Saddam Will Miss Old Buddy Reagan

BAGHDAD, Jun 12 (IPS) The Iraq (news - web sites) issue today may never have arisen if it were not for the support former U.S. president Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) gave Saddam Hussein.

Reagan died Saturday Jun. 5 in his Los Angeles home.

Reagan's two terms as President correspond roughly to the Iran-Iraq war, the longest conventional war of the 20th century.

Saddam Hussein invaded Iran on Sep. 22, 1980 with the stated goal of gaining control of the Shatt al-Arab, the river that has formed a border between Iran and Iraq, and which would give Iraq better access to the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. government was then interested in containing Iran, which had just become one of Washington's major enemies after the Islamic Revolution lead by Ayatollah Khomeini. U.S. hostages had been taken, and Ronald Reagan had just been elected partly on the strength of criticising President Jimmy Carter's inability to free them.

"America and Saddam thought the same way at that time, because America wanted to destroy the revolution in Iran," retired Iraqi Brigadier-General Zekki Daoud Jabber told IPS in an interview in his Baghdad home.

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Don

Concluding Remarks

Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted list" as the World's foremost terrorist.

While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA which has --since the Soviet-Afghan war-- supported international terrorism through its covert operations.

In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the Bush Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

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