From Harel.Barzilai@mac.dartmouth.edu Fri Feb  8 20:59:12 1991
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Date: 08 Feb 91 21:00:04
From: Harel.Barzilai@mac.dartmouth.edu
To: harelb@cabot.dartmouth.edu
Subject: pol thts
Status: RO

Re: STATEMENT on Gulf by War Fesisters League
Tell me, if there is no propaganda system in the U.S., why is it that Saddam
is now Hitler, and only so recently a de-facto "friendly nation"?  Why is
Saddam's treatment of Kurds now an issue, when it wasn't earlier? I wish it
was merely "not an issue;" in fact, the US continued to supply Saddam with
agricultural credits, actually increased them, after his extermination of
Kurdish villagers using chemical weapons in
1988.  Why is it that now we hear all about Saddam's dangerous army and
dangerous weapons, when so recently the public was kept essentially ignorant
of these?

One minute China is a totalitarian evil country; the next, the secret meetings
behind the American public's back with the authors of the massacre are "trying
to establish better relations?"

One minute Iran is a terrorist nation, Reagan telling the world not to deal
with it; the next, we find out Reagan has been selling arms to Iran, which
explanation is kinder I don't know; to arm terrorists who blow up hospitals
and murder teachers and rape and torture peasants, or to pay up for Iran's
delaying the release of the hostages in '80 to help Reagan win the election.

One minute we are not supposed to think about human rights in Panama, while a
drug-running brutal dictator is on the CIA payroll, helping to illegally train
a terrorist army against Nicaragua which deals in drug-running itself; the
next, Noriega must be removed, to free Panama (to a group of U.S. approved
right-wing businessmen with links to drug-running as well) and to help in the
"war on drugs" (boy it sure did).

Human rights having *vastly* improved under the Sandinistas, after the
U.S.-administration supported Somoza dictatorship, Our Leader then tells us
how concerned he is with human rights in Nicaragua, which is why we must sent
a group or former Somoza National Guardsmen to terrorize the population; all
the while, in "friendly" El Salvador and Guatemala the army practices mass
extermination against "peasants, trade unionists, teachers, human rights
workers, church members..."  (Amnesty International).

A sizable portion of this letter runs contrary to the Washington Line;
references available upon request.

Harel

Incidentally, by the way, aside from these considerations, Bush is, in
"liberating" the monarchy of Kuwait and other noble human-rights-inspired
actions, committing mass-murder against tens of thousands, probably hundreds
of thousands of  Iraqi and other Non-American (whose lives are worth less,
right?) civilians and draftees, the same ones he loves so much because they
suffered so under Saddam, who, despite his best efforts, will only have
managed to murder several percent of Bush's mass-murder grad total.

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