Quoted from Libertarian4life

Just a government toppling invasion based on lies.

Not one American was ever under threat from Iraq.

Not one of the dead Iraqis ever did anything to the US, to make the US attack their homeland and slaughter them.

Unjustified deaths, every single one.

Quoted Text

October 19, 2004  

So, Did Saddam Try to Kill Bush's Dad?

  
by Jim Lobe
  

Now that President George W. Bush's allegations about former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda and ambitious weapons programs have been thoroughly discredited, another outstanding charge remains to be resolved.

During a campaign speech in September 2002, Bush cited a number of reasons – in addition to alleged terrorist links and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – about why Saddam was so dangerous to the U.S., noting, in particular that, "After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad."

He was referring, of course, to an alleged plot by Iraqi intelligence to assassinate Bush's father, former president George H.W. Bush, during his triumphal visit to Kuwait in April 1993, 25 months after U.S.-led forces chased Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War and three months after Bush Sr. surrendered the White House to Bill Clinton.

Although he did not name his father, Bush Jr. also cited the assassination attempt in his September 2002 address at the United Nations General Assembly where he called on the UN Security Council to approve a tough resolution demanding that Saddam fully give up his (nonexistent) WMD weapons and programs

While the alleged plot was never cited officially as a cause for going to war, some pundits – including Maureen Dowd of the New York Times – have speculated that revenge or some Oedipal desire to show up his father may indeed have been one of the factors that drove him to Baghdad – as the sign of one demonstrator suggested in a big antiwar march here just before the war: "I love my dad, too, but come on!"

The circumstances of the alleged plot, which ended in a trial and conviction of 11 Iraqis and three Kuwaitis, have always evoked skepticism, although Clinton himself was apparently sufficiently convinced after receiving reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to order a missile strike on the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad that killed six civilians in June 1993.

But a closer look at the 11-year-old plot, particularly in light of the findings by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the special team of experts that spent 15 months investigating Baghdad's WMD programs and found they were all dismantled in 1991 shortly after the end of the Gulf War, may now be warranted, especially if Bush is still laboring under the impression that Saddam "tried to kill [his] dad."

While the ISG's 960-page report, known as the Duelfer Report, does not address the assassination attempt, its chronology and depiction of Hussein's worldview – adduced through lengthy interviews by one Arabic-speaking FBI investigator and other interviews of Saddam's closest advisers – make the notion that the Iraqi dictator tried to kill Bush all the more implausible.

For one thing, Saddam, according to the report, was convinced that the CIA had thoroughly penetrated his regime and thus would know not only that he had dismantled his WMD (which the CIA apparently did not), but also would know about his plans for important intelligence operations. Under those circumstances, it is hard to understand why he would then order an assassination attempt on the former U.S. president.

Even more interesting, according to the report, was Saddam's "complicated" view of the U.S. While he derived "prestige" from being an enemy of the U.S., he also considered it to be "equally prestigious for him to be an ally of the United States – and regular entreaties were made during the last decade to explore this alternative."

Indeed, beginning already in 1991, according to the report, "very senior Iraqis close to the president made proposals through intermediaries for dialogue with Washington."

"Baghdad offered flexibility on many issues, including offers to assist in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Moreover, in informal discussions, senior officials allowed that, if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programs and/or ambitions," it added.

The report even concluded that Iraq was willing to be Washington's "best friend in the region bar none."

The fact that the U.S., under Bush Sr. and Clinton, did not show interest was apparently a source of bewilderment to the Iraqi leader, according to the Duelfer report.

If Saddam had tried to kill the ex-president, he probably would not have been bewildered by Washington's lack of interest, but, by all accounts, he was.

"From the report, Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination," notes Gregory Thielmann, a former senior State Department analyst who specialized in Iraq's WMD programs

"If his top priority was getting the [UN economic] sanctions lifted [as indicated by the report], then it doesn't follow that he would try to kill the president of the United States," added Thielmann.

As portrayed by both the alleged assassins and the Kuwaitis who grabbed them, the plot was itself deeply amateurish, dependent on the leadership of Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali, a 36-year-old male nurse, Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, from Najaf, and a dozen Iraqi whiskey smugglers led by a 33-year-old owner of a coffee shop in Basra that was meeting-place for cross-border smugglers. Despite his age, al-Assadi confessed to being a colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, according to the Kuwait authorities.

Ghazali, who initially said he was approached and supplied with explosives and cars by the Mukhabarat, was the only person in the group who knew that Bush was the target. Other defendants confessed to transporting explosives across the border from Iraq but insisted they had no idea what they were for.

Both Ghazali and Assadi retracted their confessions during the trial, claiming that they were extracted by repeated beatings. At the time, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed strong doubts that the trials could be fair, noting that it had received credible reports of severe beatings meted out to defendants accused of capital crimes in Kuwait. Assadi insisted that he was asked by the Mukhabarat to plant bombs around shopping centers in Kuwait City.

U.S. investigators, however, reported that they believed the confessions were not coerced and noted the similarity in the construction of the bombs found with the Iraqis with one known to have been built in Iraq in 1991.

In October, 1993, however, New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh assailed the government's case as "seriously flawed," noting among other problems that seven bomb experts had told him that the devices were mass-produced and probably not even manufactured in Iraq.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who met with Saddam when he served as U.S. charge d'affaires in Baghdad during the Gulf War, said he found the plot "odd."

"[Saddam] had to have had some idea that his ability to run operations outside Iraq was not very good, because we had foiled so many things before the war. So you have to ask why someone who was a risk-taker but clearly not suicidal would undertake to assassinate a former president of the United States," pointed out Wilson.

Larry Johnson, a top counter-terrorist official at the State Department, said he still has "no doubts" about the plot, recalling Saddam's "gangster" ethic. "Personal honor was involved," he said.

(Inter Press Service)

Quoted from CICERO

C'mon box, just admit it...I know you are spin - spin - spinning to avoid voicing your support of economic sanctions that MURDERED 500K Iraqi's.  You can justify your support for these deaths by referencing the other governments that joined in supporting the State sponsored genocide all you want.  The fact remains, there are 500K dead Iraqi's as a result of U.S. GOVERNMENT POLICY.  

At-a-boy box, as Sean Hannity would say, 'yer a great American'.

Quoted from Box A Rox

There are 500k dead Iraqi children as a result of Saddam's policy.  

Quoted from Box A Rox

.  
Just as there are hundreds of thousands of dead American children due to US policy...
The USA is 50th in infant mortality in the world.  50 countries take better care of their infants in their
first year of life than the USA.
WHY?
LACK OF HEALTH CARE OR PRENATAL CARE IS MUCH OF THE CAUSE!!!
Hopefully, Obamacare will reduce that number.

Quoted from CICERO

Even when Box's fellow democrats admit that it was U.S./UN sanctions policy that led to the death of 500K children, Box is STILL in denial.  How about this one box, even Governor Richardson(Clinton's U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) admits that the 500K deaths resulted from the economic sanctions, because prior to the sanctions Iraqi children were not dying at the genocidal rates like those that were occurring after the U.S. implemented its sanctions.

Box will likely once again show his obedient patriotic colors and argue in favor of exterminating 1 million innocent Iraqi's that were just trying to raise their families and live their lives because the U.S. government opposed their leader.  So the U.S. policy was kill 1 million Iraqi's to punish their government.  

When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”

Amy Goodman:
... many say that, although president Bush led this invasion, that president Clinton laid the groundwork with the sanctions and with the previous bombing of Iraq. You were president Clinton’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.... the U.N. sanctions, for example ... led to the deaths of more than a half a million children, not to mention more than a million Iraqis.

Governor Richardson:
Well, I stand behind the sanctions. I believe that they successfully contained Saddam Hussein. I believe that the sanctions were an instrument of our policy. [Emphasis Added]

Amy Goodman:
To ask a question that was asked of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright, do you think the price was worth it, 500,000 children dead?

Governor Richardson:
Well, I believe our policy was correct, yes

Watch for yourself

Quoted from Box A Rox

The USA and much of the world went to the aid of Kuwait when it was INVADED by Iraq.  In the resulting
war, much of Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed including water treatment plants.
After the war Saddam went to work rebuilding his weapons systems, but neglected the infrastructure
that was destroyed in the war.
The US and much of the world continued the economic and military sanctions against Iraq... and Saddam
refused to repair the infrastructure...
Had Saddam complied much of the sanctions would have been removed, saving lives...
Similarly...
Had the Right Wingers opposing Obama Care and Opposing WIC complied with the proposals to save
infants in the USA... many lives in our own country could have been saved.

Quoting L4Life in this thread... "Baby killers are a proud bunch."

Quoted from Box A Rox

The USA and much of the world went to the aid of Kuwait when it was INVADED by Iraq.  In the resulting
war, much of Iraq's infrastructure was destroyed including water treatment plants.
After the war Saddam went to work rebuilding his weapons systems, but neglected the infrastructure
that was destroyed in the war.
The US and much of the world continued the economic and military sanctions against Iraq... and Saddam
...

Quoting L4Life in this thread... "Baby killers are a proud bunch."

Quoted from Libertarian4life

So Sadaam killed the babies by not rebuilding the US devastation.

Awesome justification. Not.

Quoted from CICERO

Man, you keep embarrassing yourself by attempting to justify genocidal sanctions.  Even when your fellow democrats Richardson and Albright admit to the massive amount of death their sanctions caused, and they believe it was the correct policy, box is still in denial.  

Looks like Mr. Fact Man Box-a-Rox wants to massage the facts to fit his twisted argument supporting state sponsored genocide.

BTW...Does anybody eles find it hilarious that box keeps on trying to interject U.S. infant mortality rate as if it adds something to his argument?

Quoted from Box A Rox

BTW, I'm really glad that I got this opportunity to educate Cicero since he posted this video.  I think he's
learned a lot... Educating the unwilling is a difficult task.

Quoted from CICERO

Oh, believe me, I've learned a lot.  I've learned that there are still Americans out there that will argue to support a policy of mass starvation to prove they are good patriotic Americans.  Many of the world atrocities were committed in thename of nationalism and patriotism.  

Quoted from Box A Rox

I wasn't aware that the problem that caused these Iraqi children was "mass starvation" as you seem
to think.
It's been a while since I read up on the subject, but it was presented as a problem of unclean water
supply... not malnutrition.

It's so difficult to tell with Cicero... is  "mass starvation" one of Cicero's FACTS, or one of his OPINIONS...
for Cic, they are usually interchangeable.

Quoted from CICERO

What do you care how 500k kids died?  As long as their dead right?

Quoted from Box A Rox

Cicero  is once again posting his erroneous  OPINION as if it were FACT.  
The SCAM continues!