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1/3/2003
More on what We Already Knew: The U.S. Armed Iraq, and Assisted with War Crimes :.The fact that this article appeared in a major U.S. publication at all is shocking. While the author, Michael Dobbs, touches on many points accurately, he still manages to serve as an apologist for multiple and egregious U.S. blunders and high crimes. The general nature of what went on between the U.S. and Iraq is thrashed out in this Washington Post article. But if you want the really ugly and fascinating details, please read Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq written by Alan Friedman. Excerpts from the article and analysis follows: High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.A couple of notes on this. The technical term for "enemy of my enemy is my friend" in the White House at the time was, "active neutrality." How's that for double plus good newspeak? You can thank the dead criminal and notorious former CIA Director Bill Casey for that one. The Chilean front company was Industrias Cardoen, and the article mentions this. What it fails to mention is that the CIA moved the plans for the U.S. Rockeye cluster bomb down to Chile so Carlos Cardoen could make the cluster bombs Iraq needed. The U.S. also reclassified a fully functional munitions factory as scrap metal and sent it down to Cardoen! The U.S. couldn't send the weapons to Iraq due to export restrictions, so they brought in a proxy to manufacture them instead. Oh, and then there's the South African connection. Read Friedman's book. The article ends with this ridiculous passage: "Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation." Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam!? Not quite everybody, Mr. Wilson. Teicher wasn't wrong. This is from a case study I wrote in college back in 1995, The Tilt that Backfired: Historical Perspectives on the Persian Gulf Crisis: Back in 1979, while he [Teicher] was working as an analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he had written a fifty-page paper predicting that Saddam would invade Iran, seek to annex oil-rich provinces from Tehran, and eventually even try to renew Iraq's historical claims to Kuwait.
Harold Brown, secretary of defense under Jimmy Carter, brushed aside Teicher's warnings, commenting in the margin of the report, "I disagree. Iraq has changed. It has moderated its behavior." Teicher did not change his views when he joined the Reagan administration; in fact, he grew more convinced as his predictions started to materialize. He then found out that U.S. arms shipments had found their way through third countries to Iraq. When he inquired about how the White House could be assisting in the clandestine transfer of U.S. mat�riel to Iraq, he was told not to bother himself about it.Hey Washington Post, how does it feel to be scooped on what really happened by a 20 something year old college student, 8 YEARS AGO!? Related: Comments from a Former U.S. Marine :.The reason for all this cacophony of bombast and silence, the justification for all this bellicose din and self-righteous declamation, the cause for this constant beating of war drums and unfurling of flags, the focus of all this national attention and the linchpin of our quasi- elected president's "axis of evil" turned out to be the 1-bit dictator of an impoverished 4th world country, whom virtually no-one else in the world seems to particularly care about, let alone fear. Yet we, the fortunate few citizens of the single mightiest military nation on earth, bizarrely continue being subjected to a ceaseless barrage of fear-mongering and war- prodding, as the White House continues to replace international policy with obsession, and to put ideology and personal grudges before our national interests. Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 7:30 PM
FDA: Neurotoxic Amphetamine-Type Substance Approved for Children :.If you thought Columbine was shocking, just wait: The US Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it has approved Eli Lilly & Co.'s Prozac (fluoxetine) to treat depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in children and adolescents aged seven to 17 years.There is a push to get infants (as young as one year old) on Prozac and other neurotoxic drugs. Please see Dr. Peter Breggin's books on toxic psychiatry before some quack attempts to swindle you. Anytime you visit a doctor, realize that the entire medical and healthcare infrastructure is based on institutionalized fraud. Realize that the FDA and pharmaceutical companies exist to rip you off as they kill you! If you think I'm being harsh or unfair, read the fine print on the drugs your quack is telling you to take! READ IT! While your doctor may mean well, the chances are that he or she is a professionally educated ignoramus who is unwilling and unable to look outside their pharmaceutical based world view. Search for natural and nontoxic alternatives on your own. They exist.
posted by Kevin at 7:28 PM
Medical Fraud of the Moment: Female Sexual Dysfunction :.Pharmaceutical firms Friday rejected claims they had created a new disorder known as female sexual dysfunction to build a market for Viagra and similar drugs among women.
An article in the British Medical Journal said researchers with close ties to industry had defined the new disorder at company-sponsored meetings over the past six years to encourage use of the same medicines that have helped men with impotence. The result was that female sexual problems were being wrongly "medicalized" and the number of women affected greatly exaggerated.
The author of the article, Australian Financial Review journalist Ray Moynihan, said claims that 43 percent of women aged 18-59 had female sexual dysfunction were misleading and potentially dangerous.
posted by Kevin at 7:26 PM
Air Force: Amphetamines = Fatigue Management Tool :.A lawyer for one of two U.S. pilots who released a bomb over southern Afghanistan in April, accidentally killing four Canadian soldiers, says the Air Force had pressured the pilots to take amphetamines that may have impaired their judgment during the mission.
Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach face a possible court-martial for dropping the laser-guided bomb near Kandahar on April 17. An Air Force investigation determined the pilots "demonstrated poor airmanship" and ignored standard procedure by not making sure there were no allied troops in the area.
posted by Kevin at 7:25 PM
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:. Reading
 Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to
genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
 Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
 The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
 Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
 The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
 When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
 The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes
practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables,
with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
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