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From: kevin@lasspvax.UUCP (Kevin Saunders)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Closed Eyes to the raping of a nation.
Message-ID: <133@lasspvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Nov-84 11:46:08 EST
Article-I.D.: lasspvax.133
Posted: Thu Nov 29 11:46:08 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Dec-84 19:59:14 EST
References: <>
Reply-To: kevin@lasspvax.UUCP (Kevin Saunders)
Organization: Theory Center (Cornell University)
Lines: 42
Summary: 

>>> stuff.  Our technique is different -- that's all.  We get the Shah
>>> of Iran to kill thousands (literally!) of his subjects.  We get the Death
>>> Squads to do the dirty work in El Salvador.  Morally, we are simply in
>>> no position to complain.
>
>We got the Shah of Iran to kill thousands??? Certainly the Shah did kill 
>thousands, but we had nothing to do with it! Explain to me why on Earth 
>it would have been in our interests to kill thousands of Iranians. Are you 
>so naive to believe that we could compel a leader to kill his own people,
>or that we would even want to??? Garbage. We were a strategic ally of the 

Since you ask what we had to do with it:

In 1953 the CIA had the democratically elected Premier of Iran
(Mossadegh) overthrown:  he was a socialist, and had 
nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.  The Shah (a king,
remember?  an hereditary king, of the sort we violently rebelled
against some *200* years ago)  was flown back in from to take over.

Why was it in our interests to kill thousands of Iranians?  Because
some Iranians were Communists or merely anti-imperialists who would
screw around with *our* :-) oil.  The secret police of the Shah, the
dreaded and despised SAVAK, were trained by the CIA and worked in
coordination with our intelligence services, like the secret police of
any "friendly" country.  Americans didn't pull the trigger-- but we
oiled the gun and loaded it.

Oh yes, don't forget the electronic/signals intelligence station in
Iran, which was our primary means for a long time of monitoring Soviet
missile tests.

BTW, please don't talk about naivete when you're waxing skeptical about
well-publicized American crimes in third world countries--it sounds
crushingly, well, naive.  Most of this stuff was revealed in the 1973
Senate hearings on Intelligence activities.  For more background, check
out _The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence_ (Marchetti & Marks, 1974) or
_The Man Who Kept the Secrets_ (Powers, 1979).


Top Secret,
Kevin Eric Saunders
kevin.lasspvax@cornell.arpa