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Comment by frozenport | Hacker News Reader

This article missed a very important point: Iran encouraged and supported the invasion of Iraq. They supplied the evidence and polticians that would topple Sadam and take over his goverment. The Iraq was a major Iranian victory.

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Why is this noteworthy? This is obvious to anyone with even minimal knowledge of the Middle East.

There was an Iraq/Iran war in the 80's with casualties in the millions. Iraq, a country with a dominant Shia population was ruled by Saddam and the Baathists, an elite Sunni minority.

The conflicts and politics in the Middle East are very complex, but you can paint it with a broad Sunni vs. Shia brush. Before this, there was a secular, pan-Arab movement in the middle east, tacitally supported by the USSR, but the west didn't like the idea of a pan-Arab movement. So this is the result

I recently listened to a podcast where Jeremy Scahill (the author of the book Dirty Wars) claims Saudi Arabia has been belligerently bombing Yemen to show unruly groups inside of Saudi Arabia that they have the ability to bomb people too.

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-52-dirty-war...

Iran supplied evidence that the US gave as reason to invade Iraq? Nice try!

How Iraq was broken is still fresh in our minds, so don't attempt to rewrite history.

> They supplied the evidence

Can you please elaborate? Some links?

I assume that's in reference to Ahmed Chalabi. See,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Chalabi

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Pushed-America-Extraordinary/...

I haven't seen the claim proven before, but, I'm not sure it needs to be: the man was an asset to Iran, knowingly or not.

Thanks. I don't see anything supporting the theory that he worked for Iran before the 2003 US invasion started.

It's also known that the people who worked with G. W. Bush planned the war in Iraq even before 2001 and that W. asked for some link from Saddam to 9/11 to be produced. Then even lacking it, the link was "suggested" to the public. The politicians and media accepted that narrative.

Now claiming "it was all Iran" just doesn't fit.

Yes. For the record, I agree with what you wrote. Actual evidence suggests that American and European intelligence agencies knew that the justification for the war was being manufactured; Chalabi was simply a convenient scapegoat.

The Iranians provided that link. Certainly with a more rational goverment we would never take intelligence information ( for example the famous yellow cake) from a hostile goverment with more restraint. Indeed Hussein through the US invasion was a bluff until the last minute.

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