Suffocating memories
Every time I see
Rumsefeld shaking Saddam's
hand, memories rush back
October 29, 2004
iranian.com
Slater Bakhtavar (I have never seen
a name more "Persian" than
Slater) writes a long and succinct argument [President
Bush? Yes!] commending
the Republican Party and its leader George Bush (GW). The
author is obviously proud, showing his brash looks and posing with
GW's nephew.
Bakhtavar's
arguments regarding why Iranians should vote for GW seem as
if he has not been living on this planet. But then again he may
have been too
young
to remember. Here, I like to refresh his memory.
In the mid 1980's when Saddam Hossein realized that Iran is not that
easy to invade and later felt threatened by an Iranian invasion, he resorted
to the ultimate weapon: chemical warfare. The weapons were Vx, mustard
and serine. Some
were odorless, and obviously invisible, yet their effect was a thousand
times more deadly than the strongest conventional weapons. As
one of his commanders later said, "he smiled when we told him the
Iranians are falling like flies."
It is now evident that the chemical weapons that Saddam used
were provided to him not only by the French and Germans but also
Americans. In fact every time I see Donald
Rumsefeld, as part of a trailer for CNN, shaking Saddam's
hand, the memories rush back.
The world now knows that
the US not only was providing Saddam with chemical weapons, he
was providing him with intelligence on the whereabouts of
Iranian troops so they could have been used more efficiently.
The result was a horror never
before seen on the battlefield; certainly not since the second
world war. The memories
of 17-year-olds suffocating, or their skins literally peeling
off, will never escape many of us.
 Many have asked
me if I could describe the horror. The other day, after watching
the movie "Predator", I suddenly felt sick to my stomach
only to realize that the scenes were familiar to me. In
the movie the soldiers are attacked and killed by an invisible
predator from outer space. Precisely what happens during a chemical
attack.
Saddam used toxic gases on Iranians all the way to the end of
the war. Some of the agents used are still not fully
known. This all happened on the watch of GW senior and Donald Rumsfeld. I
wonder where America's concern for WMDs was during those
times? Where were the US and the world when Iranians
showed the evidence of Saddam's atrocities on television
and then in the UN?
Back then, Bakhtavar was probably a young man growing up in the US far away
from the horror of war in the battlefields. I wonder whether he
has the balls to ask one of his Republican friends or Bush junior, for that
matter, about the US involvement in providing Saddam with WMDs.
I wonder whether
he knows that he shook hands withe nephew of a president who knew where,
when and how many Iranians were being killed by WMDs. Maybe one day he can
find the guts to walk to them and ask them exactly what changed their
minds from turning a blind eye during the time their WMDs were being used
to gas our kids to the proactive role they have taken today
in abandoning WMDs.
 Finally, other than a few cheap words in the forms
of "we
support the Iranian people for a more democratic Iran" exactly
what has GW done for Iranians or democracy in Iran
for that matter?
No thanks Mr. Bakhtavar, Iranians will not vote
for war criminal who invaded another nation based on baseless allegations
and in the process killed thousands of innocent Iraqis with 7,000
pound bombs in the so called "shock and awe" phase of
the war. Another four years for GW will be one of the
tragedies of the 21st Centry. Instead he should be shipped
to the Hague and wait four years there until his atrocities
are looked into.
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