Bill McKee wrote:
> Seems as if a few European nations also believed that message. A bunch of
> Iranians, and Kurds seemed to think so also, after being gassed.
Funny that you should mention the Iranians being gassed. The US administration
at the time went through the motions of expressing concerns over that, even
though they had been supplying the Iraqis with satellite information about
Iranian troop deployment in order to make the attacks more effective. They
didn't seem to mind Iraq having certain WMDs when they were being used against
a common enemy. However, those weapons had been used up or destroyed by weapons
inspectors. There was a report that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Niger,
but that claim turned out to be a fraud based on forged papers, and we still
don't know at what point the White House knew is was a hoax.
The fact that several European countries went along with it does not mean that
they had their own proof. They made the mistake of accepting the information
the US claimed to be true. They bowed to US pressure to participate. They
didn't have to do anything in Iraq other than show up and look like they were
supporting the effort. In the first Gulf War the US paid a fortune in direct
aid, debt relief and loans to get a number of countries to participate in the
coalition, and their troops only had to show up. They were never expected to
actually do anything.
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