It's aggravating to see so-called trusted news sources completely ignore documented facts in their reporting of the news. Consider this AP Newswire story about Iran's call to have Saddam Hussein tried for atrocities committed during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Iran believes Hussein should, obviously, be tried first for atrocities committed against his own people; however, next "A spokesman also said Iran wants the court to expose which nations sold weapons to Saddam -- a reference to allegations that the U.S. military supplied him during the Iran-Iraq war." Later the story further complicates the complicity of the United States in supplying arms to Hussein:
"Several countries sold weapons to Iraq during the war, including the Soviet Union, France and Egypt. The United States is known to have provided intelligence and civilian helicopters that Iraq converted to military use.
But Iranian leaders, and people in the street, believe that Washington both supported Iraq during the conflict and supplied it with weapons."
First, the story tries to forgive American complicity in the atrocities committed against Iranians by basically asserting that everyone was doing it (Soviet Union, France, Egypt). Then, the story attributes to "people in the street" the belief that America sold weapons to Iraq; in other words, we're supposed to believe that any American involvement in the Iran-Iraq conflict is at best just heresay, the whispers of suspicious Iranian citizens on the street.
Washington DID support Iraq during the conflict and supplied it with weapons (including chemicals used to gas Iranians and Kurds). Documented proof of America's involvement in the Iran-Iraq conflict is plentiful. The fact that "non-combat" helicopters were sold by America to Iraq's "department of defense" should have alerted someone in the American government to their obvious use (of course they knew). And the Reagan White House knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons, and it chose to ignore this inconvenience to achieve its own political ends in the region.
Obviously Bush isn't going to let a trial take place in which America's role in funding and arming Saddam Hussein would be front and centre. Better to let the ignorant American public revel in its supposed victory over a supposed enemy. It's a shame that even the Associated Press is subtley masking America's complicity in Hussein's monstrous regime by ignoring a documented history of collaboration between Ronald Reagan and the Iraqi military, and instead characterizing this collaboration as simply "intelligence and civilian helicopters" and the tangential aspersions of "people in the street."
10:55:23 PM 
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