The war on Iraq: Five US presidents, five British prime ministers, thirty years of duplicity, and counting....

Twenty years ago this August, with a green light from America, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. He had walked into possibly the biggest trap in modern history, unleashing Iraq's two decade decimation, untold suffering, illegal bombings, return of diseases previously eradicated and what can also only be described as UN-sponsored infanticide. The reason for the Kuwait invasion, has been air brushed out of the fact books by Britain and America, and been presented as the irrational and dangerous act of a belligerent tyrant who was a threat to his neighbors. He had, they pointed out piously, attacked, then fought an eight year war with Iran, and exactly two years to the month, after the 20th August 1988 ceasefire, invaded Kuwait, on Aug. 2, 1990. It was, of course, not quite that simple. After the US engineered the fall of the democratic government of Mossadegh, in Iran, resultant from his nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) in 1953. After two years of economically ravaging sanctions, The US installed Shah Reza Pahvlavi (whose savage state police, SAVAK, were trained by General Norman Schwartzkopf, Snr., father of General "Storming" Norman Schwartzopf of the 1991 Gulf war, who famously declared at the time of the ceasefire: "... no one left to kill...") Under the Shah, oil arrangements satisfactory to the United States were, of course, restored. Five years later, across the border in Iraq, the British-installed monarchy was overthrown and the popular leader of the anti-British uprising, Abdel Karim Kassem, began nationalizing the country's Western assets. It took the CIA just five more years to bring about his overthrow. They picked the wrong collaborators, the nascent Ba'ath Party, with Saddam Hussein as Vice President, embarked on nationalizing the oil industry. President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger schemed with Iran to arm the Kurds and weaken the Iraqi government. Iraq was placed on list of supporters of terrorism.