On 1/15/07, soula avramidis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My research tells me that the relationship of the former Iraqi regime with the US is exaggerated.
that's likely true. But when Saddam was the Hitler du jour, it made the Bushmasters look bad to have videos circulating with Rumsy shaking the then-Hitler's hand.
the US nominally intervened to assist Iraq in its war against Iran because when Saddam started to loose after one year of fighting, they had to prop him, but it was more of a marriage of convenience since the US feared Iranian expansion.
most alliances are marriages of convenience (cf. the US and the Shah in the 1970s, etc.) Most are not as deep as the US-Israel axis or NATO.
whilst Israel backed Iran (conta), and the stubborn mullah wanted to send more young men to heaven that is not stop the war. all the records speak of saddam wanting to stop as soon as he realsied he started losing. one interesting paper from Sweden, do not recall who, says that Saddam had to be done away with as soon as he insisted on stopping the war. circles of the liberal left inflated the cozy relationship of Saddam with the US. Iraq was a soviet satellite who's number was up as soon as the cold war was over.
Iraq was never a Soviet "satellite." that status was reserved for Eastern European countries and not all of them. It was more of a "marriage of convenience." The USSR backed the Ba'athist "non capitalist road" (nationalist state capitalism) in order to get points in the Cold War game. Saddam -- who initially won his reputation by killing Communists -- was willing to play along in order to get MiGs and the like. -- Jim Devine / "Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it, because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us." -- Stephen Colbert.
