Last Straw

In 1980 Iraq invaded Iran. In response the United States, Bri­tain, France, Ger­many and the Soviet Union provided Hus­sein the means to build a chem­ical, bio­lo­gical and nuc­lear weapons programme.

In 1986 the United States with Bri­tain blocked all Secur­ity Coun­cil res­ol­u­tions con­demning Iraq’s use of chem­ical weapons, and on 21 March the United States became the only coun­try to refuse to sign a Secur­ity Coun­cil state­ment con­demning Iraq’s use of these weapons.

Iraq failed to defeat Iran and in 1988 a cease fire was declared.

In 1990 a U.S. Ambas­sador met with Hus­sein under instruc­tions “to broaden and deepen our rela­tions with Iraq” and declared “we have no opin­ion on the Arab-Arab con­flicts, like your bor­der dis­agree­ment with Kuwait.” No expli­cit go ahead was given for the inva­sion of Kuwait but a month later Hus­sein invaded, under the assump­tion that the United States would not respond.

Hus­sein had been cut loose.

The Secur­ity Coun­cil imposed a bru­tal near-total fin­an­cial and trade embargo, killing half a mil­lion Iraqi children.

When the World Trade Centre was attacked in 2001 they tried to pin it on Hus­sein. Then there was the whole ‘Sad­dam could nuke Bri­tain in 45 minutes’ thing. Then they tried to link Sad­dam to Al-Qaeda. When all of these excuses crumbled Tony Blair and his ilk were left to pro­claim that they invaded Iraq because Sad­dam was a bad man, a tor­turer and murderer.

Thanks to WikiLeaks, and some brave whis­tleblower, we now have a very clear por­trait of a United States and Bri­tain com­pli­cit in the tor­ture and murder of Iraqis. Blair has run out of excuses.

In the mean time Iraq’s oil reserves have been handed over to the markets.