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The U.S. government had been planning for
the Persian Gulf War since 1979, when President Carter set up the "Rapid
Deployment Force" and declared that any threat to Persian Gulf oil ...
"... will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
(Jimmy Carter, 1979) [57]
In the early 1980s Iran was seen as the main threat to U.S. "interests"
in the Gulf, so Washington and its allies supported the Iraqi invasion
of Iran and provided the Iraqi military with lots of high-tech weapons
to pound their neighbor. U.S. companies even sold Iraq materials to make
chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax. The Pentagon
supplied satellite photos of Iranian troop deployments and then looked
the other way when Iraq bombarded them with poison gas.
Don't do anything I wouldn't do! [58]
In 1987, the Reagan administration intervened directly in the Iran-Iraq
War (on Iraq's side), sending a naval armada to the Persian Gulf to
protect the oil tankers of a country that was then Iraq's ally --
Kuwait. Using state-of-the-art weaponry, the U.S. Navy blew up an
Iranian oil platform, destroyed several small speedboats, and recklessly
shot down an Iranian passenger airliner, killing all 290 passengers.
We had to defend our ship! [59]
Sure, what were they going to do, flush their toilets on you?
After the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, Washington was worried that the
large army it had helped build in Iraq threatened U.S. domination of the
region. Now, it was decided, something had to be done to disarm Iraq.
The sabers were sharpened.
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