For Cameron  

Your quotations are great. Thanks for sharing them.

Thanks! I shouldn't take credit as another liberal Mormon blogger had most of them in one blog post written a few years ago.

I'm going to mix metaphors here:

"Our traditions have been such that we are not apt to look upon
war between two nations as murder; but suppose that one family
should rise up against another and begin to slay them, would they
not be taken up and tried for murder? Then why not nations that
rise up and slay each other in a scientific way be equally guilty
of murder? Does it justify the slaying of men, women, and
children that otherwise would have remained at home in peace,
because a great army is doing the work? No: the guilty will be
damned for it." Brigham Young (Disc. 7:137)

"There are, however, two conditions which may justify a truly
Christian man to enter -- mind you, I say enter, not begin --
a war: (1) an attempt to dominate and to deprive another of his
free agency, and (2) loyalty to his country. Possibly there is a
third, viz., defense of a weak nation that is being unjustly
crushed by a strong, ruthless one." McKay (CR April 1942)

... contention, strife, and hatred are manifest between ... advocates of nazism, fascism, communism, and capitalism. No matter how excellent any of these may seem in the minds of their advocates, none will ameliorate the ills of mankind unless its operation in government be impregnated with the basic principles promulgated by the Savior of men. ...

Activated by that Spirit, leaders will think more of men than of the success of a system. Kindness, mercy, and justice will be substituted for hatred, suspicion, and greed. There is no road to universal peace which does not lead into the hearts of humanity. (IE 47:657-58, 708)

Right, peace=good.

But what happens when a family, a nation, or a nation's families, are being "crushed by a strong ruthless one"?

You don't start a war based on cherry picked intelligence, a war that many in the military didn't support, and a war that has killed far too many people.

If we wanted to simply get rid of Saddam, that was accomplished, we are occupying the country, which I highly doubt, McKay would support.

But I ask you, do you start a war based on genocide?

In the case of Iraq, no. We kept Saddam in power, even when we encouraged an insurrection yet failed to support it and lost their trust, which still hurts us. Not when we supplied Saddam with the chemicals he used to kill his own people. Not when we helped the Iranians and Iraqi's kill each other. In the case of Iraq, no. Not when they cherry picked intelligence and misled Americans into a war.

Ok, we didn't supply Saddam Hussein his weapons.

Source of conventional arms

Source of WMDs

Who provided the arms? USSR, China and France.

As for keeping him in power, are you suggesting that we should have removed him after the Gulf War? Kicked him out of Kuwait and kept going? Because most of your reasons for not kicking him out in 2003 were present in 1991.

Out of curiosity, is genocide a reason to go to war? Is war ever justified in your opinion?

From your source: "The United States did not supply any arms to Iraq until 1982, when Iran's growing military success alarmed American policymakers. It then did so every year until 1988. Although most other countries never hesitated to sell military hardware directly to Saddam Hussein's regime, the United States, equally keen to protect its interests in the region, adopted a more subtle approach. Howard Teicher served on the National Security Council as director of Political-Military Affairs. According to his 1995 affidavit and other interviews with former Regan and Bush administration officials, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly directed armaments and high-tech components to Iraq through false fronts and friendly third parties such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait, and they quietly encouraged rogue arms dealers and other Private military companies to do the same..."

"As for keeping him in power, are you suggesting that we should have removed him after the Gulf War?"

No, I'm suggesting that when the US encourages people to overthrow their leader and promising their support, they keep their promise.

"According to information obtained by the AGWVA, there is irrefutable
evidence to show that the Unites States government provided and encouraged Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States Department of Commerce
and The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) provided at least 80 shipments of biological agents that were not attenuated (or weakened) and were capable of reproduction. These shipments included such virulent as Anthrax, West Nile Virus and Clostridium botulinum (S.R.103-900, May 25, 1994, pg. 264)."

"Iraq reportedly began using chemical weapons (CW) against Iranian troops in 1982, and significantly increased CW use in 1983=8A Shortly after removing Iraq from the terrorism sponsorship list, the Reagan
administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters. Analysts
recognized that "civilian" helicopters can be weaponized in a matter of hours and selling a civilian kit can be a way of giving military aid under the guise of civilian assistance."

Mark Phythian, in his book Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine" (Northeastern University Press, 1997) stated:

"...the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC (National Security Council) advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters, officially for crop spraying. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village Halabja, which killed 5000 people."

"Probably the most critical piece of information is that according to
Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to "calibrate" mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.

"It is public record that the U.S. not only armed Iraq from 1983 thru
August 1, 1990, but that they also provided the money to Iraq to purchase the weapons via the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro(BNL), George Bush, Sr., and the Export-Import Bank. Iraq received $5 Billion dollars funneled through the Commercial Credit Corporation ostensibly for food credits. It is also public information that at least $2 Billion dollars from the defaulted loan was repaid by the U.S. citizen taxpayers."

House Committee on Government Operations report: "Strengthening the Export License System" from July 18th up until Kuwait invasion, the Bush Administration approved of $4.8 million in advanced tech product sales to Iraq--the end user being Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Indistrialization (MIMI) which was identified in 1988 as a facility for Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs."

Well, there's a whole lot more to the story than what you copied and pasted. To whit:

1959 — 17 August USSR and Iraq wrote agreement about building atomic power station.

1968 — atomic power station was build nearby Baghdad. Power of this station was 2 MW.

1975 — Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow in April. He asked about building advanced model of atomic power station. Moscow said Ok but under control International Atomic Energy Agency only. Iraq refused.

[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq.htm After 6 months Paris agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% Uranium and built the atomic power station without International Atomic Energy Agency control at a price of $3 billion.

In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.[2] Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s. [3][4][5][6][7] As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manfacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.[8]

France built Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in the late 1970s. Israel claimed that Iraq was getting close to building nuclear weapons, and so bombed it in 1981. Later, a French company built a turnkey factory which helped make nuclear fuel. France also provided glass-lined reactors, tanks, vessels, and columns used for the production of chemical weapons. Around 21% of Iraq’s international chemical weapon equipment was French. Strains of dual-use biological material also helped advance Iraq’s biological warfare program.

Italy gave Iraq plutonium extraction facilities that advanced Iraq’s nuclear weapon program. 75,000 shells and rockets designed for chemical weapon use also came from Italy. Between 1979 and 1982 Italy gave depleted, natural, and low-enriched uranium. Swiss companies aided in Iraq’s nuclear weapons development in the form of specialized presses, milling machines, grinding machines, electrical discharge machines, and equipment for processing uranium to nuclear weapon grade. Brazil secretly aided the Iraqi nuclear weapon program by supplying natural uranium dioxide between 1981 and 1982 without notifying the IAEA. About 100 tons of mustard gas also came from Brazil.

So the whole world seems to have been pretty dumb concerning Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

Even more interesting to me, though, is what happened once the world supposedly wised up and put sanctions on Iraq:



Despite UN sanctions, many countries and companies engaged in prohibited procurement with the Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s, largely because of the profitability of such trade.


Private companies from Jordan, India, France, Italy, Romania, and Turkey seem to have engaged in possible WMD-related trade with Iraq.

The Governments of Syria, Belarus, North Korea, former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yemen, and possibly Russia directly supported or endorsed private company efforts to aid Iraq with conventional arms procurement, in breach of UN sanctions.

In addition, companies based out of the following 14 countries supported Iraq’s conventional arms procurement programs: Jordan, the People’s Republic of China, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, France, Poland, Romania, and Taiwan.

The number of countries and companies supporting Saddam’s schemes to undermine UN sanctions increased dramatically over time from 1995 to 2003 (see figure 54).

A few neighboring countries such as Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and Yemen, entered into bilateral trade agreements with Iraq. These agreements provided an avenue for increasing trade coordination and eventually led to sanctions violations.

According to his former science advisor, ‘Amir Hamudi Hasan Al Sa’adi, Saddam, by mid-to-late 2002, had concluded that sanctions had eroded to the point that it was inevitable they would be dropped.

The Regime also sought diplomatic support for the lifting or easing sanctions by tying other countries’ interests to Iraq’s through allocating contracts under the OFF program and entering into lucrative construction projects to be executed when sanctions were lifted. In addition, Iraq held conferences to recruit and cultivate “agents of influence” to build pressure for lifting sanctions.

Iraq negotiated a $40 billion agreement for Russian exploration of several oil fields over a 10-year period. Follow-on contracts called for the construction of a pipeline running from southern to northern Iraq. Performance would start upon the lifting of sanctions. Under OFF, 32 percent of the Iraqi contracts went to Russia. The Iraqis gave preferential treatment to Russian companies mainly to try to gain Russia’s support on the UN Security Council. The Russians, French, Ukrainians, and others succeeded in reducing the amount of OFF money Iraq paid to the UN Compensation Committee (for Gulf war reparations) from 30 to 25 percent thus adding significantly to Iraq’s income stream.

The Regime sought a favorable relationship with France because France was influential as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and was in a good position to help Iraq with lifting sanctions.

Iraq awarded short term contracts under OFF to companies around the world. As of June 2000, French companies had contracts totaling $1.78 billion.

‘Aziz personally awarded several individuals substantial oil allotments. All parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council.

Source, Iraq Survey Group.

"As for keeping him in power, are you suggesting that we should have removed him after the Gulf War?"

No, I'm suggesting that when the US encourages people to overthrow their leader and promising their support, they keep their promise.

I'm really not trying to be argumentative here, but it seems to me that you would be ok with the US providing military support in order to overthrow Saddam in 1991. Why is that?

I think you are reading too much into what I am writing. I can't say that I would have supported the removal of Saddam post Gulf War. Even Dick Cheney was against it. I am against the US promising to support an insurrection and failing to deliver on a promise. That broken promise, according to Thomas E. Ricks, hurt us deeply with this war. That is what I am against first and foremost.

And you'll receive no argument from me in regards to other countries supporting Saddam Hussein. However, with my non-argument comes my reminder that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

I get what you're trying to say regarding glass houses, but I don't think that 0.5% (the US portion of arms supplied to Iraq) qualifies as a glass house.

The glass house would be those countries that not only gave weapons both conventional and WMD pre-Gulf War, but continued to do so even while publicly condemning Iraq for having WMD's and supporting very severe sanctions against Iraq. The glass house is taking the moral high ground when it became apparent Saddam Hussein was never going to comply with the sanctions or resolutions passed by the same UN members that were helping him to circumvent the sanctions. The glass house is taking billions of dollars in bribes in order to support a now-convicted and executed dictator kill and torture a million people.

I can't say that I would have supported the removal of Saddam post Gulf War.

Why not?

"Why not?" Read Fiasco by Thomas Ricks and that will answer most of the questions you have asked me.