Ah, the US military at its best.

I was in the Navy when that happened. At first they told us that that IFF transmitter squawked enemy F-14, so based on that information the crew had no choice but to fire. When that story no longer held water they abruptly quit talking about it altogether.

Not even a year later the USS Iowa had a turret explode. By then I had become fully aware of the lies the Navy brass were constantly spoon feeding us, so when they tried to make it sound like the explosion was the deliberate act of a suicidal gay lover, I immediately told my friends, family, and everyone else I knew that wasn't in the military to NOT believe a damn word of it. I had absoultely no inside information about what really happened, but I just knew you could never trust those motherfuckers in the Pentagon.

I was proud to serve my country, and still am to this day. However I am ashamed of how the men who told us to always act honorably and with integrity couldn't be bothered to do the same thing themselves.

The following is from a Newsweek article read by Sen. Byrd (D, WV) during a congressional hearing on September 20, 2002:

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions...

The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons...

The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.

The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

"Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?"

The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services also be included in that request.

The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.

We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate. The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers to the whole story.

" I was proud to serve my country(...)"

Not to pick on you, kronosposeidon; actually I raise the question because you seem like a thoughtful person; but what do you really mean that you are proud to serve your country? Are you saying that you basically agree morally with US exceptionalism and the imperial project, and are proud to have played a minor role in keeping the rest of humanity at bay through the constant threat of military force?

Do you think American lives are more valuable than the lives of people in other countries?

Who did you serve?

I had a teacher who will go remain anon tell us a story.

During his time in a radar station some where over "there" a Soviet bomber pinged his station with infrared signals common to guidance systems back then.

The soviet plane was just spooking them. This is what happens when you up the anti every 5 minutes eventually some one will pull the trigger.

There should have been no Civilian Air Breathers in that zone, there was a damned war on.

Both sides are at fault here, once again the Americans cant keep their damned noses out of problems that aren't theirs to begin with, and civilian planes in a war zone.

>> ^qualm:
" I was proud to serve my country(...)"
Not to pick on you, kronosposeidon; actually I raise the question because you seem like a thoughtful person; but what do you really mean that you are proud to serve your country? Are you saying that you basically agree morally with US exceptionalism and the imperial project, and are proud to have played a minor role in keeping the rest of humanity at bay through the constant threat of military force?
Do you think American lives are more valuable than the lives of people in other countries?
Who did you serve?

I was going to upvote this -- important bit of infamous history and cautionary tale that it is -- until that ridiculous editing at the end. "Here, let's loop that part where he gets up and gives a whoop so that it looks like he's fucking the shattered corpse of each person on that destroyed airliner." Very poor taste.

Fair enough question, qualm.

No, I don't believe in American exceptionalism, nor do I support most of our foreign policy, nor do I think American lives are more valuable than anyone else's.

Quite simply, I was proud to play a small part in defending my home. Virtually every nation on Earth has a military, even the most peaceful ones. Why? If for no other reason, national defense. Now I know the U.S. hasn't used its military in self-defense since World War II. Still, if the United States completely disbanded its military by tomorrow morning, how long would it take for another nation to attack us? Once they determined it wasn't a trick, it would probably take all of 5 seconds. The same thing would happen to any other prosperous nation if they did the same thing. Hell, even the poor nations are at risk. We all know that.

I am proud to have defended my country, my home. The house I live in right now is nice, but it has its problems. I have some weeds in the yard, I need to replace the refrigerator and dishwasher soon, I've got a cracked window in the garage that I need to replace, and a tree that I think is dying so it will need to be cut down some time in the next few years. However, even with all its flaws I'm still happy here, and I wouldn't want someone to take it away from me.

That's the same way I feel about America. It's got a lot of things wrong with it, but I believe they still can be fixed. Also, I have a lot of people here I love, a lot of people I like, a lot of people I don't like, and a LOT of other people whom I don't even know at all. Yet I want to protect them all from those who would bring harm to my country, my home. And I am proud of that.

>> ^calvados:
I was going to upvote this -- important bit of infamous history and cautionary tale that it is -- until that ridiculous editing at the end. "Here, let's loop that part where he gets up and gives a whoop so that it looks like he's fucking the shattered corpse of each person on that destroyed airliner." Very poor taste.


i agree about that silly montage at the end, not necessary. however, the fact remains, those guys got away with mass murder. and ask yourself - what was their fucking business, patroling the iranian waters? defending the interests of some jumpy big oil cowboys who were afraid for their investments and didn't want iraq to loose the 1980-88 war with iran. it was the US war ship that was the agent provocateur in this case, their actions can not be defended in any international court of law. not that any US soldier will ever see the inside of one - you can't sue a stormtrooper, can you?
the russians did the same with a korean airliner for god knows what reason

BTW http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Iraq_rules_need_more_airing

check that out

That's a quite thoughtful and eloquent reply, kronos.

I don't accept the premise that a demilitarized USofA would suddenly be open to attack* from other nations, but certainly the USofA would not be quite so able to throw its weight around everywhere else in the world, economically and politically, if it were not for the massive US military. But that's a question different from my immediate concern.

*I think it was Deng Xiopeng (sp?) who laughed out loud when asked, considering China's 30 million soldiers or some ridiculous number, whether China could, hypothetically, invade the United States. To paraphrase: "Nobody can invade the United States. There are ___ million guns..."

Anyway... Large powers generally don't attack one another. They invade tiny countries like Grenada and Panama.

I do remember watching a Discovery channel show on the shoot-down. Even with all the other factors, one of the root causes was a software error.

The radar and tracking locked onto the IFF of an F-14 on the tarmac at the airport, the same airport that the plane was taking off from. The operator didn't re-lock tracking on the incoming passenger plane. There was no indication that the IFF was on another plane. While they were tracking the passenger plane for airspeed, altitude, etc., the IFF was locked on the F-14.

There were many other problems including the ones listed above, but the whole thing was a breakdown of procedure, technology, and communication.

...according to a program on Discovery Channel.

While I do enjoy the Discovery channel, I would never trust their reporting on anything that has to do with US politics.

When they aren't masturbating to the MOST EXTREME, AWESOME and DEADLY weapons of the army in a deep voice, they are doing dodgy documentaries that are as unbiased as the myth busters are scientific.

So, the Discovery channel airline disaster documentaries are all suspect? Or just this one is, and all the rest are OK?

You do understand that they said pretty much everyone failed on the US warship, including the technology and procedure. Are you saying that the US ship was not at fault, or it was? The documentary said the US warship was at fault. I am just trying to understand what part exactly you are having a problem with, since it seems that the documentary agrees with you.

>> ^kulpims:
>> ^calvados:
I was going to upvote this -- important bit of infamous history and cautionary tale that it is -- until that ridiculous editing at the end. "Here, let's loop that part where he gets up and gives a whoop so that it looks like he's fucking the shattered corpse of each person on that destroyed airliner." Very poor taste.

i agree about that silly montage at the end, not necessary. however, the fact remains, those guys got away with mass murder. and ask yourself - what was their fucking business, patroling the iranian waters? defending the interests of some jumpy big oil cowboys who were afraid for their investments and didn't want iraq to loose the 1980-88 war with iran. it was the US war ship that was the agent provocateur in this case, their actions can not be defended in any international court of law. not that any US soldier will ever see the inside of one - you can't sue a stormtrooper, can you?
the russians did the same with a korean airliner for god knows what reason


What does your comment have to do with my comment? Here's two facts: the crew of the USS Vincennes were grossly negligent in this case (you seem to think I'm defending them somehow), and this video uses vulgar and idiotic editing to try and make a point which instead weakens its reportage.

^vulgar editing? what about the vulgar fact that inncocent people were blown off the skies by a bunch of idiots who got away with murder because they were americans? that doesn't make you angry, but the tasteless editing does?

Even if we didn't have a Military, I don't think people would realize how many citizens would take up arms if America was invaded. Even immigrants in my opinion the illegal and legal ones would take up arms if their lively hood was threatened by an invasionary force. we would be fighting just like the people who fight in iraq are fighting. Don't underestimate the general population. We won the civil war by guerilla tactics. That is why i can't understand why our military is so unused to fighting that style of war. Our Country was founded on those tactics.

^vulgar editing? what about the vulgar fact that inncocent people were blown off the skies by a bunch of idiots who got away with murder because they were americans? that doesn't make you angry, but the tasteless editing does?

Cease this moronic bleating and read his comment again.

>> ^Gunter:
Even if we didn't have a Military, I don't think people would realize how many citizens would take up arms if America was invaded. Even immigrants in my opinion the illegal and legal ones would take up arms if their lively hood was threatened by an invasionary force. we would be fighting just like the people who fight in iraq are fighting. Don't underestimate the general population. We won the Revolutionary war by guerilla tactics. That is why i can't understand why our military is so unused to fighting that style of war. Our Country was founded on those tactics.


There fixed that for you.

>> ^budzos:
^vulgar editing? what about the vulgar fact that inncocent people were blown off the skies by a bunch of idiots who got away with murder because they were americans? that doesn't make you angry, but the tasteless editing does?
Cease this moronic bleating and read his comment again.


my point is that poor editing is, well - beside the point. calvados was getting stuck at the stupid montage at the end and thought the message was conveyed in an inappropriate manner, but one shouldn't let that get in the way of facts presented.

"That is why i can't understand why our military is so unused to fighting that style of war. Our Country was founded on those tactics."

Insurrectionary warfare is fought by guerillas or resistance fighters or "freedom fighters" against an outside invader. Tactics involve ambushes, engaging in regular skirmishes, general harassment and sabotage. Guerillas take advantage of local support and their superior knowledge of terrain to erode the will to fight of the invaders.

Anti-insurrectionary warfare attempts to divide, isolate and destroy pockets of resistance. Cutting off lines of supply is crucial, and attempts are made to befriend the locals while trying to make the guerillas appear as the enemy. To this end invaders generally first employ propaganda against local inhabitants and when that invariably fails they attempt to coerce them with economic sanctions, or the supplying or withholding of necessary medicines. Next invaders destroy their homes and/or kill the locals en masse, ie. women and children, and the elderly.

Keeping that in mind, I suggest that the USofA was primarily established by anti-insurrectionary warfare. (In this case, a 'cleansed word' for genocide.)

the message was conveyed in an inappropriate manner, but one shouldn't let that get in the way of facts presented.

That's the duty of the messenger, not the recipient. Being overly strident or outright manipulative only undermines the message. That was probably Calvados' objection.

If it's clear that one part of the message is lies and manipulation, why would a reasonable person assume the rest of the message is factual and worthy of concern?

^agreed, but i can identify with what the author wanted to accentuate with that little gesture, i think. the facts are true, much has been written about this incident, however, since US was (and still is) constantly provoking Iran since the islamic revolution and nationalisation of oil resources, this affair was promptly hushed up and the culprits have been awarded honors instead of deserved punishment. that pisses me off. we can't let governments get away with murder

*dead? The video won't come up.

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by alien_concept.

fixed