Why is it that to this day, he will not (nor you or millions of others) acknowledge what he did? Why does he only point at the two Presidents named Bush? Stop listening to the crap your reporters spew at you and learn the facts. Learn all of the things which you have not been told. Learn who did what and when. Most of all LEARN THE TRUTH!
Maybe he denies your conception becomes your conception is false.
And with that line, you have successfully negated anything else which you might wish to say on this matter. By deciding that my conception of something is false, you have decided that you are somehow wiser than the rest of the world. Are you an Iraqi? If you are, then state things as one. If not, then you have no real understanding of what is happening in Iraq or what has happened for several years.
If I had decided that your conception of something was false, that would in no way imply that I was deciding that I was somehow wiser than the rest of the world. That is a complete
non sequitur, Northland ... and if you don't know that, you should.
Now, if you actually read my statement (something you ought to do if you're going to respond to it), you will see that I wrote this:
Maybe he denies your conception becomes your conception is false.
That is not an assertion that you are wrong, though my strong suspicion is that you are.
I don't have doubt that Jimmy Carter would have more than easily tolerated an Iraqi invasion of Iran back in 1980.
Most of the Western world did, after all.
Why should he not? The Iranians were holding 52 Americans hostage; the Iranian government was strongly opposed to Western values; the human rights situation in Iran was dreadful, with mass hangings of people who hadn't had trial, brutal subjugation of women, etc.; and the promise of export of the values animating the Iranian revolution to other Muslim countries brought little comfort to any Arab government.
Not only many Western countries, but virtually all the Arab countries were strongly opposed to Khomeini's project.
Between Iraq and Iran themselves, there had been many border disputes and the oomph the Shia triumph in Iran was giving to the restive and oppressed Shia population in Iraq could only be disquieting to the national government.
Saddam Hussein himself hated the Iranians, some say under the influence of an uncle who had once published a pamphlet entitled
Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies.
Saddam is legendary for his dreams of Iraqi empire, stating on several occasions that he didn't care what people thought of him in his own time, but rather of what they thought of him in five centuries. He thought he might be seen as a latter-day Saladin.
He also had designs on Iranian oil wells and Iranian territory, especially the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
The Iraqi military equipment, apart from some American-supplied helicopters, had come mostly from the Warsaw Pact countries.
During the war itself, the USSR, France, Germany, China, and other countries supplied most of the equipment. The chemicals for chemical warfare came from many countries, though a long supply route, including, FWIW, Canada.
The foreign financing for the war came mostly from other Arab countries,
with the United States well down the list:
Kuwait - $15 Bn; Saudi Arabia - $9 Bn; Qatar - $ 4 Bn; UAE - $3.8Bn
Russia - $3.5 Bn; France - $3 Bn; Germany - $2.4 Bn; US - $2.2 Bn; UK - $1 Bn.
You make it sound as though Carter was a prime mover behind the war. I see no reason to believe that, though if you have proof to bring forward, I will gladly look at it.
I don't think anyone would doubt that he supported the war, however, and that that support had its importance.
It's important to stress that much of what support the Americans did give came during the Reagan and Geo. H.W. Bush presidencies, long after Carter had left the scene. (He left the White House only a few months after the beginning of hostilities, as you know.)
When you suggest that your experience as an Iraqi gives you more access to the truth on these questions, I find it, frankly, naive.
As a Canadian, I am often hearing things about Canada that are utter surprises to me ... and I never suppose that my not knowing them makes them false. Often, they come from Canadian experts, and I am no expert. And if they come from foreigners, I don't on that account discredit them, because being a resident of a country does not confer any kind of expertise.
In a later post, you say we can have no idea of how life was under Saddam.
I don't doubt that at all. On that question, you, as an Iraqi, do indeed have an expertise that dreamer and I should acknowledge. (Not to say you have the final word, because not all Iraqi accounts will be similar.)
But how that expertise makes you knowing on the questions over which you and I have engaged, is something that remains unclear to me.
People often don't know what's going on between their national government and other states. This is true everywhere, but surely especially so in as closed a state, with as closed a media, as was Iraq at the time of the war we are discussing.
Final point: You suggest that Western media knows nothing about the Iran-Iraq War. Actually, I think many angles have been covered over the years, some of them with withering criticism of the American role.