Yea! We captured Saddam (where's that pic of him and Rummy?)

Does anyone regret that Saddam has been captured? Good riddance to a very nasty man. However, I don't think the Bushies wanted him to be captured alive either. Look at the spectacle of a Slobodan Milosevic trial. Months, perhaps years, of Saddam detailing the evidence of how he came to trail. What are the questions we Democrats must ask?

Who gave him all his weapons?

How did Bush senior support his tyranny?

Why did Bush junior rush to war?

What does it mean if Saddam is gone but the insurgency continues?

The circle hasn't been completed yet. We've still a few more questions to ask.

who was no threat to the U.S.

Unfortunately, it's not over yet. Not by a long shot.

PS Is anybody selling that Saddam/Rummy photo on a T-shirt? I'll buy.

Breaking News!
Saddam Hussain (shown in file photo) has been reported as captured last night.

We like to hear a detailed history of how you came to power and who kept you there.

There were few if any reservations evident in the range of weapons which President Ronald Reagan, and his successor George W. H. Bush were willing to sell Saddam Hussein. Under the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, the foreign sale of munitions and other defense equipment and technology are controlled by the Department of State. During the 1980s, such items could not be sold or diverted to Communist states, nor to those on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting countries. When Iraq came off that list in 1982, however, some $48 million of items such as data privacy devices, voice scramblers, communication and navigation equipment, electronic components, image intensifiers and pistols (to protect Saddam) were approved for sale during 1985-90.

Edit ...
Through the mid and late 1980s, said Milhollin, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Office Naval Intelligence, among others, continued to warn the White House that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were maturing at a rapid pace, as was work on the ballistic missiles to deliver them. The warnings were falling on deaf ears: in October, 1989, 10 months before the Kuwait invasion, President George Bush signed NSD 26, updating NSDD 114, and again committing the U.S. to normal relations with Saddam Hussein's government.
edit ...
But these companies were not, per se, Saddam Hussein's main weapons suppliers: that designation should properly go to Ronald Reagan and George W.H. Bush, the signers, respectively, of NSDD 114 and NSD 26, both of which remain classified. As the primary recipients and ultimate "customers" of the alert memos from the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community, they were currently and fully aware of the use to which the equipment and technology were being put, and of the security policy implications of the process. And the instrument, the person, the envoy, who negotiated the process in the first instance, is the current U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
more ...
http://www.rense.com/general35/rums.htm

"...data privacy devices, voice scramblers, communication and navigation equipment, electronic components, image intensifiers and pistols (to protect Saddam) were approved for sale during 1985-90."

Bwaaahahahahaha!

Pistols and voice scramblers? Give me a break. Take a look at http://projects.sipri.se/armstrade/IRQ_IMPRTS_73-02.pdf

"But these companies were not, per se, Saddam Hussein's main weapons suppliers: that designation should properly go to Ronald Reagan and George W.H. Bush"

Perhaps the title of "Saddam's main weapons supplier" should go to the rightful owners: France and the Soviet Union.

"Through the mid and late 1980s, said Milhollin, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Office Naval Intelligence, among others, continued to warn the White House that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were maturing at a rapid pace, as was work on the ballistic missiles to deliver them. The warnings were falling on deaf ears: in October, 1989, 10 months before the Kuwait invasion, President George Bush signed NSD 26, updating NSDD 114, and again committing the U.S. to normal relations with Saddam Hussein's government."

Nice try. Maybe not.

I think that photo of Rumsfeld and Hussein should be plastered all over the DU..

all over our home towns

What about that picture of Chiraq and Saddam together touring a French nuclear power plant (which France later built for Saddam for a tidy price - but unfortunately those damn Israelis blew it up much to the dismay of Chiraq and Saddam.) Our man of peace Chiraq on the right.

I don't question that France or Germany contributed to Iraq in the eighties. I do question why you are trying so hard to ignore the contributions to this tyrant by rethuglicans.

Want some more evidence?

>>In possibly the only humanitarian gesture of his political career Senator Jesse Helms co-sponsored the ‘Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988’ which passed unanimously in Congress and called for sanctions against Iraq. The bill was killed by the Reagan White House and its allies in the House of Representatives. Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith recalls that "Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the national security advisor who orchestrated Reagan’s decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds. Dick Cheney, then a prominent congressman, could have helped push the sanctions legislation but did not."

In late 1989 Bush the First ignored the objections of officials in three government agencies and signed a secret directive ordering closer ties with Iraq and opening the way for 1 billion dollars in aid, placing the US "in a better position to deal with Iraq’s human rights record" announced the State Department, with a straight face. This human rights record was regarded by Jack Straw, during his tenure as UK Home Secretary, as sufficiently fair that an Iraqi exile seeking refugee status was deported back to Iraq where he could "expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted judiciary." Shorthand for attaching electrodes to his testicles before being beaten to death and dumped in an unmarked grave.<<
More ...
http://www.medialens.org/articles/iraq/gw_short_history.html