Iran's Rafsanjani wants U.S. and Saddam on trial

Can anyone point me to a description of the support provided by the US to Iraq?

I have heard many claims but have not seen a detailed analysis backed by evidence.

The Death Lobby: How the west Armed Iraq
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0395593050/qid=1071846605/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2630504-7298202?v=glance&s=books

Arming Iraq
by Mark Phythian, Nikos Passas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1555532853/qid=1071846714/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-2630504-7298202?v=glance&s=books

Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq
by Alan Friedman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553096508/ref=pd_sim_books_1/103-2630504-7298202?v=glance&s=books

All three are excellent, well-researched studies of the crimes committed by the US and the West as they pursued the cynical policy of using Saddam as their blunt instrument in the Middle East.

with plenty of docs: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Remember the USS Vincennes? Remember that the ship's air-warfare coordinator got a medal for 'heroic service' for shooting down the airliner, killing all 290 passengers?

Well, you can bet the Iranians remember it.

If I remember right, the only attacks occurring during the War was between IRAQI forces and IRANIAN oil tankers. No "Neutral" Tankers were ever hit.

Iraq could ship its oil through Turkey (and did) thus did not need to ship through the Persian Gulf. Iran's oil fields were next to the border with Iraq, and thus had to ship through the Gulf. Iraqi planes than attacked Iranian Tankers coming from those fields.

Now, Kuwait did ship its oil through the Gulf, but none of its Tankers were attacked. I have always suspected that the Attack on the Vincennes was a deliberate move by Iraq to give the US an excuse to attack Iran. The problem was other countries in the Gulf (The Soviet Union still had some ships in the Gulf) reported it was a FRENCH MISSILE fired from an IRAQI Plane, thus the US could never Claim it was Iranian.

Remember, except for some brief time period at the beginning of the War with Iran, the Iraqi were the ones LOSING the War. Every time Iran was about ready to drive out the Iraqis, either internal political problems (the infighting between the Iranian Military and the Shiite Leadership of Iran) OR US intervention with additional supplies kept the Iraqis from losing the War. The Spin at the time was we were supplying BOTH sides to keep them at each other's Throats, but if you looked at what the US Did (as opposed to what the US Government said it was doing) you see a clear preference for Iraq and Saddam over BOTH Peach and Iraq.

...they were sailing under the US flag.

Don

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/iran-iraq.htm

In March 1984, the tanker war entered its second phase when Iraq initiated sustained naval operations in its self-declared 1,126-kilometer maritime exclusion zone, extending from the mouth of the Shatt al Arab to Iran's port of Bushehr. In 1981 Baghdad had attacked Iranian ports and oil complexes as well as neutral tankers and ships sailing to and from Iran; in 1984 Iraq expanded the so-called tanker war by using French Super-Etendard combat aircraft armed with Exocet missiles.

In March 1984 an Iraqi Super Etendard fired an Exocet missile at a Greek tanker south of Khark Island. Until the March assault, Iran had not intentionally attacked civilian ships in the Gulf. Neutral merchant ships became favorite targets, and the long-range Super-Etendards flew sorties farther south. Seventy-one merchant ships were attacked in 1984 alone, compared with forty-eight in the first three years of the war. Iraq's motives in increasing the tempo included a desire to break the stalemate, presumably by cutting off Iran's oil exports and by thus forcing Tehran to the negotiating table. Repeated Iraqi efforts failed to put Iran's main oil exporting terminal at Khark Island out of commission, however.

The new wave of Iraqi assaults, however, led Iran to reciprocate. In April 1984, Tehran launched its first attack against civilian commercial shipping by shelling an Indian freighter. Iran attacked a Kuwaiti oil tanker near Bahrain on May 13 and then a Saudi tanker in Saudi waters five days later, making it clear that if Iraq continued to interfere with Iran's shipping, no Gulf state would be safe. Most observers considered that Iraqi attacks, however, outnumbered Iranian assaults by three to one. Iran's retaliatory attacks were largely ineffective because a limited number of aircraft equipped with long-range antiship missiles and ships with long-range surface-to-surface missiles were deployed. Moreover, despite repeated Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz, Iran itself depended on the sea-lanes for vital oil exports.

...if it weren't for the sale of spare parts by the US (payment for cooperation with "October Surprise").

They hate us because we were two-faced in that war - we've only begun to experience the blowback from that...

The Russians are essentially in line with the Iranians and Putin stated a few months back that the only way to enforce the peace process in Israel is to send international troops to police both sides. Bush* co have started something they can't possibly win IMO.