didn't really need to read much beyond the bolded...are you fucking serious right now? I can see your point about Iran having some grievances, and that radicalization of people isn't really an Iranian thing...PER SE...ie Iranians seem not to radicalize their own into doing stupid shit on a regular basis. pretty easy to dismiss the reasoned points when you say ridiculous shit about the US telling Iraq it was OK to use chemical weapons...and spare me the bullshit about black hats giving the nod...blah, blah, blah. NO ONE in their official capacity representing the United States ever gave such a nod explicitly or implicitly....
Yeah, so what you're saying is that the Reagan Administration had it's head completely up its ass when it came to Saddam. Give me a break. You gotta do what you gotta do, wink wink, nudge nudge assurances go on all the time when it comes to US Foreign policy. Frankly, after all the crazy crap the US has done and the fact that it helped Iraq build it's chemical and biological stockpiles I'm pretty surprised that your so offended by that statement. To wit, what did the US do to punish Saddam immediately after the fact when he deployed said weapons during the Iran/Iraq war? Nothing, that's what.
Here's some stuff from Wikipedia, I'm sure it will offend you as well....
Chemical and biological exports[edit]
Iraq purchased 8 strains of anthrax from the United States in 1985, according to British biological weapons expert David Kelly.[27] The Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive strain for use as a biological weapon, according to Charles Duelfer.[28]
On February 9, 1994, Senator Riegle delivered a report -commonly known at the Riegle Report- in which it was stated that "pathogenic (meaning 'disease producing'), toxigenic (meaning 'poisonous'), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce." It added: "These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction."[29]
The report then detailed 70 shipments (including Bacillus anthracis) from the United States to Iraqi government agencies over three years, concluding "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program."[30]
Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that authored the aforementioned Riegle Report, said:
U.N. inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 separate agents "with biological warfare significance," according to Riegle's investigators.[31]
In 1980, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating that Iraq had been actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years, which later proved to be accurate.[28] In November 1980, two months into the Iran–Iraq War, the first reported use of chemical weapons took place when Tehran radio reported a poison gas attack on Susangerd by Iraqi forces.[29] The United Nations reported many similar attacks occurred the following year, leading Iran to develop and deploy a mustard gas capability. By 1984, Iraq was using poison gas with great effectiveness against Iranian "human wave" attacks.[verification needed] Chemical weapons were used extensively against Iran during the Iran–Iraq War.[30][31] On January 14, 1991, the Defense Intelligence Agency said an Iraqi agent described, in medically accurate terms, military smallpox casualties he said he saw in 1985 or 1986. Two weeks later, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed a current immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally in Iraq since 1971; the same prisoners had also been inoculated for anthrax. The assumption being that Iraq used both smallpox and anthrax during this war[32] All of this occurring while Iraq was a party to the Geneva Protocol on September 8, 1931, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on October 29, 1969, signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, but did not ratify until June 11, 1991. Iraq has not signed to the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Washington Post reported that in 1984 the CIA secretly started providing intelligence to the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War. This included information to target chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed beyond doubt by European doctors and UN expert missions that Iraq was employing chemical weapons against the Iranians.[33] Most of these occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, but WMDs were used at least once to crush the popular uprisings against Kurds in 1991.[20] Chemical weapons were used extensively, with more than 100,000 Iranian soldiers as victims of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons during the eight-year war with Iraq,[34] Iran today is the world's second-most afflicted country by weapons of mass destruction, only after Japan. The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions.[citation needed] Many others were hit by mustard gas. Despite the removal of Saddam Hussein and his administration by American forces, there is deep resentment and anger in Iran that it was Western nations that helped Iraq develop and direct its chemical weapons arsenal in the first place and that the world did nothing to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons throughout the war.[citation needed] For example, the United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this use. On March 21, 1986 the United Nation Security Council recognized that "chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian forces"; this statement was opposed by the United States, the sole country to vote against it in the Security Council (the UK abstained).[35]
