kissinger once quipped, being America's ally is far more dangerous than being its enemy.

After jubilation among Shia and Kurds over Saddam's execution subsides, Iraq will return to its daily bloody chaos. Saddam called himself a martyr. In years to come, many Arabs will forget his many crimes and remember him as a flawed hero and martyr who dared challenge the United States and Israel, and paid the price for his audacity.

[COSTA]

WHO CARES SADDAM MY HOME TOWN KISMAAYO
WILL BE LIBARRATED SOON BY THE TFG ARMY AND OUR ALLIES THE MIGHTY ETHIOPIAN

[michael_ital]

i thought your home town was addis ababa ?

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

All Margolis does is spin lies and nonsense. The guy ONLY writes critic against any and all US government.

[michael_ital]

Theyre not worthy of anything but criticism.

[biko]

[quote="michael_ital"]i thought your home town was addis ababa ?[/quote]

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Mick
The list of things America has done for the world is so long, you could not put them all down on print. Don't be a focking idiot.

[michael_ital]

MAC
And Canada's list is just as long, if not in some cases longer. Difference being we don't go around starting/funding wars and/or regime changes that make us enemies of pretty much everyone on the planet Earth, hyme's aside. Even YOU needn't be a focking idiot here and admit this little excursion in Somalia was poorly rationalized and poorly thought out. ZERO common sense. But that has come to be expected of America and Americans.

[Xplosive]

Loved it! Eventhough he is kind of repeating what we all knew.

Especially this part.

"Saddam's biggest crime was not killing rebellious Kurds or Shia. As ruler of the unnatural, British-created Frankenstein state Iraq, Saddam was forced to keep putting down rebellions.

Saintly Winston Churchill authorized the RAF to bomb Iraq's rebellious Kurdish tribesmen with poison gas -- exactly as Saddam later did. Saddam's most brutal repression of Kurds and Shia occurred when they revolted during Iraq's wars with Iran and the U.S. "

And this.

"Some of the tame U.S. media have been spinning Saddam's execution as a justification for the Bush/Cheney administration's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, without ever asking why Saddam was an ally in 1988 yet a devil in 1991 and again in 2003.

Nor has there been much reporting that under Saddam, Iraq became the Arab world's most industrialized nation, a leader in women's rights, medical care, education, and public projects"

[muslim-man]

Mikey,

Nice post there! I finally saw "All The King's Men" it was really well done & shows the uglier side of politics.

BTW, they'd a Clint Eastwood movie marathon on AMC yesterday, did you happen to catch it?

[michael_ital]

MM
Thanks bro. I LOVE Margolis, i've been reading him for years. He's easily my favourite columnist, though i've yet to see "All the KIng's Men".
As for Clint, they had a Clint Marathon on the Lone Star network here on Boxing Day.

[gurey25]

Saddams crime was that he did not bow down to the west, be a good boy and do as he is told.

disobedience and stupidity, is what got him.



Iran is also a naughty boy, but they wont go down becuase they are not stupid.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

Mick
Canada is not even close. What a focking joke. And the reason Canada doesn't use military force is because it can't. It doesn't have any.

BTW Margolis argument here, that Saddam was killed to silence him, is laughable. Our collusion with Iraq in the war on Iran is well known. It's not a secret. Iran was our enemy, it served our purposes to support a state invading it. Furthermore, it was the right thing to do. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[michael_ital]

Did you mean helping people, or killing people ? In that end, of course the US has killed more people, Muslims in particular, than Canada has. Although we're trying in Afghanistan. That's why people hate you and love us (the reason SOOO many Americans claim Canadian citizenship when abroad ), and applauded when the WTC was brought down, killing 3000+ Yanks. But in terms of aid to places like Africa, we're World Leaders.

[Steeler [Crawler2]]

The US, throughout it's history, has done far more good than evil. America is not what's wrong with the world.