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MY LAI VET SAYS: HERE IT
COMES AGAIN IN IRAQ
Tony Swindell
recalls "Butcher's Brigade" in '69; says "gooks"
have now become "ragheads", every adult male is an
"insurgent" ... atrocities against Iraqi civilians
are soon going to explode in America's face; US Government's courtroom jihads against terror
stumble. Alexander Cockburn on Lodi case where Feds paid $250,000
to man who "saw" world's three top terrorists at mosque.
As neocons
and Israel lobby howl for US to bomb Teheran, an Iranian outlines
simple path to peace. CounterPunch
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Now!
The crimes of Saddam Hussein and his
henchmen during the 1980's have been in the news lately as their
on-again off-again trial has resumed in Baghdad. Even though
a court established under US military occupation has questionable
legal standing and legitimacy, there isn't much doubt that Saddam
and others of the accused are guilty of serious atrocities against
their own people as well as international war crimes in the attacks
against Iraq's neighbors. The use of chemical weapons against
Iraqi Kurds and Iranian soldiers was particularly heinous.
But what none of the stories in the main-stream media seem to
mention is that the Iraqi dictator could count on firm US government
support when he was committing these crimes. The Reagan Administration
went all-out to assist Iraq in its war with Iran after our man,
the Shah, was overthrown. US Government and business officials
-- many of them recycled in the Bush II administration -- shuttled
to Baghdad, offering aid, intelligence support, and trade in
"dual-use" civilian-military products, including chemical-biological
weapons know-how and pre-cursor ingredients. The US worked tirelessly
in the UN to shield Iraq from any condemnation or economic sanctions
for its atrocities. Nothing better symbolizes this obscene alliance
better than the famous "Handshake" of Donald Rumsfeld
with the Iraqi dictator. (The whole sordid history, with key
documents, is available in a comprehensive report:SHAKING HANDS WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN: The U.S. Tilts
toward Iraq, 1980-1984,
National Security Archive, February 25, 2003.)
Of course, US crimes in Iraq are not just old news. By any consistent
legal standards including the Nuremburg trials after the
Second World War and the UN Charter US officials from Pres.
Bush down are guilty of punishable war crimes offenses. Nazis
were hanged after 1945 for waging of aggressive war, indiscriminate
killing of civilians and authorizing torture and mistreatment
of prisoners, but it is unthinkable that any of our perpetrators
will ever be brought to justice. See: When
War Crimes Are Unspeakable by Norman Solomon, and Returning to the Scene of the Crime:
War Crimes in Iraq
by Noam Chomsky)
* *
*
I don't often write about my
personal experience, but a dark secret must be confessed. I
was an unwitting dupe of the US effort to prop up Saddam Hussein's
dictatorship!
SADDAM
and Me a true story. . .
When I was working as a machinist in the Marine and Steam Turbine
Division of General Electric in Lynn, one of the last civilian
projects we had in the early 1980's was called simply "IRAQ."
Our job was to manufacture equipment for an electric power plant
to be installed somewhere in Saddam Hussein's Mesopotamia. The
deal was financed, I learned later on, by a USAID program. I
didn't know much about Iraq in those days and the media wasn't
cultivating much hostility toward Iraq in the 1980's. It was
those crazy Iranian Ayatollahs we were supposed to worry about
along with the Nicaraguan Sandinista Communists pouring
over the Rio Grande to invade Texas. Anyway, I was happy to
work on a civilian project when most of the plant was rapidly
morphing into an exclusive supplier for Reagan's naval warship
building program. (When I started at GE in the late 1970's we
had a large contract to build high-speed gunboats for Iran
but after the overthrow of the Shah the ships were eventually
sold to Saudi Arabia. . . but that's another story.)
Periodic lay-offs were a fact of life for workers at GE in Lynn.
When the Turbine Division began to decline after 1985 I lost
my job along with many other union members. But I was luckier
than some. Because I had enough seniority, I was able to get
another machinist job in the company's Lynn jet engine department.
Most of the work there was military for attack helicopters
and assorted fighter planes. One of our mainstays was the production
of jet engines for Navy F-18 fighter-bombers. Many of these
carrier-based aircraft were very effective in bombing Iraqi industry
and infrastructure targets from US aircraft carriers during the
First Gulf War. So, a few years later, I gained the patriotic
satisfaction of knowing I had done my bit to help destroy the
electric plant we had recently built for the evil Saddam Hussein.
Of course, by the time of the Gulf War in 1991 I had been permanently
laid off from the shrinking Lynn plant. The IRAQ project was
one of our last civilian jobs because shortly afterward GE licensed
its turbine designs and manufacturing technology to companies
in Korea and Japan. Soon the Lynn Turbine Division was permanently
closed. Now Hitachi and Hyundai continue to make GE-designed
power plants for the robust Asian market, paying a handsome royalty
to the friendly corporation that "Brings Good Things to
Life." But the US turbine workers are history. (Light
bulbs aren't made here any more either. The company's lighting
production has moved to Mexico and plants in the former People's
Republic of Hungary, which were purchased at bargain-basement
prices.)
Today GE is universally admired as one of the best-managed corporations
in the world. Saddam Hussein may be facing war crimes charges
in Baghdad, but GE's fabled Chairman, Jack Welch, enjoys a kingly
retirement in New York City -- on a $9 million annual pension,
with company-provided mansions and limos, plus a lifetime skybox
at Yankee stadium. In Iraq, Welch's company made handsome profits
on both ends Con-struction and De-struction. GE, and other
corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton are once again cashing
in on Iraqi cost-plus "Re-Con-struction" projects,
including new power plants that never seem to actually deliver
electricity to Iraqi homes.
A Triple Play! Don't you just love Free Enterprise?
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