Flag at half mast

I haven’t been keeping up with the news lately, so I only just found out yesterday that ex-President Ford died on the 27th and today I heard that Saddam Hussein was hung yesterday. Today as Kurt and I head out to go shopping for a new living room chair to place next to our couch, “The Laura” I noticed that the a flag at half mast. Given the latest news I wondered who was it flying for the ex president or Saddam. Don’t scoff at me, just twenty years ago Saddam was our ally against Iran. Twenty years ago it didn’t matter that Saddam was an assassin who killed his way up to the top of the Iraq government or that the US knew Iraq was using chemical weapons both against Iran and to punish Kurdish insurgents. It wasn’t really cool with US citizens to support a terrorist, and the government denied it at the time, but with Iraq being 80% Shiite I don’t think the Sunni Leader would have had a chance without a little help from his friends.

In the ‘90s Saddam became a bad guy again. He accused Kuwait of illegally slant-drilling petroleum across Iraq’s border and so Iraq invaded. The US feared for Saudi Arabia because they are an ally of the US, but mostly because we like their oil, so Bush Sr. tried to pursued the public to go to war. It’s not ok for Iraq to violate Kuwaiti territorial integrity, but in a few more years (2003) it’ll be ok for us to invade Iraq’s boundaries for preemptive purposes. Many cried, “No Blood For Oil”. Bush Sr. pulled the biochemical weapons card and the attempting to build atomic bombs card. It wasn’t until the Kuwaiti government paid for the Nurse Nayirah ads in which a nurse described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor that everyone said ok fine let’s go to war.

Now the US government claims moral superiority over Iraq even though as a civilian anyone who not only has knowledge of a crime but funds the criminal is an accessory to said crime. So for moral reasons very similar to the ones daddy Bush used, let’s wage war! Does this make any fucking sense? With nothing but a document stating that there are “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”, which is known by the government before the start of the war to have been falsified, let us go to war because we can’t find Waldo in Afghanistan. Why if it’s so important to bring Saddam to ‘justice’ don’t we just go to the UN and start filing all the papers for a war crimes / human rights abuses trial? The penalty for that is still death. His underlings will get trials and then Iraq could have their civil wars without our soldiers getting in the way. – Oh wait there’s still that pesky fact of us having known all along what was going on but didn’t give a shit at the time factor. If helping Saddam in the 80’s was the right thing to do then we really should be flying the flag for our dear friend Saddam.

And in case you were wondering we did find the perfect chair to go with the Laura. It’s called the Farris. We also got an ottoman called the Tosha.

“Iraq: Declassified Documents of U.S. Support for Hussein”
With Joyce Battle Middle East Analyst, National Security Archive at George Washington University Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003; 11 a.m. ET

“Giant Firm Parlays Political Connections Into Pr Coups” Marcy Gordon AP Sunday, February 02, 1992

“Photos don’t show buildup” St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Fla. Author: JEAN HELLER Date: Jan 6, 1991

THE STOVEPIPE
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2003-10-27
Posted 2003-10-20

Mohamed ElBaradei, publicly described the fraud at his next scheduled briefing to the U.N. Security Council, in New York on March 7th. The story slowly began to unravel.

Vice-President Cheney responded to ElBaradei’s report mainly by attacking the messenger. On March 16th, Cheney, appearing on “Meet the Press,” stated emphatically that the United States had reason to believe that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear-weapons program. He went on, “I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency on this kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t have any reason to believe they’re any more valid this time than they’ve been in the past.”