We killed
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis with war and economic sanctions.
Saddam is solely responsible for the deaths of those killed in the first Gulf War, he is entirely responsible for the sanctions imposed and the sanctions not being lifted because he blatantly and continuiously violated the terms of the armistice, the amount of deaths attributed to the sanctions are based on statistics provided to the UN by the Baathist regime and are thus unreliable at best, food and medical supplies were not banned under the embargoe, and Saddam managed to build himself lavish palaces during the embargo so its not our fault that Saddam cared more about himself than he did about the welfare of his people. Furthermore; the second Iraq war which your article cites occurred after 9-11.
The Iranian coup led to dictatorship under the Shah, the
ex-Nazi prime minister who replaced Mossadegh, and
SAVAK, which tortured and killed innocent people using
German techniques from WWII. We supported this regime instead of Mossadegh’s because Iran under Mossadegh would have been a neutral power in the Cold War—not, as you claim, a Russian ally.
A) Pahlavi was not a Nazi.
B) We did not install the Shah he was the head of state under the Constitutional monarchy.
C) The Shah appointed Mossadeq and only ousted him from power after Mossadeq dissolved parliament through a fraudulent referendum in which he garnered a 99.9% yay vote because they wouldn't give him direct control over the military and then took direct control over the military and granted himself authority to rule by decree. It wasn't a coup it was a counter-coup.
D) The support of the counter-coup occurred 50 years before 9-11, the perpetrators of 9-11 were Wahhabists who consider the Shia to be takfir and sure as hell had no love for Mossadeq, so even if support for the counter-coup could be seen as a provocation it was not a provocation against the perpetrators of 9-11.
There is in fact
no evidence that Mossadegh was aligned with the Soviets. The accusation is an ancient myth promoted by the CIA as part of the effort to depose him.
The evidence is that Mossadeq turned to the Soviets for support after the U.S. refused to grant him hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.
Everything was banned unless it was imported as part of the Oil for Food program. Iraq was able to import less than
$200 worth of food per person per year, around half the per capita income of Haiti, which led to significant malnutrition.
Infant mortality rates dropped in the North where the UN was in charge of the program and increased in the south where the Baathist government was in charge of the program, it is not difficult to ascertain that it was the failure of the Iraqi regime not the sanctions themselves. Both the North and the South were under the same sanctions the only difference was who was in charge of managing the aid provided. It's not our fault that Saddam decided to resell the food provided under the oil for food program to finance the building of lavish palaces and invest in military spending rather than providing that food and medical supplies to his people.
The US also placed holds on
medical supplies,
Saddam has a long history of weaponizing materials intended for civilian use.
destroyed water and sewage facilities,
The U.S. specifically avoided water and sewage facilities during the first Gulf War.
and withheld the chlorine needed to provide clean water.
Gee I wonder why.
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Obviously, it was not simply a matter of our refusing to trade with Iraq. The sanctions prohibited Iraq from trading with anyone.
Anyone who wanted to trade with Iraq could have but then they would have suffered from those member states who supported the sanctions refusing to trade with them.
Wrong yet again. They were confirmed by multiple sources, including an
extensive survey conducted by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.
Wrong the statistics provided came directly from the Baathist regime. And once again infant mortality dropped in the north and rose in the south proving conclusively who was to blame, the UN sanctions weren't starving the Iraqi people, Saddam was starving the Iraqi people.
Actually, Saddam is credited with bringing Iraq some of the highest living standards and best civilian infrastructure in the region, particularly in the area of health care. Iraq was close to being a
First World country at that time.
Actually Saddam is credited with engaging into a disasterous war against Iran which put his country deeply into debt and destroyed his economy prompting him to enter into yet another war of aggression this time against Kuwait which precipitated the sanctions.
Everything changed with the sanctions, which devastated Iraq’s economy beyond the point where Saddam could have repaired it.
Saddam had already destroyed the economy during the Iran-Iraq war. Likewise Saddam is directly responsible for the sanctions being implemented and the sanctions not being lifted.
Indeed, they were
calculated to do so in order to make the Iraqis revolt against him. This is the definition of terrorism—an attack on civilians for political ends.
Infant mortality dropped in the North and rose in the South proving conclusively that it was not the sanctions that hurt the Iraqi's but rather it was the fact that Saddam cared about living in the lap of luxury more than he cared about the welfare of his own people.
And, again, they did block food and medical supplies.
They blocked some medical and food supplies, they did not block all medical and food supplies and they did not block enough medical and food supplies to cause this as demonstrated that the North where the UN managed the program and the Kurds managed the money and food supplies no such things occurred and infant mortality actually decreased. Saddam resold the food and medical supplies while the masses starved.
Unlikely. US officials under both Bush 41 and Clinton
stated that the purpose of the sanctions was to remove Saddam and that they would be in place until he was gone.
Nothing he did with regard to UN resolutions would have changed that.
The point is mute since Saddam did not abide by the sanctions; bottom line is there was a requisite number of things that Saddam needed to do to have the sanctions lifted, he did not do these things so whether or not they would have been lifted is pure conjecture on your part the only thing we know for sure is that he violated the terms of the armistice.
