Troops, you have your merchant orders...

"Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down... Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused." (Woodrow Wilson, 1907)

Not up yet on Media Lens' website, but passed along to me from Jody in Honolulu, I've excerpted some bits from December 17, 2003   MEDIA ALERT: THE TYRANT WITH A THOUSAND FACES:

Five months after [the gassing at] Halabja, [UK] Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe noted in a secret report that "opportunities for sales of defence equipment to Iran and Iraq will be considerable". In October 1989, Foreign office minister William Waldegrave wrote of Iraq: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed" and that "the priority of Iraq in our policy should be very high". (Quoted, Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit, Vintage, 2003, p.37)
...
In the first year after Halabja, the British government steadfastly refused to accept that its ally had used chemical weapons, stating that the evidence "was compelling but not conclusive". Human Rights Watch reported recently that the evidence it collected on Halabja at the time was simply ignored by the Foreign Office. The British government, it seems, was "singularly unreceptive". (Ibid)
...
On August 18, 2002, the New York Times reported how in the 1980s the Reagan administration secretly provided "critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war". Walter Lang, a former senior US defence intelligence officer added: "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern."

The Times' story was quickly buried and forgotten.

Soon after Halabja, the US approved the export of virus cultures and a $1 billion contract to design and build a petrochemical plant that the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas. Profits were the bottom line. Indeed "so powerful was the grip of the pro-Baghdad lobby on the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan", Dilip Hiro notes in the Observer, "that it got the White House to foil the Senate's attempt to penalise Iraq for its violation of the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons to which it was a signatory". (Hiro, ?When US turned a blind eye to poison gas', The Observer, September 1, 2002)

The US continued to support Iraq after the Iran-Iraq war because of "our duty to support US exports" the State Department declared in early 1990. (Quoted Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Routledge, 2003, p.111)

Recent reports by the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban affairs, reveal that the US sold anthrax, nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulinum to Iraq up until March 1992, even after the 1991 Gulf War, and four years after Halabja.

This is the same "pragmatic" Western approach being pursued now in support of mass murderers in Russia, Turkey, Colombia, Algeria and elsewhere ? leaders who could become the next "new Hitler" at the drop of a hat were they ever to repeat Saddam's mistake by crossing the West.

Warning shots were fired earlier this year when the Turkish government refused to allow a US land attack on Iraq from its borders. Having consistently ignored atrocities against Turkish Kurds with US weapons, the US media suddenly began writing of "Turkey's ghastly record of torturing, killing, and ?disappearing' Turkish Kurds and destroying more than 3,000 of their villages." (Editorial, Boston Globe, March 6, 2003)
...
While media commentators had next to nothing to say about the West's complicity in Saddam's atrocities - just as they have nothing to say about support for Turkey, Russia and Colombia's atrocities now - dissidents vigorously opposed Western support for the tyrant. In 1992, Jeff Cohen of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described how the media, shrieking with horrified outrage at Saddam's crimes now, responded at the time he was actually committing those crimes with our support:

"During that whole period when the United States was helping build up the military and economic might of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the issue of his human rights abuses was off the media agenda."... (Jeff Cohen in conversation with David Barsamian - Stenographers To Power, Common Courage Press, 1992, p.142)
...
Even this level of media subservience was insufficient for US leaders in the 1980s and 1990s. When a delegation led by Majority Leader and future presidential candidate Bob Dole visited Saddam in April 1990, they conveyed President Bush's greetings and assured Saddam that his problems did not lie with the US government but with "the haughty and pampered [US] press". Senator Alan Simpson advised Saddam to "invite them to come here and see for themselves". Dole assured Saddam that a commentator who had been critical of Iraq on Voice of America had been removed. (Quoted Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, op., cit, p.112)
...
In fact Saddam was an ally of the West long before Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 and long before (and after) the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Author Roger Morris observes:

"As its instrument the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein...

"According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite - killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated." (Morris, ?A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making,' The New York Times, March 14, 2003)
...
The consistent nature of Western foreign policy suggests that focusing on individual leaders and parties ? finding cause for optimism in Tony Blair's endearing smile or George Bush's Christian faith ? is a gross form of self-deception at best. Policy flows from a stable framework of domestic power pursuing similar goals in similar ways over many decades.

This institutional framework is rooted, not just in greed, but in the limitless greed of corporate fundamentalism ? there are no limits, no acceptable costs that have to be tolerated where they can be avoided. People pay the price.

The article is here until it gets put up on the Media Lens website. It also includes information on other "tyrants" - other faces of the tyrant - that the U.S. has installed and supported, and some suggested actions and email addresses if you want to do something.

When next you hear someone gas-p about Saddam gassing his own people, please ask that person when it happened. Ninety-nine percent of them won't know. Then ask why they didn't know about it when it did happen.

Keeping track here. And here. (Under construction, as they say in WebAuthorville.)

Also see: A Short History of Regime Change, Gassing People and WMDs

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.