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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