Sovereignity Hanged as Executed is Saddam
Palash Biswas
( Pl Publish the matter with latest updates and send a copy. Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Sodepur, Kolkata - 700110, India. Phone: 91-25659551. Resi.)
Saddam Hussein is hanged. It is a cold blooded murder. It is illegal as every citizen is sovereign as any nation state is. While unable to defend himself , a citizen ceases to be a human being as he is depriveved of freedom as well as natural sovereignity. No one should be allowed to award death penalty to a fellow man. Thus, we are against the death penalty itself. So is many of the nations and the European Community. But Brute Bush and his American Statepower , both responsible of genocide of millions worldwide and mass destruction of natural resources and production systems armed with post modern globalisation and the support enjoyed from Developed as well as non developed and developing countries inculding India and Pakistan, has not to care for human values. He did not and got his long waited revenge. The south asian countries have not the gutts to resist US interventions in their purely home affairs. We may not expect them to take a stand at all. Hence it happend that overjoyed with Indo US nuclear deal the governemnt of India avoided to condemn the most inhuman and illegal act.However,Political parties in India have strongly condemned the hanging of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The government's ally CPI(M) saw the hanging as an "illegal and criminal act" of "an imperialist occupying power" which has "no right to violate national sovereignty and dispense justice on those whom they have illegally overthrown." Foreseeing increased hatred for the US after the hanging, the Left party, in a statement, asked the government to "realise that its strategic alliance with the Bush administration, which is notorious for its imperial aggrandisement, will harm India's interests." But in Pakistan, as Saddam supported India on Kashmir issue and was the first to recognise Bangladesh among Muslim nations, Sunni dominated population hesitates to condemn the ghastly event.
He was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court on November 5, and was in US custody since his capture on December 13, 2004.The former Iraqi leader was executed at an undisclosed location in Baghdad a few minutes before 6:00 am (local time). A representative of the Iraqi prime minister and a Sunni Muslim cleric were also present.
U.S. President George W. Bush, who called Saddam a threat though alleged nuclear and other weapons were never found, said:
"Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself."
Not only humanity and justice were hanged ., hanged is also sovereignity. No nationstates seem to sovereign enough to sustain biotecally and defend its own interests . The NRI US turned ruling classes in nations general are quite busy to defend US interests. Thus is the state of affairs all over Asia. Musarraf and Manmohan may not address the public opinion as they are entrapped well.
The body, he said, was held by the government. His immediate family, including his three daughters all stay outside Iraq.
Dubai-based al-Arabiya satellite TV quoted his daughter Raghad as having asked Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to request Saddam's body for temporary burial in the country. She hoped to eventually take her father's remains to Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad.
Issam Ghazzawi, a member of Saddam's defence team said from Amman, Jordan, that he was worried the body would be buried in an unmarked location.
Execution of Saddam is very shocking for me personally. during the firs Glf War I used to coordinate the War Desk in a prominent dail of North India. I used to write the daily anchore on front page analysing the war. I relised during the war that south asia will be targeted sooner or later. So it happened with non miliotary agression and US has taken over our polity as well as economy accross the political borders. We have been uprooted, destryed our villages along with our green fields and indigineous production system, snatched our languages, culture and heritage, values and rituals. We are deprived of history and geography. As a journalist, I had direct lincs with talex and phone with different centres in middle east and Europe. We had the other stories as we had only CNN telecast as technical help which largely displayed the ads of US technicla warfare. Just after the war every nation got a fresh list of shopping from the US Arms Industry. Now we have the Indo Us nuclear deal, too.
He was found guilty over the killing and torture of Shi'ites in the town of Dujail after militants tried to assassinate him there in 1982. An appeal was rejected four days ago.A trial witness from Dujail said he was shown the body at Maliki's office and wept for his dead relatives.
After complaints of political interference in the trial, however, the speed of the execution may fuel further unease about the fairness of the U.S.-sponsored process.Saddam became president in 1979, and the next year led his country into an eight-year war against Iran that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. In 1990 he invaded Kuwait, but U.S.-led forces drove the Iraqis out in 1991.
Saddam's half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander are to be hanged in January. (Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Dubai and Mariam Karouny, Mussab Al-Khairalla, Ibon Villelabeitia and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad) ((Writing by Alastair Macdonald, editing by Jon Hemming))
"When I saw the body in the coffin I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father whom he had killed. I approached the body and told him: 'This is the well-deserved punishment for every tyrant'," Jawad al-Zubaidi told Reuters. "Now for the first time my father and three brothers are happy."
Before his death, the former president recited the Muslim profession of faith, one of a dozen official witnesses said.
I began to write a novel in Hindi AMERICA SE SAAVDHAAN ( BE AWARE OF AMERICA). different cahapters of the novel, more then one hundred, were published in scores of little mags nationwide. I tried my best to corelate my creativity with mobilasation against the imperialist attacks imminent. A prominent daily from Jharkhand Dainik Awaz published the novel serially for two years 195 to 1997 in its Dhanbad and Jamshed pur editions until the publication of the well circulated newspaper stopped suddenly. Some little mags published debate on the novel and hundreds of readers wrote directly to me. But I could not complete the work due to some personal problems and time and space crunch. I had to discontinue at a point. It was quite a despair to find not only my country, but the entire world amaricanised so fast.
It is a pleasnt surprise that in 2005, while I was addressing a selected audiance in Nagpur University Ambedkar Faculty, some readers enquired about the novel.
The Gulf War (2 August 1990 – 28 February 1991) was a conflict between Iraq and a coalition force of approximately 30 nations[1] led by the United States and mandated by the United Nations in order to liberate Kuwait.
The conflict is known by numerous alternative names that reflect the historical, political, and journalistic views of different groups and regions. These include Gulf War, Persian Gulf War, War in the Gulf, 1990 Gulf War, Gulf War Sr. or First Gulf War (to distinguish it from the ongoing Iraq War), Second Gulf War (to distinguish it from the Iran-Iraq War), Liberation of Kuwait , War of Kuwait and Mother of Battles. Operation Desert Storm was the US name of the airland operations and is often used to refer to the conflict.
The war began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, following Iraqi contentions that Kuwait was illegally slant-drilling petroleum across Iraq’s border. The invasion was met with immediate economic sanctions by the United Nations against Iraq. Hostilities commenced in January 1991, resulting in a decisive victory for the coalition forces, which drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait with minimal coalition deaths. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait and bordering areas of Saudi Arabia. Iraq also launched missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The execution
Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn on Saturday for crimes against humanity, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who brutally ruled Iraq for three decades before he was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.Betraying no hint of regret, a composed-looking Saddam refused a black hood over his head before masked hangman placed the noose around his neck, a Shi'ite Muslim politician who witnesses the execution said.The Vatican strongly condemned the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein Saturday, terming it "tragic news".The execution was "tragic news" and there was "the risk that it would further incite the spirit of revenge and sow the seeds for new violence", Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi said. A top commander of Afghanistan's Taliban said on Saturday that the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would galvanize Muslim opposition to the United States.Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, a former Taliban defence minister and top insurgent commander, also said Saddam's execution on the Eid al-Adha Muslim festival -- marking the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca -- was a provocation.
"We heard his neck snap," Sami al-Askari, an ally of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said after the indoor execution at a former military intelligence headquarters in northern Baghdad, where Saddam himself had executed his opponents.
A Shi'ite-run channel aired grainy film of the body in a white shroud, showing Saddam, who was 69, lying with his neck twisted with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his cheek.
Askari said Saddam will likely be buried secretly in Iraq after the government rejected a family request for the body.
As Maliki's fellow Shi'ites, oppressed under Saddam, celebrated in the streets, the prime minister called on the former president's Sunni Baathists to end their insurgency.
"Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship," said Maliki, seen on television signing the order with red ink for a hanging he did not attend.
But there was little sign of an end to the violence.
Police in Kufa, near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, said 36 people were killed and 58 wounded by the car bomb at a market packed with shoppers ahead of the week-long Eid al-Adha holiday. They said a mob killed a man they accused of planting the bomb.
A triple car bombing killed 25 in a Shi'ite district of the capital -- the sort of attacks that have pitched Iraq towards sectarian war since U.S. troops broke Saddam's iron rule.
December became the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq in two years after the U.S. military reported five more combat deaths, leaving the tally just three short of the emotive 3,000 mark. Three U.S. marines died on Thursday from wounds suffered in combat in Iraq's western Anbar province. One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad and another soldier was killed in Anbar on Friday, the military said on Saturday.The latest deaths take the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq since the invasion of March 2003 to 2,997, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks U.S. deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.The number who died in December is now 108, two more than the previous high this year in October, and the the highest since November 2004 when 137 U.S. servicemen and women died.Mounting U.S. casualties are raising pressure on U.S. President George W. Bush to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from the increasingly unpopular war.
His enemies rejoiced, his defenders proclaimed him a martyr, and others looked ahead to the impact the execution Saturday of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would have on Iraq.But there was no official comment from Arab leaders, many of whom have been accused of human rights abuses _ though on a much smaller scale than Saddam _ and slow progress on democratization by Western countries and non-governmental rights watchdogs. For Sunni Muslims, Saturday was the first day of the most important holiday on the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha.
"Eid is a day of happiness, a day of goodness, a day of reconciliation, not a day of revenge," Karzai told reporters at his presidential palacein Kabul
Arab pilgrims in Mecca expressed outrage on Saturday that Iraqi authorities had chosen to execute former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on a major religious holiday, saying it was an insult to Muslims.
Sunni Arabs at the haj were shocked at Saddam's hanging which followed his conviction for crimes against humanity against Iraqi Shi'ites.
Popular reactions were muted as Iraqis woke on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar to begin a week of religious holidays for Eid al-Adha. No curfew was imposed on Baghdad.Shi'ites danced in the streets of the city of Najaf and cars honked through Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City slum.The main Sunni television channel in the capital gave little coverage to the news -- though it did show old footage of Saddam meeting former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a time when Washington helped Iraq against Islamist Iran in the 1980s.State broadcaster Iraqiya on the other hand ran graphic footage of Saddam's agents beheading and beating their victims.
Tribal leaders of executed former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein and the municipal council of his hometown Tikrit demanded Saturday that Saddam's body be taken to Tikrit under US protection for burial.
Sheikh Ali al-Nada of the Tikrit-based Al Bayjat tribe and the town council said Saddam's body should be buried in Tikrit close to his two sons, Uday and Qusay.Tribal leaders had earlier announced they would boycott Saddam's burial ceremony if the Iraqi government insisted on burying him in Baghdad.
A four-day curfew has been imposed in Tikrit after Saddam's execution and for the Eid-ul-Zuha festival this weekend.
Reaction in India
In a guarded response to execution of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, India on Saturday said it was "disappointed" over the "unfortunate" event but political parties and Muslim leaders strongly denounced the "illegal" hanging of a friend of this country. The government, which had earlier opposed Hussain's execution, hoped it will not affect the process of reconciliation and restoration of peace in the trouble-torn country.
"We had already expressed the hope that the execution would not be carried out. We are disappointed that it has been (carried out)," External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in a statement.
"We hope that the unfortunate event will not affect the process of reconciliation, restoration of peace and normalcy in Iraq," he said.
New Delhi had on Monday expressed opposition to Hussein's execution and cautioned that no steps should be taken which could delay restoration of peace in the troubled country.
"It is our hope that the sentence will not be carried out and the former President's life would be spared," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna had said after an Iraqi appeals court upheld the death sentence to Hussain. New Delhi had hoped that "no steps" would be taken which "might obstruct the process of reconciliation and delay restoration of peace in Iraq."
Political parties, including the ruling Congress, reacted strongly to the hanging of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, terming it as "judicial assault" and "barbaric" development that will cause "more serious and bigger problem" in that country. Congress said Hussein's hanging does "not carry any credibility" as there were "clear procedural deficiencies in the trial process" besides the "undue haste" in carrying out the death sentence.
Bush greets Muslims for Id
US President George W Bush sent holiday greetings to all Muslims in the United States, Iraq and across the world as they celebrate Id al-Adha.
"Id-al-Adha is an important occasion to give thanks for their blessings and to remember Abraham's trust in a loving God," Bush said in a statement released yesterday his Texas ranch.
Bush is spending the week at the ranch pondering changes to US policy in Iraq and staying abreast of Saddam Hussein's execution. Id-al-Adha, one of the two most important holidays in Islam, runs from December 31 to January 4.
wikipedia:
Pre-war Iraqi-American relations
[edit] Pre Iran-Iraq war
To the U.S., Iran-Iraqi relations were stable, and Iran had been chiefly an ally of the Soviet Union. The U.S. was concerned with Iraq’s belligerence toward Israel and disapproval of moves towards peace with other Arab states. It also condemned Iraqi support for various Arab and Palestinian militant groups such as Abu Nidal, which led to its inclusion on the incipient U.S. list of state sponsors of international terrorism on December 29, 1979. The U.S. remained officially neutral during the outbreak of hostilities in the Iran-Iraq War, as it had previously been humiliated by a 444 day long Iranian hostage crisis and expected that Iran was not likely to win. In March 1982, however, Iran began a successful counteroffensive (Operation Undeniable Victory). In a bid to open the possibility of relations to Iraq, the country was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Ostensibly this was because of improvement in the regime’s record, although former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Noel Koch later stated, "No one had any doubts about [the Iraqis'] continued involvement in terrorism... The real reason was to help them succeed in the war against Iran."[2] With Iran's newfound success in the war and its rebuff of a peace offer in July, arms sales from other states (most importantly the USSR, France, Egypt, and starting that year, China) reached a record spike in 1982, but an obstacle remained to any potential U.S.-Iraqi relationship - Abu Nidal continued to operate with official support in Baghdad. When the group was expelled to Syria in November 1983, the Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld as a special envoy to cultivate ties.
[edit] US military aid to Iraq
Because of fears that revolutionary Iran would defeat Iraq and export its Islamic Revolution to other Middle Eastern nations, the U.S. began giving aid to Iraq. From 1983 to 1990, the U.S. government approved around $200 million in arms sales to Iraq, according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI).[3] These sales amounted to less than 1% of the total arms sold to Iraq in the relevant period, though the US also sold helicopters which, although designated for civilian use, were immediately deployed by Iraq in its war with Iran.
An investigation by the Senate Banking Committee in 1994 determined that the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved, for the purpose of research, the shipping of dual-use biological agents to Iraq during the mid-1980s, including Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), later identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program, as well as Clostridium botulinum, Histoplasma capsulatum, Brucella melitensis, and Clostridium perfringens. The Committee report noted that each of these had been "considered by various nations for use in war."[4] Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that the U.S. government had confirmed that Iraq was using chemical weapons (but not biological weapons that the agents being exported could have been used for) "almost daily" during the Iran-Iraq conflict as early as 1983.[5] The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record”.[6]
The level of US covert aid to Iraq during this period is difficult to quantify. Hussein is widely known to have received battlefield “intelligence” from the US. This, corresponding with other facts, leaks and rumors, is seen by many as an indicator of substantial CIA involvement during the era. This remains unproven however.
[edit] US economic aid to Iraq
Chiefly, the U.S. government provided Iraq with economic aid. Iraq’s war with Iran, and the consequent disruption in its oil export business, had caused the country to enter a deep debt. U.S. government economic assistance allowed Hussein to continue using resources for the war which otherwise would have to have been diverted. Between 1983 and 1990, Iraq received $5 billion in export credit guarantees from the Commodity Credit Corporation program run by the Department of Agriculture, beginning at $400 million per year in 1983 and increasing to over $1 billion per year in 1988 and 1989, finally coming to an end after another $500 million was granted in 1990.[7] Besides agricultural credits, the U.S. also provided Hussein with other loans. In 1985 the U.S. Export-Import Bank extended more than $684 million in credits to Iraq to build an oil pipeline through Jordan with the construction being undertaken by Californian construction firm Bechtel Corporation.[2]
[edit] Cooling of relations
Following the war, however, there were moves within the Congress of the United States to isolate Iraq diplomatically and economically over concerns about human rights violations, its dramatic military build-up, and hostility to Israel. Specifically, in 1988 the Senate passed the “Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988,” which imposed sanctions on Iraq. The bill was not, however, adopted by the House.[8] These moves were disowned by some Congressmen though some U.S. officials, such as Reagan's head of Policy Planning Staff at the State Department and Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Paul Wolfowitz disagreed with giving support to the Iraqi regime.
The relationship between Iraq and the United States remained unhindered until the day Iraq invaded Kuwait. On October 2, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed secret National Security Directive 26, which begins, “Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security.”[9]
With respect to Iraq, the directive stated, "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and promote stability in both the Persian Gulf and the Middle East."
[edit] Eve of the invasion
In late July, 1990, as negotiations between Iraq and Kuwait stalled, Iraq massed troops on Kuwait’s borders and summoned American Ambassador April Glaspie for an unanticipated meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Two transcripts of that meeting have been produced, both of them controversial. According to the transcripts, Saddam outlined his grievances against Kuwait, while promising that he would not invade Kuwait before one more round of negotiations. In the version published by The New York Times on September 23, 1990, Glaspie expressed concern over the troop buildup, but went on to say:
"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late ’60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via [Chadli] Klibi [then Arab League General Secretary] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly."
Some have interpreted these statements as diplomatic language signaling an American "green light" for the invasion. Although the State Department did not confirm (or deny) the authenticity of these transcripts, U.S. sources say that it had handled everything “by the book” (in accordance with the U.S.’s official neutrality on the Iraq-Kuwait issue) and had not signaled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein any approval for defying the Arab League’s Jeddah crisis squad, which had conducted the negotiations. Many believe that Saddam’s expectations may have been influenced by a perception that the US was not interested in the issue, for which the Glaspie transcript is merely an example and that he may have felt so in part because of U.S. support for the reunification of Germany, another act that he considered to be nothing more than the nullification of an artificial, internal border. Others, such as Kenneth Pollack, believe he had no such illusion, or that he simply underestimated the extent of American military response.
In November 1989, CIA director William Webster met with the Kuwaiti head of security, Brigadier Fahd Ahmed Al-Fahd. Subsequent to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Iraq claimed to have found a memorandum pertaining to their conversation. The Washington Post reported that Kuwait’s foreign minister fainted when confronted with this document at an Arab summit in August.[citation needed] Later, Iraq cited this memorandum as evidence of a CIA - Kuwaiti plot to destabilize Iraq economically and politically. The CIA and Kuwait have described the meeting as routine and the memorandum as a forgery. The purported document reads in part:
"We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country's government to delineate our common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activities be coordinated at a high level."
Consequences
Saddam Hussein in a propaganda picture overseeing a war scene in the foreground.Following uprisings in the north and south, Iraqi no-fly zones were established to help protect the Shi'ite and Kurdish groups in South and North Iraq, respectively. These no-fly zones (originally north of the 36th parallel and south of the 32nd parallel) were monitored mainly by the United States and the United Kingdom, though France also participated. Combined, they flew more sorties over Iraq in the eleven years following the war than were flown during the war. These sorties dropped bombs nearly every other day against surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns which engaged the patrolling aircraft. However, the greatest amount of bombs was dropped during two sustained bombing campaigns: Operation Desert Strike, which lasted a few weeks in September 1996, and Operation Desert Fox, in December 1998. Operation Northern Watch, the no-fly zone covering the Kurds, allowed the population to focus on developing security and infrastructure, which was reflected after Saddam's fall in 2003 by a much more progressive and sustainable region (when compared to the rest of the country following Operation Iraqi Freedom). Operation Southern Watch, on the other hand, was not successful in providing the Shi'ite population the same opportunity.
Widespread infrastructure destruction during the ground war hurt the Iraqi population. Years after the war, electricity production was less than a quarter of its pre-war level. The destruction of water treatment facilities caused sewage to flow directly into the Tigris River, from which civilians drew drinking water, resulting in widespread disease. Funds provided by Western nations to help combat the problem were diverted instead to maintaining Saddam's military control over the country.
Economic sanctions were kept in place following the war, pending a weapons inspection with which Iraq never fully cooperated as it accused the UN inspectors of spying (something which was later proven to be at least partially true). Iraq was later allowed to import certain products under the UN's Oil for Food program. A 1998 UNICEF report found that the sanctions resulted in an increase to 90,000 deaths per year. Many argue that the sanctions on Iraq and the American military presence in Saudi Arabia contributed to an increasingly negative image of the United States in the Arab world.
A United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on weapons was established, to monitor Iraq's compliance with restrictions on weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. Iraq accepted some and refused other weapons inspections. The team found some evidence of biological weapons programs at one site and non-compliance at many other sites.
In 1997, Iraq expelled all U.S. members of the inspection team, alleging that the United States was using the inspections as a front for espionage; members of UNSCOM were in regular contact with various intelligence agencies to provide information on weapons sites back and forth. The team returned for an even more turbulent time period between 1997 and 1999; one member of the weapons inspection team, U.S. Marine Scott Ritter, resigned in 1998, alleging that the Clinton administration was blocking investigations because they did not want a full-scale confrontation with Iraq. In 1999, the team was replaced by UNMOVIC, which began inspections in 2002. In 2002, Iraq — and especially Saddam Hussein — became targets in the United States' War on Terrorism, leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom.
The People's Republic of China (whose army in many ways resembled the Iraqi army) was surprised at the performance of American technology on the battlefield. The swiftness of the coalition victory resulted in an overall change in Chinese military thinking and began a movement to technologically modernize the People's Liberation Army.
These things irritated Islamic Extremeism, although it had already been there to start with, strong as ever. The change of face by Saddam's secular regime did little to draw support from Islamist groups. However, it, combined with the Saudi Arabian alliance with the United States and Saudi Arabia being seen as being on the same side of Israel dramatically eroded that regime's legitimacy. Activity of Islamist groups against the Saudi regime increased dramatically. The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent blockade were some of the greivances listed by Osama bin Laden in his 1998 Fatwa.
In part to win back favour with Islamist groups Saudi Arabia greatly increased funding to those that would support the regime. Throughout the newly independent states of Central Asia the Saudis paid for the distribution of millions of Qur'ans and the building of hundreds of mosques for extremist groups. In Afghanistan the Saudi regime became a leading patron of the Taliban in that nation's civil war, and one of the few foreign countries to officially recognize the government.
[edit] Technology
Missouri launches a Tomahawk missile.Precision guided munitions (PGMs, also "smart bombs"), such as the United States Air Force guided missile AGM-130, were heralded as key in allowing military strikes to be made with a minimum of civilian casualties compared to previous wars. Specific buildings in downtown Baghdad could be bombed whilst journalists in their hotels watched cruise missiles fly by. PGMs amounted to approximately 7.4% of all bombs dropped by the coalition. Other bombs included cluster bombs, which break up into clusters of bomblets, and daisy cutters, 15,000-pound bombs which can disintegrate everything within hundreds of yards.
SCUD is a tactical ballistic missile that the Soviet Union developed and deployed among the forward deployed Red Army divisions in Eastern Germany. The role of the SCUDs which were armed with nuclear and chemical warheads was to destroy command, control, and communication facilities and delay full mobilisation of Western German and Allied Forces in Germany. It could also be used to directly target ground forces. SCUD missiles utilise inertial guidance which operates for the duration that the Engines operate. Iraq used SCUD missiles, launching them into both Saudi Arabia and Israel. Some missiles caused extensive casualties, while others caused little damage. Concerns were raised of possible chemical or biological warheads on these rockets, but if they existed they were not used. SCUD missiles are not as effective at delivering chemical payloads as is commonly believed because intense heat during the SCUD's flight at approximately Mach 5 denatures most of the chemical payload. Chemical weapons are inherently better suited to being delivered by cruise missiles or fighter bombers.
general secretary and MP Debabrata Biswas on Thursday said all possible efforts have been made to evolve the Singur deal as a pro-farmers project. ''The Left Front government of West Bengal has only acquired 943 acre of land which has happily been given by the farmers after they were assured a prime price for their land besides 40 per cent bonus and a job for one member of each family in the Tata small car project,'' he said.
ersonal Profile