InkDog (in comments below) says:
Mr. Lileks is certainly entitled to waste his time with irrational hatred of Mr. Barris, but I do find the remark about Saddams' killing of children juxtaposed with a dig at Hollywood actors as rather bizarre. Perhaps he should send a missive with his concerns to the Republican National Party. In the years before the Iraq attack on Kuwait Mr.’s Reagan, Bush Sr, and Rumsfield were so enamored of this "child killer" they shared intelligence info with him, give him supplies of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitated Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological weapons and the components to make them. Saddam was already guilty of gross human rights violations....but hey he sold us cheap oil and the unthinking hawks playing fetch’ it for big oil turned a blind eye. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague, Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst warned the Repukes about Saddam and were promptly ignored. Saddam could murder, rape, and gas the Iranians, the Kurds and his own people as long as repuke-ican foreign policy marched blindly forward. Reagan and Bush were both aware at the time that Saddams’ actions violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol against the use of chemical weapons, but as usual with republicans principles took a back seat to expediency. Dum Dum Rumsfeld a private citizen at the time made several diplomatic overtures to Iran, which Iran welcomed and said so publicly. Soon after these meetings the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982.
In 1991 after the Gulf war, weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq and found chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes. Many of which were huge contributors to the Republican party. Hey the Dems got some money too, have to cover your bets. Mr. Lileks and his two-faced conservative brothers with such great senses of humor can certainly appreciate the irony when the Bush Jr. administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons "against his own people" -- and particularly the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah -- to bolster their argument that his regime presents a "grave and gathering danger" to the United States; or that Vice president Cheney beginning in 1998, his company, Halliburton Oil, sold more technology to Iraq than any other corporation. Then Dick Cheney lied about it in a July 23 2000 interview with ABC and only admitted the truth after the facts leaked from his own company. In 1991, after the Persian Gulf War, Cheney told a group of oil industry executives he was emphatically against trying to topple Saddam, Dick didn't want to bomb his then business partner.
