[Vision2020] Donald Rumsfeld-speak

[Bob Hoffmann]

At 05:00 PM 1/17/2003 -0800, Don Kaag wrote:
>>You assume that things in Iraq would have been better had we toppled 
>>Hussein.  However, given our history of installing and/or supporting 
>>rulers who kill both their own subjects and sometimes those of their 
>>neighbors, I don't make the same assumption."
>
>...so, how do you explain the present-day democratic states of the Federal 
>Republic of Germany, Japan and South Korea?

No, I suspect he's talking about Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, 
Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, and a number of other countries where (more 
recently that the 1950's) the U.S. has toppled democracies and/or supplied 
militaries with arms used to exterminate segments of the population.

Oops, I made one major omission in the above list.  Iraq.  Much of its 
military was built by the U.S. and other Western powers.  Small example: 
helicopters used to spray poison gas were Made in the U.S.A., bought from 
the U.S.A.  When Iraq invaded Iran, the U.S. even supported a U.N. 
resolution preventing Iran from purchasing weapons to defend itself.  It 
all seemed pretty sensible then, and was supported by a U.S. population who 
thought the cost of one million Iranian lives was sufficient penalty for a 
nation that had allowed the kidnapping of 52 U.S. citizens.

For those who were cheering the Iraqi invasion of Iran (and I fear that 
would be the majority of those on the list who are old enough to remember 
that war), have you learned anything since?


Bob Hoffmann
820 S. Logan St.
Moscow, ID  83843

Tel: 208 883-0642