What do you think you know about Saddam?

the following is an article by Eric Margolis in the Toronto sun. The original article entitled 'west has bloodied hands' is located here.

As I have said before, Saddam is an evil man and should be tried for his crimes against humanity in a fair and just court. So too should his accomplises, Bush Snr, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others. Please read this article and LEARN something.

I reproduce the article here, because I believe it to be important enough to be shared and I cannot guarentee it staying on their server.

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West has bloodied hands
By Eric Margolis -- Contributing Foreign Editor

Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?

If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong.

The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier.

Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes.

Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands. These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed.

The Halabja atrocity remains murky. The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas, as is generally believed.

At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in the ferocious last battles of their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas. If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq.

But it's also possible al-Majid ordered an attack. Kurds in that region had rebelled against Iraq and opened the way for invading Iranian forces.

What's the difference between the U.S. destroying the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah and Saddam destroying rebellious Halabja? What difference does it make if you're killed by poison gas, artillery or 2,000-pound bombs?

"Chemical Ali" was a brute of the worst kind in a regime filled with sadists. I personally experienced the terror of Saddam's sinister regime over 25 years, culminating in threats to hang me as a spy.

Saddam Hussein and his entourage should face justice. But not in political show trials just before U.S.-"guided" Iraqi elections nor in Iraqi kangaroo courts. They should be sent to the UN's war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where Saddam should be charged with the greatest crime he committed -- the invasion of Iran, which caused one million casualties.

Britain, the U.S., Kuwait and Saudi Arabia convinced Iraq to invade Iran, then covertly supplied Saddam with money, arms, intelligence, and advisers. Meanwhile, Israel secretly supplied Iran with $5 billion US in American arms and spare parts while publicly denouncing Iran for terrorism.

Up to their ears

Who supplied "Chemical Ali" with his mustard and nerve gas? Why, the West, of course. In late 1990, I discovered four British technicians in Baghdad who told me they had been "seconded" to Iraq by Britain's ministry of defence and MI6 intelligence to make chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, Q-fever and plague, at a secret laboratory at Salman Pak.

The Reagan administration and Thatcher government were up to their ears in backing Iraq's aggression, apparently with the intention to overthrow Iran's Islamic government and seize its oil. Italy, Germany, France, South Africa, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Chile and the USSR all aided Saddam's war effort against Iran, which was even more a victim of naked aggression than was Kuwait in 1991.

I'd argue senior officials of those nations that abetted Saddam's aggression against Iran and supplied him with chemicals and gas should also stand trial with Ali and Saddam.

What an irony it is to see U.S. forces in Iraq now behaving with much the same punitive ferocity as Saddam's army and police -- bombing rebellious cities, arresting thousands, terrorizing innocent civilians, torturing captives and sending in tanks to crush resistance.

In other words, Saddamism without Saddam. A decade ago, this column predicted that when the U.S. finally overthrew Saddam, it would need to find a new Saddam.

Finally, let's not forget that when Saddam's regime committed many of its worst atrocities against rebellious Kurds and Shiites, it was still a close ally of Washington and London. The West paid for and supplied Saddam's bullets, tanks, gas and germs. He was our regional SOB.

Our hands are very far from clean.
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I cannot fault a single word. Facts, Truth reality. Not quite so black and white as Bush and his neo-con hordes would have you believe. Britain's and America's leaderships are up to there necks in war crimes. From both during the Saddam era and in the way that the Saddam era was brought to an end, our leaders hands are stained with the blood of illegally executed innocents. Why should Saddam be the only one to face any kind of justice?

./ later.

OK, this is getting sicker by the day

I used to be very tolerant and sympathetic to ordinary Americans. I personally know several Americans and they are awake and, sort of, thinking, rational human beings. However, lately I have been getting more and more frutrated, hence the open letter below.

Now it is just getting sick. The US military, that bastion of freedom and democracy, upholder and defender of global human rights and dignity and liberator of the oppressed. The US miltary, after destroying fallujah, killing countless thousands and planning to turn it into an electronic prison camp, hasn't done enough damage it seems. They are now dropping 2000lb bombs and cluster bombs.

It seems I missed another meeting, I dunno, but my notification of these meetings must be screwed somewhere. I recall that the Yanks were saying in mid November that they will have the city of Fallujah pacified within a week. When did they withdraw and let the 'insurgent terrorists' back in? Or, no, they couldn't possibly be ....Lying ? or is it the case that, Tony Blair made a political decision to bring the Black watch troops home? ignoring strategic needs on the ground, therefore lying in the commons again. (he promised not to make political decisions on troop deployment), the Americans cannot handle the insurgents on their own? could it? The american troops are, after all, uncommonly stupid. Well that's what happens when you recruited your cannon fodder from the stupidest and poorest parts of society.

I don't know, but the name of the black watch has been blackened badly by becoming accessories to war crimes.

1000 and 2000lb bombs, Cluster bombs, anti personnel bombs, depleted uranium rounds, nalpalm, phosphorous grenades and poison gas have been used in a civillian location that was systematically and deliberately robbed of fresh water, food and medical aid. I cannot think of any act that Saddam did that can be its equal.

Yet the dumb yanks keep-a-cheerin' and a hollering for their war-criminal, president-coward-thief religious fundementalist psycho.

I am still waiting for any american to be able to explain to me how it is OK for their troops to commit war crimes? And how this is somehow better for the Iraqis? or how it is even just, given that:

Iraq never attacked America.
Iraq was never likely to attack America.
US/UK Intelligence services knew Iraq was not a threat.
Secret offices in Washington / London created false information about Iraq's WMD.
Iraq had no ties to AL Queda (a western created and funded organisation).
Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.
Iraqis were hoping for freedom and liberty and have been robbed of their assets, sold into multinationalist slavery, given starvation, disease, mutilation and death.

Gee it's nice to know we are the good guys,

" woooooohar, let that tank roll over another sand nigger camel fucker, he had it a comin' anyhow, that's fer 9 1 1 you ragheaded muji you."

When will they ever learn?

./ later

The ID Card myth.

People should read more Government documents. I have and it's quite revealing. I have read the Identity Cards Bill Rgulatory Impact Assesment (a .pdf document) This is quite illuminating.

First of all, I would like to go on record and say clearly that there are some genuine benefits to the ID card scheme. If it can be implemented without errors and in time and to cost and if the hardware, software and personnel inputting the data work faultlessly and once fully in place and wholy established, It would dramatically reduce ID theft and repeat immigration through multiple ID's and cut down on organised crime through abolishing multiple IDs.

The Problem is, it would have to be fully implemented and according to this document, that means card readers EVERYWHERE!

What does this mean?

• Every transaction monitored, logged and stored in the National Identity Register.


• Your whole existence will be watched and rated by persons unknown.


• This IS a big brother database on steriods

For those wanting to see the benefits of this scheme, they will not be apparent for some time because, as the document makes clear, there is no complusion on anyone to carry the card yet, or for anyone to scan the card yet. So you will still have to carry many other forms of ID (passports, driving license, credit cards, utility bills etc) when you wnt to open an account anywhere. All the other benefits of this scheme are nonsense and cannot be realised until the scheme is fully in place.

The government has admitted a 'catch 22' situation here. The ID card scheme will not be a big brother scheme untill fully implemented, but will not have the benefits of the ID scheme either. The crime will not be lessened, because there is no complulsion in the ID card bill. So you won't get the benefits of the ID card until it is a big brother scheme.

But then it will be too late.

Not only will the Government be able to monitor and extinguish organised crime and multiple entry immigration, it will also be able to identify and extinguish any dissent from the population.

Democracy will be dead, there will be no freedom to object other than what freedoms are granted at the whim of Government.

Am I Being Fair?

Of course I am giving the Government too much credit here. It is big business that wants the control, big business that has no interest in competition, or rules. Big multinational business that requires a monopoly and total control.

It is Big Business through the banking system that finances unacknowledged special access programs in the internation intelligence and security services. These people will be exempt from having to have a 'genuine' identity, these are the people that run the largest drug and prostitute organisations and therefore are behind organised crime.

What? Don't believe me? Fine, explain to me how the Taliban destroyed 95% of Afghanistan's opium and heroin production, then the US/UK invaded and took control of the areas that had poppy production stopped and now those areas are producing more heroin than ever??? War on drugs? or war on competition in the illegal drugs empires? Freelancers beware.

So the organised crime that is NOT commited by intelligence services will be destroyed by the ID card scheme, but Organised crime will flourish.

CIA/MI6/MOSSAD/ISI etc. Terrorism will flourish, not smaller scale animal rights acts of terror, but the really big international terrorism of the scale that makes Governments take notice and change course.

This scheme is designed from the outset to abolish the competition from small time criminals to international organised crime, and suppress domestic dissent.

It is, in short, a fascists charter!