Saddam needs to be taken down now! The Iraqi people deserve a democratic government not a dictatorial regime that uses chemical weapons on it's citizens.

The American people deserve to be freed from the tyranny of a government they did not elect, and which has made war on the constitution of the United States and civil liberties, and which has mass produced and stockpiled more weapons of mass destruction than any other country in the world, that has 'war gamed' genocide in the Middle East, that created Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Regime circa 1960, and armed him to the teeth, including with chemical and bio weapons in the 1980s .....

Gestapo Guy, if you do want to de-program yourself from American propaganda on Iraq, please turn to:

 http://www.indymedia.org/archive/features/current#4648

I sent an email to the local MP who is on the opposing list - surprise cos I thought he was just a little Blair sucker - urging him to continue the opposition. And why not? It's the least we can do

Saddam's rise to power in the 60's was backed by the CIA - this was to wipe out the Iraqi communist party for Cold war purposes.

In the 1980's the US and its allies armed and financed Saddam's war effort against Iran. Saddam was then seen as a bulkwark against militant Shia Islam.

In 1988, when the Kurdish people of Halabja were massacred with poision gas, the left protested against this atrocity.

Thatcher and Reagan remained very quiet...Saddam was their ally.

Then after the 1991 Gulf war, when the peoples of Iraq rose up against Saddam, a strange thing happened: The CIA had no alternative tyrant to replace Saddam.

Instead they were faced with a Kurdish popular revolt in the North of Iraq, and a Shia one in the south.

These revolts, if victorious, would have destabilised Turkey, to the North, and the Gulf states to the South.

Turkey is a Nato member waging a war of oppression against its own kurdish minority. The Gulf states like Saudi Arabia are corrupt absolute monarchies, held together with the support of US oil interests and US military power.

So George Bush 1st feared such popular revolt more than Saddam.

This was following a precedent set by Iraq's British founders. Sir Percy Cox drew the borders of Iraq after ww1 with a ruler. The British military then suppressed the Kurds and Shia's, focing them into the new state of Iraq under a puppet monarchy. The young Winston Churchill even advocated dropping poision gas onto the Kurdish tribal revolt for this reason!

All the dicatorships in the middle east are held in place to allow the oil to be exploited cheaply. Democracy would mean more of the oil profits spent on the ordinary people!

But instead the west has killed a millions of Iraqi through war and sanctions, only strengthening Saddam's regime.

America would only repalce Saddam with another brutal dictator. To really get rid of the Saddam's of this world we must also get rid of George Bush and his kind and the global system that holds them in power!
Vive Democracy!

Remember the first person to use toxic gas on a civilian population was Churchill when he was put in charge of putting down a Kurdish revolt in Iraq! Churchill was also responsible for the Gallipoli campaign, a doomed military venture slaughtered large numbers of young men who came to fight in a stupid war from the far-flung corners of the empire.

Now we know why Bush wants to be Churchill.