Here’s an ever-relevant oldie from Truthout delving into the sordid and hypocritical history of American policy towards Iran and Iraq. The page also contains related writings from Michael Klare of TomDispatch.com.

This is important reading in giving some better perspective on the full nature of the real issues we are facing in the half-concocted threat of Iran.

“Memory is a complicated thing,” says Barbara Kingsolver in her novel Animal Dreams. “It’s a relative of truth but not its twin.”

The deadly missile attack on the USS Stark was unleashed by a Mirage F-1 jet - flown by an Iraqi pilot who mistook the U.S. warship for an Iranian vessel. At that moment, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran were in the seventh year of a war that had begun in 1980 with a surprise Iraqi invasion.

The act of aggression that claimed the lives of the Stark’s precious men and women in uniform elicited a fierce barrage of angry denunciation from the United States. The assault was despicable, villainous, and depraved. These were the words of a bellicose U.S. establishment and they were aimed - at Iran.

Glory to the gospel of perpetual dividends. This was the 1980s, after all; a time when the Reagan administration was still busy fondling Saddam Hussein.

There would be no counter-strike at Iraq, of course. Not then. And the angriest criticism would come from Secretary of State Caspar Weinberger, who described the attack as “indiscriminate.” “Apparently,” said Weinberger, the Iraqi pilot “didn’t care enough to find out what ship he was shooting at.”

“We’ve never considered them hostile at all,” was the way President Ronald Reagan described Saddam’s military. “They’ve never been in any way hostile… And the villain in the piece is Iran.”

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