Kadaffi vs. Saddam = America's Disgrace

[theaustinescorts]

While the brave citizens of Libya are being slaughtered by Kadaffi's tanks and jets it might be an appropriate time to take stock of American policy in the Middle East, particularly in the last ten years, and what our total indifference to what's going on in Libya says about American policy.

It may be helpful to contrast Kadaffi vs. Saddam, as they couldn't be more different, and American policy toward them has been totally different also.

Acts of War Against the United States

Unlike Saddam, who never targeted any American citizen for any reason, Kadaffi has killed, murdered and maimed numerous US citizens over his fourty year tenure. He has blown up places where US servicemen congregated, blown up our Airliners, and so forth. Many such explosions were conducted with the TWENTY TONS of American-manufactured C-4 which Kadaffi bought from a CIA agent, Edwin Wilson, in the 1970s. Wilson was convicted in Federal Court in Houston for this, but his conviction was overturned six years ago when another Federal Judge in Houston concluded THAT WILSON WAS ACTUALLY WORKING ON ORDERS FROM THE CIA when he sold Kadaffi the C-4, which was the TOTAL AVAILABLE AMOUNT OF C-4 IN THE U.S. AT THE TIME.

Support of Terrorism

Unlike Saddam, who never supported any foreign terrorists, Kadaffi provided the bulk of all support to international terrorist organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His camps and training were used by every single terrorist group on record. He gave them not only training but of course C-4, and every other kind of material aid. In fact it is because of his role that such groups were ALWAYS SUCCESSFUL IN EVERY PLAN AND ATTEMPT, unlike today, when all "al-Qaeda" can muster is someone like the "underwear bomber," etc.

Aggression Against Neighbors

Saddam had valid beefs with the Iranians and Kuwaitis, but that does not justify his military aggressions toward them. Saddam is to blame for those two wars.

Kadaffi was too timid to use his military directly against anyone who could shoot back, so instead he trained and supported a host of criminals in sub-Saharan Africa who instigated horrible tribal and commercial wars in such places as Niger, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Playing a game of carnage in sub-Saharan Africa was something no major power cared a damn about, so he focused on that as his entertainment in the 1990s.

American Policy Toward Each

The U.S. raided Libya in 1986 with F-111 bombers which missed Kadaffi but killed numerous Libyan citizens, including Kadaffi's eleven year old daughter.
Besides this the U.S. has pretty much left him alone. Recently the U.S. has turned a blind eye to his rapproachment with the UK and EU, who would rather purchase his gas and oil rather than dispose of him.

President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not lifted a finger to indict him for his many bloody crimes against US citizens over the years, or to assist in any way the courageous citizens of Libya who he is now slaughtering.

In contrast to this the US invaded Iraq, a country which had never committed any act of war against the US, and delivered Saddam to his enemies, who hung him at the end of a rope.

Today in Iraq there is less electricity, water, employment or income than during even the worst days under Saddam.

There is at least as much government-conducted torture and murder in Iraq today as there was under Saddam. This repression has been stepped up in the last few weeks to suppress the population from following the example of other Arab peoples in their respective revolts.

[Vyt]

You got quite a few things wrong, minor and major.

Gaddafi did actually invade a neighbor - the extremely poor state of Chad, to Libya's south. Chad kicked their ass. With Toyota pickup trucks. Really. It's where the "technical" was invented. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

Iraq is a very complex place today but to compare its government now to that of the Saddam Hussein era is errant nonsense. It's freely elected, the media in Iraq is for the most part uncensored, and the secret police that terrorized Iraqis in the Saddam era is gone.

You noted the 2000s-era rapprochement between Libya and the West but left out a very key part: the reason. Namely that Gaddafi turned over his nuclear and chemical weapons program and disavowed sponsorship of terrorism. Admittedly this did not turn him into a good Rotary Club Democrat but the situation would be far different today were Libya to have chemical or even nuclear weapons.

And lastly, to say that the Obama administration, and the West in general, is doing nothing is silly. There are billions of dollars in assets in US banks (the largest such seizure in history) that Libya can no longer get to. The UN Security Council has ordered a criminal investigation of the Libyan leadership for crimes against humanity and that is being fast-tracked (a BBC news crew was captured and tortured, and documented the torture of others, which to put it mildly will not help Libya's case).

No, we're not currently invading Libya, bombing them, or blowing their aircraft out of the sky. With the exception of the no-fly zone, the rebels themselves insist that the West do none of these, and I expect we will see a no-fly zone very soon (aircraft carriers of multiple nations have been moving to the area and NATO today said they were just waiting for a UN resolution for the go-ahead).

[WyldemanATX]

Lets just nuke the middle east we do not really need it do we???

This shit is going to happen no matter what. This is what Irans leader wants is chaos in the middle east. Libya is not the only country that this kind of thing is happening in over there. Saddam tested chemical warfare on his own people.. He was a bad man.

The UN is a joke and needs to be dismantled, but it will not be.

[Keith Stone]

I recommend listening to "Fuck the Middle East" by SOD

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by Vyt

Iraq is a very complex place today but to compare its government now to that of the Saddam Hussein era is errant nonsense. It's freely elected, the media in Iraq is for the most part uncensored, and the secret police that terrorized Iraqis in the Saddam era is gone.

Sorry but this is untrue. The present Iraqi secret police is just a savage as under Saddam, with rampant torture, killings, and secret prisions. The press is not free - anyone in the press that reports contrary to what the government wants is dissappeared and murdered. The human rights situation is worse than under Saddam, and the material quality of life is much worse. Under Saddam the bulk of oil revenues went to public subsidies and projects. Today it all goes to the Swiss accounts of government policitians.

Iraq has a serious problem with it's "national character," and those of us who were familiar with Iraq over the decades understood that only someone like Saddam was able to hold it together, just as Marshall Tito in Yugoslavia held together that otherwise nighmarish place. This is why Saddam was held in place in 1991, but that wise decision was undone in 2001.

In terms of Barak Obama, two weeks ago he state that "Kadaffi must go."

But of course Obama has done exactly the opposite.*

He is supporting AN ARMS EMBARGO ON THE REBELS in an effort to assist Kadaffi vanquish them, and is blocking all international efforts to assist their survival. The account seizures, etc. you site are designed as cosmetics only. They will not threaten Kadaffi's hold on power, but will merely give the US more bargaining position relative to him so they can gain more concessions from him.

The fact is Kadaffi has been functioning as a useful idiot of the US for a long time. The sale in the 1970s of the entire available stock of C-4 explosive to him through a flimsy, now-exposed cut-out operation has documented the sinister manner in with US intelligence sought to use him.** In the 1970s and 80s the US didn't give a shit about international terrorism, and only became obsessed with it recently when doing so furthered particular special interests for doing so.

If anyone in the US government would be truthful about our capabilities against him they would state the obvious -- it would take about 72 hours to take him out. All that would be required is the one US air base in southern Italy and 40 Commando to destroy all his military and occupy Tripoli in a few hours. It would be a simple thing to do, and we wouldn't have to stay more than a week.

In the mean time a lot of good people there are gonna get slaughtered.

* I have reached the conclusion that Barak Obama is a clinical sociopath. He consistently states that he is doing exactly the opposite of whatever he is actually doing. He evidences a flat affect, and is incapble of empathetic feelings of any kind. Like most sociopaths he is highly manipulative, yet doesn't display any particular emotion. This is the case for each and every item. A major case in point - the Federal deficit and spending cuts. Two weeks ago Obama put forward his spending cuts proposal of saving several billion dollars over TEN YEARS. All the proposed cuts however were present in only 10% of the buget, and there was not a single proposed cut in any entitlement program - none - zero. Yet in his news conference yesterday he claimed that, "entitlements must be cut along with everything else." Whether its GITMO, or lobbiests working in government, or anything else, he's done EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what his smiling face said it would do when he campaigned.

Barak Obama must be removed from office for medical reasons. He is afflicted with a disabling medical condition [anti-personality disorder] which impairs his judgement. The Congress should pass the necessary legislation immediately to force him to submit to medical evaluation.

**It took thirty years for Edwin Wilson's appeals to reach proper authority, but by having the matter eventually aired in Federal Court was something subsequent CIA leaders could not influence. His defense that he was acting on orders from his CIA case officer when he sold the C-4 turned out to be well documented, and was the basis of overturning his conviction. He served thirty years in Federal prison for following is case officer's orders, which turned out to be a set-up.

[gnadfly]

Please provide some sources for your material. A lot of the "accusations" on Saddam are just wrong. I remember Saddam had two well known terrorist living in Iraq and he was offering $25K to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

[theaustinescorts]

Saddam liked to grandstand as a supporter of Palestinian Arab rights, and definitely supported Palestinian liberation groups. These groups of course committed terrorist acts against Israelis, but no one else, and certainly not any Americans. This is in contrast to Kadaffi and the Iranians, both of whom supported groups that committed muderous acts against Americans.

The reason for this was the ideology of the Iraqi Baath party. The Baath was a facist/Nazi Arab movement, and was anti-semitic and opposed to the existence of Israel. Additionally the Baath came to power with the help of the CIA, as a counter to communists, and therefore the Baath had a pro-US dimension which precluded terrorist acts against any Americans.

In fact Israeli intelligence had the Baath at the top of their list of foreign threats for a very long time. The overt fascist origins of the Baath made it HATEFUL to the Israelis. To understand why they exerted such effort to destroy the Baath you have to understand this - they viewed it as an overt neo-Nazi movement thriving in their mist. Undermining or even destroying the Baath was a dream of Israeli intelligence for decades, but after 9-11 a set of coincidences occurred in the US which permitted that dream to become reality. Those coincidences were the ascendancy to power within the Bush administration of Israeli agents and sympathizers into all the key national security positions. Then when 9-11 happened they seized the opportunity to associate Saddam with al-Qaeda. They created phony accusations of WMD weapons programs and violations of UN sanctions regarding same.

Occassionally in life a confluence of unlikely events can happen which permits an otherwise impossible ambition to be realized. Conspiracy debunkers will label such "conspiracy," but it's really just coincidence, which actually does happen frequently in life.

In the matter of Israel and the Baath that is what happened.

Everyone else on the planet, including the American people and the population of Iraq, all had to pay a terrible price. And in reality the continued existence of the Baath probably wouldn't really have harmed Israel anyway, but that's not the way intelligence services operate. They don't rationally weigh the real risks versus benefits of actions. They just make lists of "threats" and then pay any price to work against them, especially when the biggest prices are paid by others. It's not their job to care about who pays. It's only their job to work their lists.

[DRorchia]

TAE writes:"Saddam liked to grandstand as a supporter of Palestinian Arab rights, and definitely supported Palestinian liberation groups. These groups of course committed terrorist acts against Israelis, but no one else, and certainly not any Americans. This is in contrast to Kadaffi and the Iranians, both of whom supported groups that committed muderous acts against Americans."

Excuse me? Do we need to list the MANY terrorist acts Palestinians committed against Americans?
Let's see, there were:
The Dawson's Field Hijackings , September 6th, 1970. TWA flight 741, Pan Am Flight 93 were hijacked and forced to land in Jordan. Last I checked, hijacking planes is a "terrorist act". Americans were on this plane.
1977: Lufthansa Flight 181 (also known as the Landshut) was hijacked by Palestinian highjackers on a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt. The ordeal ended in Mogadishu, Somalia. American passengers were on this plane.
The ANO (Palestinian Abu Nidal Organization) was responsible for the December 1985 simultaneous Rome and Vienna airport attacks in which 12 people died, including five American citizens.

The list goes on. Saddam supported these groups. Meetings between the Badder Meinhof gang and Palestinian Terrorists were held in Baghdad Iraq. That's documented and undisputed fact.

I for one think it's absolutely ridiculous that we have bombed Libya. For the last 10 years two U.S. administrations have been singing the praises of Qaddafi and how he was an example of a regime that could move away from terrorism and a quest for weapons of mass destruction. Now he's suddenly an "evil dictator" again?
There was no "massacre" of civilians. A few civilian protesters got shot. Yep it happens.
Let's see 4 American students were killed and 9 more wounded at Kent State University in Ohio by Ohio National Guard soldiers.
Now let's see. What would the U.S. have done if Russia and China would have begun air strikes to "protect" the protestors? What if China and Russia would have said...."we need to set up a no-fly zone to protect these American protesters. These were not the first protesters killed and hundreds more were injured during the Vietnam protests by our Police and Military.
Would we have allowed a foreign country to interfere?
Would we do so now? What if the American people decided to remove Obama by force? Would the Federal government stand by and allow that to happen? Would we allow foreign countries to come to the aid of those wishing to overthrow our government?
I initially supported the war against Iraq and I still today support our involvement in Afghanistan of which I am a part.
However this attack on Libya is completely unfounded. We watched 800,000 Rwandan's be slaughtered and did not launch a single aircraft. We would not provide critical equipment to the UN observers there.
We watched and still watch the systematic pillaging, raping and murder of thousands of women, kids and other civilians by government forces and militias in places like the Sudan, Congo etc. When was the last time we launched a plane to help these people? These were people begging and pleading for our help and we simply said...."Sorry, not our problem".
Less than 100 people had been killed in Libya when we announced we were "thinking" of a no-fly zone and ways to help the "rebels". Really? So less than a 100 people from Libya can move the military might of the U.S. and Europe (Europe incidentally gets a large chunk of it's oil from Libya) while over 3 MILLION Africans have died in the last 10 years without us so much as lifting a finger??!!
Sorry, I call B.S. on this one

[gnadfly]

DTorchia,

I agree with much of what you wrote. Kadaffi owned up to sanctioning the Lockerbie bombing and paid most of the 12 billion dollars he was supposed to pay in restitution. He also supposedly dismantled his WMD program. I don't like the guy - Reagan should have killed him 20 years or so ago but he was living up to the agreements he needed to to get off our embargoed nations list - as far as I know.

I don't know how many Libyans were killed recently but this has the markings of a civil war. We'd need to triple our aircraft carrier force if we are going to provide no-fly zones against every dictator who kills 100 innocents in a month.

[DRorchia]

Exactly gnadfly. When Reagan bombed him in the 80's I felt it was an appropriate response. He probably should have gotten a few cruise missiles up his rear end after Pan Am 103.
But this is the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. If we took over police stations in the USA and armed ourselves with military hardware to attack the government, what do you think the federal government's response would be? It would be swift and harsh.
Not to mention that we're currently still embroiled in two conflicts. I have seen first hand the shortages that our military in Afghanistan has to contend with. A shortage of aircraft, equipment, manpower etc. Yet we seem to have 1 BILLION $$ for this Libya action while the military in Afghanistan constantly has to make due with less than what they need. It's absolute crap.
I would have preferred us wrapping up Iraq completely as far as our troop commitment there and then focus on the threat that Iran is presenting. They are a far bigger future threat to us then Libya ever was or will be.

[theaustinescorts]

The Palestinian groups who targeted Americans did so in the early 1970s well before Saddam Hussein assumed power in 1979. Saddam Hussein and the Iraq Baath party were cultivated by the United States and came to power because the alternative in Iraq was Soviet-leaning. The Baath government obtained military aid from the Soviet block, but otherwise did nothing to promote communist influence in the region - in fact they blocked it.

Saddam Hussein was a mixed bag of good and bad. He fought off the Iranians when that was necessary, and held together Iraq. He promoted modernization and development. His fascist form of government [as in the Syrian case which is also a Baath government] posed a serious threat to the monarchs of Arabia. Unfortunately he was paranoid and prone to military attacks on his neighbors as a first solution when problems arose. These are the characteristics which normally come with fascism.

Kadaffi on the other hand is simply a criminal psychopath. He's simply a thug and a moron, whose only motivation is his own megleomania. He has no political or ideological motivations - AT ALL.

He should have been taken out decades ago. The idea that someone can go on murderous rampages for no reason at all other than his own pathology, and then pay a fine and come back into the world's good graces is disgraceful.

If Kadaffi's murderous crimes were in the context of a war, or some understandable ideological conflict, then some rapprochement should be considered. But they were not. He's entitled to no repose.

[DRorchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

The Palestinian groups who targeted Americans did so in the early 1970s well before Saddam Hussein assumed power in 1979.
This is simply untrue. As I pointed out, the killings of 5 Americans by Palestinian terrorists at the airport in Vienna took place in 1985, well after Saddam had assumed power.

Saddam Hussein and the Iraq Baath party were cultivated by the United States and came to power because the alternative in Iraq was Soviet-leaning. The Baath government obtained military aid from the Soviet block, but otherwise did nothing to promote communist influence in the region - in fact they blocked it.

Saddam Hussein was a mixed bag of good and bad. He fought off the Iranians when that was necessary, and held together Iraq.

Fought OFF Iranians?? LOL. Again, untrue. The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980. This is fact. Not theory, not some guess at world conspiracies but undisputed fact. Iraq attacked Iran, plain and simple.

They AGAIN invaded a neighboring country (Kuwait) on Aug 2nd 1990. This was done partly because they could not pay back the money they had borrowed to fight their war with Iran and because Kuwait was overproducing oil which kept Iraq's oil revenues low.

He promoted modernization and development. His fascist form of government [as in the Syrian case which is also a Baath government] posed a serious threat to the monarchs of Arabia. Unfortunately he was paranoid and prone to military attacks on his neighbors as a first solution when problems arose. These are the characteristics which normally come with fascism.

Kadaffi on the other hand is simply a criminal psychopath. He's simply a thug and a moron, whose only motivation is his own megleomania. He has no political or ideological motivations - AT ALL.

He should have been taken out decades ago. The idea that someone can go on murderous rampages for no reason at all other than his own pathology, and then pay a fine and come back into the world's good graces is disgraceful.

If Kadaffi's murderous crimes were in the context of a war, or some understandable ideological conflict, then some rapprochement should be considered. But they were not. He's entitled to no repose.

How many African leaders fit your above description of Qaddafi? How many MILLIONS of Africans were slaughtered by African thugs and morons over the last 30 years, whose only motivation is their own megalomania and greed? By your definition half of the leaders in Africa over the last 30 years should have been "taken out". Yet we didn't take them out and we're still not lifting a finger to stop whole scale genocide on the Continent. So what makes Qaddafi worse than the leaders of Rwanda (during the slaughter of 800,000), the Congo (where 2 million have died over the last 15 years), the Sudan were tens of thousands have been killed, raped and slaughtered? Why Libya and not these other countries were the killing and abuse of human rights were 100 times worse than with Qaddafi? Neither you nor Obama seem willing to address these inconvenient facts.

[theaustinescorts]

Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 as a direct result of the Iranian revolution of Febuary 1979, and the resulting threat to Iraq's security.

The October 22, 1980 attack by Iraq in Khuzistan was brought about by Iraqi security concerns ignited by the revolution, and was intended as an additional bargaining measure such as the tit-for-tat measures which characterized the Iraq-Iran conflict in Kurdistan and elsewhere from 1971-1976, in which each side was supporting violent dissidents in the other. The Kurdistan attack was a continuation of this conflict with the new Iranian government, which had made many threats since they came to power.

However the Iraqi strategy failed, and beginning in 1981 the Iranians were on the offensive. Iranian forces penetrated into Iraq in several places along their entire border, not just in the Khuzistan theater. Iranian goals were to overthrow the Baath regime and replace the Iraqi government with one vassel to Iranian interests in the same way that Pakistan intervenes in Afghanistan.

Because of this threat from Iran, the US and other Arab states in the region provided substantial aid to Iraq, resulting in a stalemate which lasted until 1989.

Saddam's strategy was unsound, but his attack was conducted for defensive reasons, not the aggressive ones you've implied.

For a broader description of these causes please see "The Causes of the Iran-Iraq War," in THE REGIONALIZATION OF WARFARE, National Strategy Information Center, 1985.


In terms of Saddam's relationship with Palestinian groups...

Unlike Kadaffi Saddam never directed such groups to specifically target Americans. Claims to the contrary by Laurie Mylroie [sp] can be discounted. Laurie has ben a paid Mossad disinformation agent since 1985 with her own Mossad agent number, etc. She first started working with Mossad when she worked at Harvard with another Mossad agent, Nadav Safran [a tenured Professor who was exposed in a Harvard Crimson article in 1985]. I was there with both of them when it happened so I speak from personal knowledge.

[DRorchia]

Originally Posted by theaustinescorts

Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 as a direct result of the Iranian revolution of Febuary 1979, and the resulting threat to Iraq's security.

The October 22, 1980 attack by Iraq in Khuzistan was brought about by Iraqi security concerns ignited by the revolution, and was intended as an additional bargaining measure such as the tit-for-tat measures which characterized the Iraq-Iran conflict in Kurdistan and elsewhere from 1971-1976, in which each side was supporting violent dissidents in the other. The Kurdistan attack was a continuation of this conflict with the new Iranian government, which had made many threats since they came to power.

However the Iraqi strategy failed, and beginning in 1981 the Iranians were on the offensive. Iranian forces penetrated into Iraq in several places along their entire border, not just in the Khuzistan theater. Iranian goals were to overthrow the Baath regime and replace the Iraqi government with one vassel to Iranian interests in the same way that Pakistan intervenes in Afghanistan.

Because of this threat from Iran, the US and other Arab states in the region provided substantial aid to Iraq, resulting in a stalemate which lasted until 1989.

Saddam's strategy was unsound, but his attack was conducted for defensive reasons, not the aggressive ones you've implied.

For a broader description of these causes please see "The Causes of the Iran-Iraq War," in THE REGIONALIZATION OF WARFARE, National Strategy Information Center, 1985.

Let's be honest here. Saddam's attack on Iran was nothing new. The two countries had been going back and forth jockeying for power, land, resources etc since biblical times. It's what Arab leaders did. It's what they still tried to do until very recently and some still haven't gotten the message that their days and ways of doing things are numbered if they continue on this path.
http://course1.winona.edu/aelafandi/...n-iraq-war.htm

[theaustinescorts]

Originally Posted by DTorchia

Let's be honest here. Saddam's attack on Iran was nothing new. The two countries had been going back and forth jockeying for power, land, resources etc since biblical times. It's what Arab leaders did. It's what they still tried to do until very recently and some still haven't gotten the message that their days and ways of doing things are numbered if they continue on this path.
http://course1.winona.edu/aelafandi/...n-iraq-war.htm

Where do you get this?

No Arab leader has ever attacked another Arab leader and started a war with them. Do you have any examples of this?

The Arab world is known, as is that of Latin America, for NOT attacking each other in war.

The conflict between Iraq and Iran happened exactly because Iran is not an Arab country, and looks upon Iraq in a superior and hegimonic manner similar to the way the Pakistanis look down their noses at the tribal societies of Afghanistan.

I don't agree with what Saddam did in October 1980, but the Iranians have been the aggressors regarding Iraq for all time, and they still are today. Today Iraq suffers under extreme manipulation from Iran.