G:

But sometimes he was working for the benefit of both himself and our elected leaders, or at least they thought. The baathist party coups were supported by the US, Iraq was given chemical weapons by the US to fight IRan. The famous handshake with rumsfeld picture was taken AFTER the mass slaughter of the Kurds. We refused to condemn the killings. CIA analysts even blamed the attack on the IRanians.

I was just waiting for this type of intellectual swill from Graeme. If it wasn’t for that EVIL UNITED STATES, the rest of the world would just get along and sing in four-part harmony.

“Iraq was given chemical weapons by the US?”

Intellectual swill is too kind for this. Intellectual turd is more like it.

Nope, you’re still twisting words to have the author, and me, say something that neither of us said. I can only assume that it’s easier for you to try to twist our words than confront what they’re really saying. I didn’t say that Hollywood infected the arabs, nor did the author. He stated in his article that Holloywood was pandering to that pre-existing sentiment.

You haven’t confronted the article, you’ve tried to change the topic. Talk about lazy.

Syriana is a MOVIE.
The article though is propaganda.

Written by an Iranian member of Benador Associates, who should at least remember who put The Shah on the Peacock throne.

Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months.

Also found among her client list are other major war-boosters, including former New York Times executive editor and now New York Daily News columnist, A M Rosenthal; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer; the Council on Foreign Relations’ resident imperialist, Max Boot; and Victor Davis Hanson,

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EH15Aa01.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Benador_Associates

graemea: Nice ancient history, but it doesn’t apply to the world of today. The time you reference to was when Saddam claimed to be our ally, while Iran was in the Soviet camp. At that time, the Soviets were a far greater enemy, and we acted accordingly. Remember the threat of nuclear annhilation? Ditto arming Bin Laden’s guys in Afghanistan to help them throw out the Soviets.

A right wing “journalist” maintains that the West has not meddled in Arab politics.

OK, if the term journalist upsets you, I’ll call him an author–after writing 10 books I think he earned that title. Happy?

As for him maintaining that the west hasn’t meddled in arab affiars, not quite correct. He maintains that the west isn’t responsible for all the ills of the arab world, and that the high profile political assassinations were all committed by arabs–primarily by islamists. What’s not factual about that?

As for it being “propaganda”, no more so than the movie Syrianna.

Who did Saddam work for? Add the missing letter ..IA?

all the high profile assassinations were done by arabs themselves?

The CIA is not capable of anything according to Taheri.
It is all the Arabs own fault.

The fact that the CIA is little more than a costly leaking device used by rival groups within the US establishment to lump accusations and counter accusations at one other need not bother the makers of “Syriana”