And no, I’m not talking about Paul Ryan. Hobbes will have to wait for Hob’s. This is from Memeorandum and was either a heavily revised earlier draft or an html-only come-on header:
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand. — The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus….
Else it is an astonishingly wonderful coincidence of the zeitgeist, a synchronicity, linking past and present presciently.
Here’s the ACTUAL story beyond the headlines:
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand.
BY SHANE HARRIS AND MATTHEW M. AID
AUGUST 26, 2013The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.
The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq’s favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration’s long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn’t disclose.
U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein’s government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.
“The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew,” he told Foreign Policy….
And any other day in the history of the United States, I would applaud this ‘fessing up.
But not this day.
Perhaps in another bit of synchronicity, (no spoilers here) Aaron Sorkin’s NEWSROOM on HBO is currently dealing with a planted news story about the use of nerve gas (serin) to kill foreign nationals in a covert operation in Afghanistan.
How mass chemical death looks: Jonestown
So, as the questions ramp up about “What do we do about the Syrian government using chemical weapons?” Foreign Policy magazine and Colonel Whistleblower* have now neatly and intentionally emasculated and stripped the government of whatever moral authority the United States MIGHT have had to prevent a similar series of human tragedies in Syria.
[* OK, according to recently declassified documents, etc. But REALLY, right NOW? Seriously. They go on to say:
In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted….
Good grief. Seemingly an attack on Dead Reagan, it serves certain anti-adminstration foreign policy camps well, I suppose. I guess partisanship doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. And we’re headed for a Hobbesian Wonderland™!]
We are at a tipping point, and if we screw this up, the notion of using chemical weapons on enemies like you use Raid® or D-Con® or any other industrialized pesticide to kill the lifeform of your choice will add humans to the list of exterminables.* Humans have, so far, been off the Exterminators’ menu. That could change.
[* OK, RE-add, post-Holocaust and Zyklon-B.]
Old Western Exterminator sign, Hollywood Freeway Southbound
This is abstract murder (but still murder in the present and future for the grudges of a personal past) murder by rhetoric, another cancer cell in the body politic who has taken it upon himself (or the staff of Foreign Policy, who obviously have no understanding of the term) to hamstring governmental actions in acts of informati0n sabotage — whether you agree or not — there comes a point where the Leviathan of Humankind must act in concert, else dissolve into small cancerous masses of Ayn Rand Supergeniuses, fighting over the last charred rabbit haunch.
We see it everywhere in acts of personal nullification, in which one individual blocks the aisle with their fat ass, even though it’s a wide aisle, decides to personally foreclose some group’s ability to act in one direction, forcing another through a form of bullying, the failure of the states and many congresscritters to accept legitimately passed legislation, to approve legitimately qualified judges, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
But there is a price. These fools love to believe that the world would continue as it is without consensus, compromise, order, laws, secrets and agreements to KEEP secrets.
Add to that list Foreign Policy, who have screamed LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME to accuse the United States of using nerve gas (in essence) while we try to see if Syria used nerve gas against their own people. And if this gets more Syrians gassed, what the hell! As long as it sells MAGAZINES! Yee. Haw.
Anyone with a bit of perspicacity already knew that the US Government had done this, when it was revealed that Donald Rumsfeld “sold” Saddam the ingredients and recipes for chemical weapons in the early 1980s. Uh, duh.
But hey, let’s make our OWN foreign policy by hobbling real world actions in the present with “startling, new!” revelations of tired old stories well-known to semi-serious observers since BEFORE the Iraq Invasion. OK?
Or, as Hobbes noted in Leviathan:
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ Goya. 1823
A libertarian paradise™, in other words.
Courage.
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.