The net is closing on the savage and inhuman killer of Ken Bigley, we can exclusively reveal. Elite SAS forces have determined that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hiding place is "somewhere in an area roughly the size of Iraq or thereabouts". The covert troops are currently wandering the desert certain of a positive outcome to the manhunt "as soon as we can get our radios working", as one scruffy and heavily bearded commando put it.

Meanwhile, bookies William Hill have cut the odds of Osama bin Laden being found before the forthcoming general election from 10,000-1 to 9,473-1. "It's not based on any intelligence we have received," admitted a spokesman. "We're just trying to inject a bit of interest into the contest."

When "the net" finally works out where Zarqawi is (which might happen, once "the net" can work out whether he actually exists), here's an idea for what to do with him.

Let's lock him, Bush and Blair into a giant steel-caged fighting ring, arm each of them with a crowbar, and tell them whoever kills the other two wins his freedom, plus a lifetime directorship in the Carlyle Group.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,583869,00.html

What happens if he's caught. The suicide bombings and attacks end. Iraq establishes free and democratic government, US and UK troops are scaled down as Iraq forces take control. What then - will the war still have been wrong or should we have left Saddam in charge ?

"Capture Saddam, and the resistance will collapse", we were all told not long ago.
Well, he's been captured, and the bombings have gone right on.

So now you think if Al-Zarqawi is captured, "The suicide bombings and attacks end. Iraq establishes free and democratic government, US and UK troops are scaled down as Iraq forces take control."

You forgot to mention "and a cure for cancer will be found at last". Do you honestly think that the suicide bombings will end when Al-Zarqawi is captured? When he is, and the bombings continue, you'll find a new Evil Mastermind to pin the blame on.

US and UK troops won't be "scaled down" either: they're building permanent bases. High permanent troop levels are planned for the foreseeable future. They won't be patrolling the cities anymore: "Iraq forces" will start being pushed in front of the bombers, and the US will go back to what they really like, bombing cities from many miles away.

And what has any of this got to do with Iraq getting a "free and democratic" govt? Iraq will never be out from under the thumb of the US, unless either the oil runs out, or ayatollahs take power and it gets about as "free and democratic" as Iran.

Should we have left Saddam in charge? I think you mean "should we have put Saddam in charge, armed him, warmly encouraged him to attack his neighbours, then deliberately allowed him to keep his attack helicopters after the first war there, so he could fill mass graves with Shia and Kurds"?

No, we shouldn't have.

Russia did.

No, not just Russia. A German paper got hold of the part of the UN weapons report that the US had edited out. Guess why:
 http://www.ccmep.org/2002_articles/Iraq/121802_top_secret.htm

US supplied Iraq with bioweapons:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,866942,00.html
 http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html

US Congressional Record excerpt of hearings on exports of bioweapons, plus helicopters to deliver them, etc.:
 http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html

US and Germany sold weapons to Iraq:
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1218-06.htm

British sold weapons to Iraq:
 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0223-07.htm

More links. See especially the section titled "US & UK hypocrisy":
 http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book60l.htm

Why oh why does anyone who posts on her under the name "sceptic" always turn out to be a credulous git who swallows the "official version" whole and never, ever, demonstrates a shred of true "scepticism" about the world's rulers and their bullshit justifications for war & horror?

Eh?

For the fuckin record, Britain NOT ONLY armed Saddam but lent him (our) money to pay for the weapons. Which we never got back. Reason for an invasion and lots of lovely reparations, perhaps?

Here's some information - oh, there's tons more on t'internet....

Who armed Saddam?

1. The British Foreign Office's “Report on Strategic Export Controls” shows that:

3. In the 1970s, Saddam approached the USSR, until then his conventional weapons supplier, to buy a plant to manufacture chemical weapons, but his request was refused. Saddam then began courting the West, and received a much more favourable response.

13. Whenever the declared policies of the Western countries stood in the way of an arms deal, Western governments used two methods to get around their own rules and thereby manage public opinion.

a. The first method was the well-established use of the 'front'. Thus, Western governments supplied Saddam through the pro-West countries of Jordan and Egypt, which acted as a front for Iraq. This was done to overcome Congressional, parliamentary and press hurdles, even when it was obvious to military experts that Jordan and Egypt had no use for the weapons in question. Saddam also set up his own weapons buying offices in the West, with the knowledge of the host governments. For example, Matrix Churchill was a weapons purchasing company set up in Britain.

b. The second method was to extend Saddam massive credits which he could then use for military purposes. Thus, the Banco di Lavoro in the United States gave Saddam US$4 billion worth of credits, ostensibly to buy food, but which was diverted to buy weapons with the knowledge of everyone involved. Britain's Export Credit Guarantee department kept increasing his credit and much of the money went to the direct purchase of arms.

Sources:

Saod K. Aburish, Saddam Hussein, The Politics of Revenge, New York, 2000.

Mark Phythian, Arming Iraq, Boston, 1997.

Geoff Simons, Iraq from Sumer to Saddam, London, 1996.

Kenneth R. Timmermann, The Death Lobby, How the West Armed Iraq, London, 1994.

Your illustrious and wonderful motherland the fucking "West" DID sell Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction!! And your fucking bitch alter boy "Donald Rumsfield" did more than his fair share of selling!!! And as for Britian? Explain how the Iraqi Army were using British made Challenger tanks?!!!


"How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them"

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs which oversees American exports policy reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.

Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's reports on US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq, undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis the micro-organism that causes anthrax were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.

The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: The United States provided the government of Iraq with dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.

This assistance, according to the report, included chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.

Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.

Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.

It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the evidence of proof that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.

According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during the ravages of the Gulf War.

Ritter has described himself as a "card-carrying Republican" who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a "liar" over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.

Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. "We have seen none of this", he insists. "If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof."

He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.

The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme.

Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were "comprehensively trashed" on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.

"We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons," von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. "They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all."
 http://www.sundayherald.com/27572

U.S. And Iraq Go Way Back
 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml

Revealed: 17 British firms armed Saddam with his weapons
 http://www.sundayherald.com/print31710

try facts:

 http://www.msnbc.com/modules/new_battlefield/iraq.asp?cp1=1

Challenger tanks? 30

For those who can't be bothered with links:

Primary military equipment
Ground forces: About 2,500 tanks, primarily Soviet T-54s, T-62s, T-72s; about 1,500 guns of various kinds, plus about 120 helicopters.
Sea power: Two Italian-built missile frigates with Soviet anti-ship missiles; several small missile patrol boats.
Air power: About 180 Soviet-built MiG-23s, MiG-25s and MiG-29s; plus some French Mirage F-1s; about 130 are jets. "No-fly" zones imposed by U.S. and Britain have kept these aircraft grounded for years, with resulting damage to pilot training. Iraq also has an extensive network of Soviet designed surface-to-air missiles, many operable and effective against conventional jet aircraft. These are a variety of models, from 1960s vintage SAM-2s to modern SAM-16 batteries. Anglo-U.S. bombings have destroyed some but not all.


Soviet, soviet, soviet ... as I said, Iraq was armed by Russia

Russia, the US, Britain, France, Italy and others armed Saddam. Yet you seem to only want to talk about the Soviets, for some odd reason.

You choose to ignore that the US and UK encouraged and helped him to attack Iran in one of the worst wars the region has ever seen.
You also have little to say about how the US and UK deliberately allowed him to keep his attack helicopters under the "No-Fly Zone", so he could go on brutally murdering the Shias when they tried to rise up against him.

Even after the first Iraq invasion, leaving him able to go on mass murdering was still seen by the US and UK govts as preferable to Shia rule there. We deliberately prevented them rising up against him.

So this "news article", trying to spin the occupation as being fought by good against bad, is just more specious bullshit from the now rather desperate and shrinking pro-war camp. It's trying to feed the lie that a minority of islamist goons like Zarqawi is running the resistance, and the lie that it'll all be over soon.

Same lies we get every time the US invades a country for Freedom and Democracy.
You'd think they'd try something new, for a change.

Facts not rhetoric:

"By 1987, nearing the end of the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq had become the single largest arms market in the world. It was buying arms from the Soviet Union, France, China, West Germany, Italy, Brazil, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Egypt, among others. According to an estimate by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Iraq imported about $24 billion worth of military equipment between 1981 and 1985."

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/iraq/iraq_armedforces.html]

I don't know whether the order is the countries is significnt, but you don't find the US or UK on that list.

"You choose to ignore that the US and UK encouraged and helped him to attack Iran in one of the worst wars the region has ever seen."

That was nothing to do with my original post. However, if you do want to go along that tangent; the US and UK encouraged and helped other countries fight wars: how about the billions of dollars/pounds aid given to Stalin to fight the worst war Europe has seen?

If you do study history, then one of the most important points is that of context. Why was Iraq supported in its war against Iran? Because of the Islamic Revolution and the resultant Embassy seige. Why the Islamic Revolution? Because of the rise of religion in the area and detestation of the Shah. WHy was the Shah hated? Partly because of US support. Why did the US support the Shah? Because of Itan's natural resources and because it was seen as a bulwark against Soviet Russia - i.e., the Cold War context. And why the Cold War? [.... zzzzz ... enough for now]

"Same lies we get every time the US invades a country for Freedom and Democracy."

I feel really really sorry for all those countries invaded by the US and now groaning under the imperialist yoke. Poor Germany, poor Japan. Those wretched people in South Korea, unlike their brethren in the glorious North. Ah, the US failed in Vietnam! True. And the people were so joyful that they took to the high seas in the millions to spread the good news of it all ... remember the boat people?

Can you point me to a country that is now worse off as a result of US intervention? [We'll leave Iraq aside for one moment - you can hardly say the situation there has resolved itself yet.]

Hilarious! You started out with:
"But the west never did arm Saddam... Russia did. "
And:
"Soviet, soviet, soviet ... as I said, Iraq was armed by Russia."

But when I point out that other countries had armed them too, including the US and UK, you link to another article, listing other countries (including western ones) which also armed Iraq. So much for "Soviet, soviet, soviet" then.

The first article from MSNBC (owned by defense giant GE) lists only Soviet equipment. The second article you linked contains a larger list of countries, but happens not to include the US and UK. So that's it? That's your argument? It's not on a list you found, so it couldn't have happened? Still refusing to read any of the links I posted? Not willing to read a veteran US Senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, testifying in the US Congressional Record with detailed evidence of US arms sales to Iraq including bioweapons? Afraid you might change your mind?

Then you lamely try to assert that detailed evidence of the US arming Iraq has "nothing to with" your original post about which country armed Iraq (!), so you can take that as an excuse to veer the argument off into a wide-ranging debate on the role of the US post-WW2.

Nice try. This article is about Iraq. Answer the evidence I've cited (and I've got loads more), in reply to your original bizarre assertion that "the Russians armed Iraq". Or you could always choose to withdraw the assertion.

The Iraqi army had T55, T72 and some T88 tanks. It had no Challenger or Abrahms
The Iraqi Air Force had MiG and Sukhoi aircraft, it had no Tornados, F16 or Jaguar Aircraft
The Iraqi Army had Kalishnikov rifles, it had no M16 or Enfield rifles
The Iraqi Air Force had bombs made in St Petersburg it had no bombs made in Bristol or Texas

Army:
600,000 men

Force Structure: 4 Corps HQ, 6 armored divisions, 5 mechanized/motor infantry divisions, 5 infantry divisions, 4 mouintain divisions, 2 Republican Guard armored brigades, 3 Speical Forces brigades, 9 Reserve brigades, 15 Peoples Army/Volunteer infantry brigades.

Armor: 4,500 Soviet built T-54/55/62/72 tanks, 260 Czechoslovakian T-69 tanks, 60 romainian M-77 tanks, 10 PT-76 light tanks, about 3,200 Armored Fighting Vehicles whihc include BRDM, GUF-70, ERC-90, MOWAG Roland, 200 EE-9 Cascavel, EE-3 Jararaca armd cars, BMP MICV BTR-50/60/152, OT-62/64, 100 VCRTH with HOT anti-tank-guided weapon, Panhard M-3, EE-11 Urutu Armored Personnel carrier.

Artillery: Some 3,500 guns including 75mm pack, 1,000 85mm, 50 SU-100, 100mm SP, D-30 and ISU 122mm SP and M-46 130mm, 150 GHNB-45 155mm gun/how; M-56 pack, M-102mm 105mm, M-1938 SP 152mm M-114, M-109 SP 155mm how; FGT 108-R (SS-06) 108mm, BM-21 122mm, BM-14 140mm Multiple Rocket Launchers.

Anti-tank Weapons: SPG-9 73mm, B-10 82mm 107mm ;85mm, 100mm towed, 100 JPz SK-105 105mm SP guns; Saggar, SS-11, Milan, HOT ATGW.

Air Defense: 4,000 23mm, ZSU-23-4 SP; M-1939 and twin 37mm, 57mm including ZSU-57-2 SP 85mm 100mm and 130mm AA guns; SA-2/3/6/7/9 30 Roland SAM

Navy:
4,500 men

Training: 1 training frigate,

FAC: 10 Soviet Osa Fast Attack Craft (Missile) (FAC(G), each with 4 Styx missiles,

Patrol: 5 Soviet Large patrol craft, 10 Soviet coastal patrol craft,

FAC (T): 12 Soviet P-6 FAC(T) torpedo ships,

Utility: 5 minesweepers, 4 Soviet Polnocny LCTs, 1 support ship.

Air Force:
38,000 including 10,000 Air Defense personnel

580 combat aircraft, some 150 armed helicopters.

Bombers: 2 Bomber squadrons with 7 Tu-22, 1 with Tu-16;

Fighters: 11 Fighter-Ground-Attack squadrons;4 with some 100 MIG-23BM; 5 with some 95 Su-7 and 80 Su-20; 1 with Hunter FB-59/FR-10; 5 Super Etendard;

Interceptors: 5 interceptor squadrons 25 MIG-25, some 40 Mig-19, some 150 Mi-21, 45 Mirage F-1EQ, 4 F-1BQ, 1 recce squandron with 5 MIG- 25; 2 transport squadrons,

Helicopters: 11 helicopter squadrons with 35 Mi-4, 15 Mi-6, 150 Mi-8, 40 Mi-24, 40 Alouette III (some with AS-12 ASM), 11 Super Frelon (some with Exocet Am-39 ASM), 50 Gazelle (some with HOT), 13 Puma, 30 BO-105 (some with SS11), 7 Wessex Mk 52;

AAM: Magic I, R-530, R-440, AA-1/2/6/7/8

ASM: 360 HOT, As-11/12, Swatter ATGW, Exocet AM-39, AS-4 Kitchen, AS-5 Kelt

source:  http://www.milnet.com/pentagon/centcom/iraq/index.html



Find me any US weapons on the list above.

Find me any UK weapons [found some! A squadron of Hawker Hunters. First flew in about 1950?].

Russian and Soviet [that I can identify]: 4,500 Soviet built T-54/55/62/72 tanks;
FAC: 10 Soviet Osa Fast Attack Craft (Missile) (FAC(G), each with 4 Styx missiles,
Patrol: 5 Soviet Large patrol craft, 10 Soviet coastal patrol craft,
FAC (T): 12 Soviet P-6 FAC(T) torpedo ships,
Utility: 5 minesweepers, 4 Soviet Polnocny LCTs
2 Bomber squadrons with 7 Tu-22, 1 with Tu-16;
Fighters: 11 Fighter-Ground-Attack squadrons;4 with some 100 MIG-23BM; 5 with some 95 Su-7 and 80 Su-20
Interceptors: 5 interceptor squadrons 25 MIG-25, some 40 Mig-19, some 150 Mi-21
Helicopters: 11 helicopter squadrons with 35 Mi-4, 15 Mi-6, 150 Mi-8, 40 Mi-24
ASM: 360 HOT, As-11/12, Swatter ATGW, AS-4 Kitchen, AS-5 Kelt

ALso various other Soviet Bloc weaponry from the likes of Czechoslovakia.

Are those enough Russian weapons for you?

Hilarious? NOW FIND ME AMERICAN WEAPONS ON THE LIST ABOVE.

Name me one US weapon system used by the Iraqi forces in either of the Gulf Wars. Jusat one. Any one will do.

Now he's got another list, and this time it's from... from Milnet.com!!!!

And LOOK! They're not listing ANY covert weapons sales from the US to Iraq at all!

And it's a real LONG list, too!

So there CAN'T have been any!

BWAAAAAAAA ha ha ha ha ha! Oh stop. Stop!

Ah Sceptic, money just can't buy comedy that good. You've really made my day this time pal, thanks.
By the way, have you got round to reading my links above yet, answering your question in detail? Not yet? Ah well. Maybe another time then, eh.

"Name me one US weapon system used by the Iraqi forces in either of the Gulf Wars. Jusat one. Any one will do."

I have to say he's got a point, I mean can you ?

We hear a lot on IM about how the West armed Saddam but I don't see a lot of Western equipment. I mean whrre is it ?

5000 Russian tanks - nah, not enough. [If they weren't Russian, where did they come from?]

Some hundreds of Migs - nah, those don't count.

Could you answer the question posed by myself and by Pedant: Name one US weapons system used by Iraq in the Gulf Wars. Just one. Please. Pretty Please?

Helicopters, howitzers and bombs:
 http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html

Mustn't forget the landmines:
 http://www.learningchannel.org/article/view/88451/1/

I've already mentioned the chem and bio weapons, but you're free to pick one of those as your favourite if you'd prefer.

How about military advisors, military satellite reports, test equipment and manufacturing equipment for Saddam's rocket and missile programmes: do those count as weapons? No?
Well, let's call those "weapons assistance" then.

How about cash, loans, massive oil purchases and support in the UN Security Council? No, they may have been essential to Saddam's war effort, but I guess it's they're not exactly weapons, and you did specifically ask about weapons.