From the Vaults: Iraq: September 30, 1980

In From the Vaults, Iraq on April 22, 2012 at 10:30 AM

At the outset of the Iran/Iraq War, Saddam Hussein addressed the Iraqi population. He justified his attack on Iran with the following words:

This glorious hour for the Iraqi Army is preparing it to liberate Palestine: victories against Iran are paving the road to Jerusalem.*

It should not be necessary to say that Saddam would have done well to consult a map before he made this claim.

*Shahram Chubin and Charles Tripp, Iran and Iraq at War, (Westview Press, 1988),p144.

About these ads

▶ 3 Responses

Check this out Michael:

http://bit.ly/10TezV

Reply

Darius 22 April 2012 at 9pm
Darius,

Thank you for reminding me of this. Because Wikipedia is not a reliable source. I copy the below from a source that is:

Ba’thi racism is sometimes breathtaking in its crudity. For example, in 1981 Dal al-Hurriyya, the government publishing house, widely circulated a pamphlet whose title in translation is Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews and Flies. The author is Khairallah Tulfah,former governor of Baghdad, and foster-father, uncle, and father-in-law of Saddam Husain. Persians, Tulfah says, are “animals God created in the shape of humans.” Jews are a “mixture of dirt and leftovers of diverse peoples,” and flies are a trifling creation “whom we do not understand God’s purpose in creating.” Quotations are from a reprint in Nahnu Nudeen, 64-72.

My source is as follows:

Kanan Makiya, Republic Of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, (Updated Edition, University of California Press, 1998), p.17n21.

Reply

Michael Ezra 22 April 2012 at 9pm
There are those on the very far left that persist in the claim that Saddam was the CIA’s man. They forget about Soviet advisers, T Series tanks, Mig and Mirage jets that are not made in the USA.

More interesting is the Israeli aid to Iran at the time of the war. It was mostly small arms captured from the PLO in exchange for allowing some Jews to emigrate. I think there was some deal in Ethiopia on a smaller scale or negotiation along those lines.

Reply

Beakerkin 8 May 2012 at 7am

Politics, Philosophy, Polemics

Under the Ocular Tree