In summary, nothing was learned in Vietnam...
What they won't tell you on Faux News:
What they won't tell you on Faux News:
The U.S. dictates Iranian policy for ~27 years. The country is systematically plundered for its oil resources.
1979: The Iranian Revolution overthrows Shah of Iran, leading to hostile confrontation with U.S. (Iran Hostage Crisis).
1980: Iraq invades Iran, beginning the Iraq-Iran war (With U.S. unofficial assent)
1982: As the war turns against Iraq, the U.S. begins actively assisting Iraq:
[T]he United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required."
"In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq’s war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons"
By 1988, U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein’s military. That March, Iraq launched a nerve gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq."
1988: Iran-Iraq war ends in stalemate
1990: Financially depleted Iraq invades Kuwait, beginning the Gulf War
U.S. and coalition forces repel Iraq from Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm:
"A United Nations report in March 1991 described the effect on Iraq of the US-led bombing campaign as "near apocalyptic," bringing back Iraq to the "pre-industrial age"
2002: Bush Administration fabricates intelligence linking Iraq to Al Qaeda and 9/11, also asserting that Iraq had developed Weapons of Mass Destruction
March 2003: U.S. invades Iraq based upon fabricated pretenses
Baathist regime loyalists flee country into neighbouring Syria to later form terrorist group ISIS
Al Qaeda begins operations in Iraq against U.S.
No WMDs are found in Iraq
Bush wins re-election anyways
Bush wins re-election anyways
2005: U.S. establishes democratic elections in Iraq, Iranian proxy government wins the first election. The U.S. successfully hands control of Iraq to Iran.
"When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East, and vast amounts of blood and treasure — about 4,500 American lives lost, more than $1 trillion spent — were poured into the cause."
From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region."
“Iran is smarter than America,” said Nijat al-Taie, a Sunni member of the provincial council and an outspoken critic of Iran, which she calls the instigator of several assassination attempts against her. “They achieved their goals on the ground. America didn’t protect Iraq. They just toppled the regime and handed the country over to Iran.”
I'm sure America's first mentally challenged president can "fix this".
