Oil is one of the reasons we're there, ala Bush , Cheney and other oil cronies..
If the US spent the money on oil shale research instead of getting our kids killed and maimed,
we' + Canadian oil reserves, could be nearly self reliant..
We shouldn't be there fighting in their tribal wars..

While I do not agree with our involvement in Iraq, our position as a major power has forced us to be involved in the politics of the Middle East. Please continue to red this and the next two. The information I got from the web.

Iran and Iraq

 In 1501 the Safavids established an empire in what is now Iran and Afghanistan, laying the foundation for the modern Iranian state and with the help of Shiite clerics from Palestine (Lebanon), the Safavids converted their empire to Shiite Islam.
 In Iran, the discovery of oil in 1908 by the British spawned intense interest in Persia by the British Empire which resulted in the rise of Reza Pahlavi and the Pahlavi dynasty in Iran.
 At the end of World War 1, because of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain imposed a monarchy on Iraq and defined the territorial limits of Iraq without taking into account the politics of the different ethnic and religious groups in the country, in particular those of the Kurds to the north who had asked for a Kurdish State. During the British occupation, the Shi'ites and Kurds fought for independence but were unsuccessful.
 In 1928, the British and French come up with the Red Line Agreement: a confidential memorandum which describes how the oil wealth of the former Ottoman territories will be shared between British, French, Dutch and American oil companies. It was a a long-term plan for world control and distribution of oil from the former states of the Ottoman Empire now under European control.
 During World War 2, the allies occupied Iran to prevent it from falling into German hands and under British influence and in 1941, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate the throne in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was very pro-West. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi would be the last Shah of Iran.
 The border between Iran and Iraq was originally established between the Ottoman and Safavid Empire in the sixteenth century. This border did not change until 1975 when under the Algiers Agreement, Iraq ceded 518 square kilometers of oil-rich lands along the Shatt al-Arab in exchange for an Iranian agreement to stop supporting Kurdish rebels in Iraq.
 The Shah?s good relations with Israel and the United States and his active support for women's rights caused fundamentalist Islamic groups to attack his policies and in 1977, when the Shah relaxed the censorship laws, many conservative Moslem clerics began to speak out against his policies, saying that Iran?s westernization was eroding Iran?s traditional Moslem values.
 Beginning in 1977, conservative Moslem elements began to lead demonstrations against the Shah?s government and in 1978, during one of the demonstrations, the police fired on and killed some of the demonstrators which escalated into riots against the government.
 As widespread discontent over the Shah?s policies continued, the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, from Paris, called upon all Iranians ?to struggle against? [the] tyrant...?
 In December of 1978 a group of soldiers, sympathetic with the fundamentalists, rebelled and attacked the Shah?s Imperial Guard causing the Shah?s government to collapse.
 In January 1979, fearing for their lives, the Shah and his family fled from the country into exile and one month later, the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile as the new leader of Iran and established an Islamic Republic and filled key positions in the government with Islamic clerics.
 To rid the country of any ?Western? influence, the Ayatollah Khomeini purged all ?un-Islamic? elements from universities, news-papers, and cultural institutions.
 In 1979 Saddam Hussein in Iraq took advantage of the chaos in Iran to attack Iran and take back the 518 square kilometers of oil-rich lands it had lost.
 In 1982 the Iranians counter-attacked and restored the Iran / Iraq border. The region would be fought over, without any resolution until 1988 when a cease fire was brokered by the UN.
 In 1990 Iraq agreed to accept the terms of the 1975 treaty with Iran and withdraw all of its troops from Iranian soil.
 During the Iran-Iraq War, a number of countries around the world either supported Iran or Iraq and supplied them with arms. However, the United States, China, North Korea, Brazil, Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union (Russia) sent arms to both countries.
 In 1990, on orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi tanks invaded Kuwait. The U.N. Security Council immediately demanded Iraq's with-drawal and imposed sanctions, but to no avail.
 Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait and appeared to threaten neighboring Saudi Arabia by moving thousands of troops to the Kuwait- Saudi border.
 The U.N. Security Council authorized "all necessary means" to remove Iraq from Kuwait and the U.S., under President George Bush, formed an international coalition against Iraq and by 1991, that coalition included 39 nations with 670,000 troops, 200 warships.
 The ground war was terminated in February of 1991 and as President George Bush noted, the war had accomplished its mandate, to expel the Iraqi forces from Kuwait and reestablish Kuwaiti independence.
 As a result of the Iraq?s defeat by the U.N. sanctioned coalition, it had to submit to arms inspections. The arms inspections were curtailed by Saddam Hussein.
 In 2003, failure of the arms inspection of Iraq resulted in the President George W. Bush?s administration stating that Iraq posed an immediate risk to the safety and security of the United States and the safety of the world and with initial backing by the UN Security Council, the United States with Great Britain, Poland and Australia sent troops to invaded Iraq.
 The major fighting ended about three weeks after the invasion began when U.S. and allied troops entered Baghdad and toppled the Hussein regime.
 However, between 2003 and the present, the victorious forces have had to contend with wide-scale looting, difficulties in the restoration of basic services, a guerrilla war, terrorist bombings, the establishment of an interim government, and the capture, trial and execution of Saddam Hussein.
 It appears that Shiite militants, backed by Iran are waging a guerrilla war against both the Sunni elements in the country and US forces.
 Iran's nuclear program began in the Shah's era, including a plan to build 20 nuclear power reactors. Two power reactors in Bushehr, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, were started but remained unfinished when they were bombed and damaged by the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq war. Following the revolution in 1979, all nuclear activity was suspended, though subsequently work was resumed on a somewhat more modest scale. Current plans extend to the construction of 15 power reactors and two research reactors.
 Iran is currently in the process of actively building up its Nuclear capability. Israel ? which destroyed an Iraqi nuclear plant in Osirak in a 1981 raid ? is deeply alarmed by the developments in Iran as are many Western countries.
 The current regime in Iran denies Israel's right to exist in any borders and is a principal sponsor of the terrorist group Hezbollah.
 Iran claims that the development of nuclear fuel is for peaceful purpose but in 2007, it began the process of enriching uranium and as Iran has claimed, it is doing so for its nuclear facilities which were built under the Shah?s regime
 The nations of the West are concerned because once nuclear fuel is in existence, it is very easy to move from using it for peaceful purposes to enriching it or reprocessing it for the use in nuclear weapons.
 Iran?s Shahab-3 missile system is capable of attacking Israel, Turkey and southern Russia.
 Jan 2008, at the UN, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China met to discuss the Iranian Nuclear issue and UN members will be called to prevent the supply or sale of material considered dual use in nuclear technology and not to provide export credits, guarantees or insurance to their nationals, if those credits and guarantees would financially contribute to the proliferation of sensitive nuclear activities and the delivery of nuclear weapons delivery systems.
 The UN is concerned because the technology used for producing fuel for nuclear power can be used to enrich the uranium to a much higher level to produce a nuclear explosion and Iran hid its enrichment program for 18 years, so the UN feels that until Iran's peaceful intentions can be fully established, it should stop enrichment and certain other nuclear activities.

The Israeli / Arab Situation

 The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (located in the region of modern Israel and Lebanon was formed around 1000 BC. This region was eventually conquered by the Babylonians during the late 500s BC
 Between the 500s until the 100s the his of this region is known as the Persian and Helenistic Period because it was under the control of the Persian Empire, then conquered by Alsexander the Great, and after his death, ruled by one of his generals.
 The Romans gained control of this region in 63 BC when it was conquered by Pompey
 63 BC ? 4 AD the region is ruled by Herod, a vassal king of the Romans
 6 AD ? 136 AD there are a series of Jewish revolts against the Romans. The Emperor Vespasian sends Roman legions into Judea to destroy Jerusalem and massacre or enslave the Jewish population. Those that were not massacred or enslaved were forced to leave the region. This is known as the ?Jewish Diaspora or scattering). The Emperor Hadrian had all Roman maps redrawn, and removed any reference to Judea from them, as if it never existed, and the Romans renamed the region ?Palaestina? or Palestine. After the spitting up of the Roman Empire into the Western and Eastern Empires, this region came under control of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.
 Between 313 AD ? 1917 this region would be ruled by first the Byzantines, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders from the West, the Seljuk Turks, the Persians, the Mamluks, and the Ottoman (Turkey) Empire.
 End of the 1800s ? The Ottoman Empire was deeply in debt to European Banks and had difficulty repaying them. The Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA), was established in 1881 to collect the payments that Ottoman Empire owned to companies and banks in Europe and by 1900, the Ottoman debt burden consumed all Ottoman revenues.
 Between the late 1800s and the 1st World War, the Zionist Movement in Europe and the United States saw Jews wanting to reestablish a homeland in the Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire.
 During World War 1, the Ottoman Empire allied itself with the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) and fought against the Allied Powers lead by Great Britain and France.
 The British, to keep the Arabs and Zionists as allies in their fight against the Ottoman Empire, promised both the same area of land as a homeland for their peoples in Palestine.
 In 1916, Great Britain and France secretly signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, that outlined the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire into various European administered areas when World War 1 ended.
 1922 Britain is granted Mandate for Palestine by League of Nations; Britain partitions the region into Transjordan and Palestine.
 In 1937-38, the British proposed to partition Palestine into three areas which the Jews accepted but the Arabs did not.
 The coastal plains and Galilee were apportioned for the Jews,
 The West Bank, Gaza and the Negev would be apportioned for the Arabs.
 Jerusalem, with a corridor connecting the city to the sea, would remain under the British authority.
 The Arabs opposed the partition because they felt the British supported Zionism
 In an effort to appease the Arabs, Great Britain issued the White Paper of 1939 (the MacDonald White Paper) which restricted Jewish immigration in Palestine and provided for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state by 1949.
 World War 2 (1939 ? 1945)
 6 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust and thousands of were displaced.
 After the war was over, Jews worldwide demanded the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
 After World War 2, in 1946, Great Britain granted Trans-Jordan its independence but retained control over Palestine.
 However, in 1947 Great Britain decided to leave Palestine and called upon the United Nations to make recommendations and the UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into Arab and Jewish areas. The proposal was accepted by the Jews but the Arabs rejected it as a violation of their right to self-determination and violence broke out between Jews and Arabs which lead to Civil War in the region.
 When the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948 the United States recognized Israel as an independent nation.
 Upon declaring itself a free nation, Israel was invaded by the combined armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia which they defeated.
 Between 1951 and 1973, a succession of conflicts between Israel and the neighboring Arab states expanded Israel?s territory beyond what it had acquired between 1948-49.
 Israeli interests tended to be backed by the US and its allies while the interests of the Arab States tended to be backed by the Soviet Union and its allies.
 In 1978, during the Carter administration, the Camp David Accords were signed between Egypt and Israel. The Camp David Accords were two agreements. The first agreement was a framework for negotiations to establish an autonomous self-governing authority in the West Bank and the Gaza strip for the Palestinians. The second agreement was a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt and in 1982 the Sinai, which Israel acquired during the Six Day War, was returned to Egypt.
 In 1993, under the Clinton Administration, the Oslo Accords were signed in Washington between Israel and the PLO. The Oslo Accords called for withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It also affirmed the Palestinian right to self-government within those areas through the creation of the Palestinian Authority.
 Israel?s parliament, the Knesset, narrowly accepted the Oslo Accords, 61 For, 50 Against, and 8 Abstained.
 Among the Palestinians, Fatah the political party that controlled the PLO was the only political party to accept the accords. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine objected to the agreement and denounced Israel's right to exist and their resistance was expressed in acts of terror.
 In 2006, a conflict between Israel and Lebanon erupted when Hezbollah guerrillas crossed the border and attacked an Israeli army patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two others.
 In response, Israel launched an air offensive and ground attacks against Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah fought back by firing thousands of rockets into Israel.
 A UN resolution called for a full cessation of hostilities, plus the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon and the establishment of a peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. The bulk of the 15,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon, were Lebanese and French forces. Other military forces who have committed to be involved in the peacekeeping are Italy China, Poland, Bangladesh, Greece, Latvia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Finland, and Denmark.


Terrorism against Israel

Fatah

 Fatah (a reverse acronym for Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini meaning - Palestinian National Liberation Movement) was founded in 1958 / 1959 by Palestinian refugees, principally professionals working in the Gulf States and students studying in Cairo. The most notable of these was Yasser Arafat, who was head of the Palestinian student movement in Cairo 1952 to 1956.
 Central to Fatah?s ideology was the overthrow of Israel, replacing it with a Palestinian state and Fatah, from Jordan and Lebanon, began carrying out terrorist raids against Israeli targets, primarily civilian, in 1965. It is believed that at the time, Fatah was being backed by Syria.
 In 1964 the PLO was controlled by the Arab League, and its goal was the destruction of the State of Israel replacing it with an independent Palestinian state. After the defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War (1967) the credibility of the Arab League was destroyed which allowed for Yasser Arafat and Fatah to gained control of the PLO.
 During the 1960s and the 1970s, Fatah / PLO received weapons, explosives and training from the USSR, the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and China and with their help, Fatah / PLO offered training to a wide range of European, Middle Eastern, Asian, and African terrorist and insurgent groups.
 With communist (Soviet Union, China, and Cuba) backing, Fatah / PLO carried out numerous attacks against Israeli targets, but because violent confrontations with Jordanian forces between 1970?1971, Fatah / PLO left Jordan, as a base of operations, for Lebanon.
 To stop Fatah / PLO?s activities, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, at which time Fatah / PLO moved its base of operations to Tunisia, whre it stayed from 1982 ? 1993.
 In 1993, Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel which allowed Arafat and Fatah / PLO to return to Palestinian territories.
 The 1993 Declaration of Principles had Fatah / PLO renounced terrorism against Israel for the recognition of the PLO by Israel and Arafat as leader of the Palestinian peoples; which he served until his death in 2004.
 After Arafat?s deat, the leadership of Fatah / PLO fell to Farouk Kaddoumi.
 In 2005, Fatah?s leadership of the Palestinian people began to be challanged by HAMAS when they won landslide victories in nearly all the municipalities where they opposed Fatah.
 Fatah?s leadership ended in 2006 when HAMAS defeated it in the January parliamentary elections and took control of the Paestinian government.
 Israel and Hamas are still in conflict.

Hamas
 HAMAS is an Arabic acronym for "Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia" -- Islamic Resistance Movement -- and a word meaning zeal. It is a radical Islamic fundamentalist organization which operates primarily in the Gaza District but is also found in Judea and Samaria.
 HAMAS was formed in late 1987, by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
 HAMAS regards the ter-ritory of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as land that belongs to the Arabs and pursues a goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of it.
 Originally, HAMAS? acts of violence were against Palestinian collaborators and the rival Islamic terrorist group, Fatah, but in 1993, HAMAS began to conduct large-scale suicide bombings against Israeli civilian and military targets.
 According to the U.S. State Dept, HAMAS is funded by Iran, Palestinian expatriates, and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.
 However, some fundraising and propaganda activity takes place in Western Europe and North America and HAMAS sympathizers are known to work openly through mosques and Arab social service institutions to recruit members, raise money, and distribute propaganda.
 Since its formation in 1987, HAMAS has won converts to its cause by conducting numerous welfare and social services where it devotes much of its estimated $70-million annual budget to running relief and education programs, funding school construction, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues.
 It is the result of its political and social activities that in the January 2006 Palestinian elections HAMAS won a majority of seats in the its legislature, replacing Fatah as the dominant political force in Palestine. However, the two groups are currently fighting over control of Gaza and its government.

Hezbollah
 Historically there have been strong geographical ties between Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. When the Roman Emperor Hadrian had the maps of Judea redrawn and replaced it with Syria Palaestina, the region consisted of what is now modern Lebanon, and Syria. When the Safavid Empire (Iran; 1500 ? 1722) converted to Shiite Islam in the 16th cen-tury, it was with the help of Lebanese Shiite clerics and ties between the two nations' Islamic clergy have always been close. Under the Ottoman Empire, until the 20th century, the term ?Syria? denoted those lands east of the Mediterranean that correspond to modern Syria and Lebanon, most of Israel and Jordan, W Iraq, and N Saudi Arabia. Maronite Christians were originally Aramaic-speaking peoples who recognized the Pope as the head of the Church and after the Arab conquest of the Byzantium Empire, they became Arabic-speaking Christians within an Arab World. At the end of World War 1 the French made the Lebanon part of ?Syria? a separate country and a haven for Maronite Christians.
 Kathryn Westcott of the BBC has reported that Hezbollah - or Party of God - was conceived in 1982 by a group of clerics after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and was formed primarily to offer resistance to Israeli occupation.
 Ali Akbar Mohatashemi, Iran?s former ambassador to Syria, and a student of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, claims to be the founding father of Hezbollah and notes that there are strong ties between Hezbollah and the government in Iran because Hezbollah is the main element of Iran?s military.
 In Lebanon, today, Hezbollah is led by Hassan Nasrallah, who as a young man, studied religion with Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr: a radical Shi'ite cleric.
 Nasrallah helped move Hezbollah into the main-stream of Lebanese politics when he had it fund social services and charitable works throughout the country.
 As a political and military organization, Hezbollah is regarded by most in the Arab / Islamic world as a legitimate, militant, Shia political party in Lebanon that has embraced the Palestinian cause and that Israel had no right to exist and should be destroyed.
 Initially, Hezbollah wanted to transform Lebanon into an Iranian-style Islamic state but so far has been unsuccessful.
 Hezbollah has had members elected to Lebanon?s Parliament.
 It has been noted that Hezbollah's spiritual head, Sheikh Fadlallah, is close to Iran and that Hezbollah has been long supported by Iran, which appears to have provided it with arms and money.
 In 2006, two Two months prior to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Mohtashemi told the Sharq newspaper in Iran that Hezbollah had a huge arsenal of heavy artillery rockets and missiles that are capable of targeting all of Israel.
 Mohtashemi also noted that Hezbollah's ability to inflict damage on the Israeli army and to fire its missiles on northern Israel can be attributed to its experience during the Iran-Iraq war when members of Hezbollah fought amongst the Iranian troops against Iraq.
 The current Lebanese government, which is supported by the United States, France and Saudi Arabia (a Sunni stronghold) is opposed by Hezbollah, and Mahmoud Qomati, a member of Hezbollah's politburo, told Reuters (1/11/07) that the Shiite party wants to topple the Lebanese government.
 Hezbollah appears to be working to establish a new political reality within Lebanon as it attempts to overthrow the current government with the hopes of replacing it with a more Shiite centered one. Shiites accounted for about 41% of Lebanon?s population in 1985. Today they make up between 45-55% of the population.

Al-Qaeda (Al-Qaida)

 Al-Qaeda (Al-Qaida) is an armed Sunni Islamist terrorist organization with the stated objective of eliminating foreign influence in the Islamic world.
 While Osama bin Laden is generally recognized as the group's leader, it is theorized that the group's operations are not centralized, and many independent and collaborative cells may exist in multiple countries linked by its common cause.
 The origins of the group can be traced to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when a group of foreign Arab Mujaheddin (holy warriors or freedom fighters), financed by bin Laden and independent wealthy Moslem contributors, joined the fight against Soviet occupation.
 Toward the end of the Soviet military mission to Afghanistan al-Qaeda, which was formed by Osama bin Laden in 1988, wished to extend the conflict to other parts of the world and in 1991, Sudan's National Islamic Front invited al-Qaeda to move operations to their country.

 In Sudan, for several years, al-Qaeda ran several businesses including an import/export business, farms, and a construction firm, but hey also ran a number of camps where they trained Islamic militants in the use of firearms and explosives.
 Osama bin Laden was asked to leave Sudan when, in 1996, the Clinton Administration put pressure on the Sudanese government to expel him, citing possible connections to the 1994 attempted assassination of Egyptian President Mubarak while in Ethiopia.
 Osama bin Laden first took interest in Iraq when the country invaded Kuwait in 1990 but it wasn?t until 2003, with the US led coalition invaded of Iraq, that al-Qaeda took a more formal interest in the region and actively organized and aided local resistance to the occupying coalition forces and the emerging government.
 For more information on Al-Qaeda go to the following BBC site.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/3618762.stm

I never read long , involved pasted posts, but I did skim over them..
(One of the things most forum readers detest)...No offense intended, just facts!
Anyone who knows anything about the last 2000 or so years know what
you post is mostly fact.
As an individual who has several years in the general region,
I know Muslims and their history pretty well..
Thanks for informing others who read this though!

our guys are there because John Howard sent them

The equivilent of Bush!

Myself alone I was there 3 different times and too me it's worth being there just to have removed Sadam from power. I have seen how here worked first hand and saw the bodies, saw his troops, saw how he lived in lavish palace and his country was in poverty. This man used nerve gas on the kurds and his own people. Was there a threat YES... Nerve gas was present and used when I was there in the 1990's. We walked through exposed areas when we have protective gear on. So for those non believers it happened and he did have WMD's.

Here's a little something I found:

Underground Nuclear Facility Found in Iraq
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83821,00.html

Thursday, April 10, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq ? U.S. officials are investigating a massive underground nuclear facility that was discovered below the Al Tuwaitha complex of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in a suburban town south of Baghdad.

While they aren't prepared to say the discovery is the smoking gun proving Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, Fox News confirmed that officials are very interested in the labyrinth of labs and warehouses unearthed by U.S. forces.

The discovery was unexpected and forces in the area are testing a variety of things to best determine the significance of the find.

Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have far found 14 buildings that have high levels of radiation, an embedded reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported Thursday, noting that some of the tests have found nuclear residue too deadly for human occupation.

The Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts" a few hundred meters outside the nuclear compound, where locals say "missile water" is stored in enormous caverns, the correspondent, Carl Prine, reported. Prine is embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division.

"It's amazing," Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist told the paper. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."

This underground discovery could still test to be perfectly legitimate and offer no proof of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The CIA encouraged international inspectors in the fall of 2002 to probe Al Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors came away empty handed.

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997, told the Tribune-Review.

"The Marines should be particularly careful because of those high readings," he told the paper. "Three hours at levels like that and people begin to vomit. That leads me to wonder, if the readings are accurate, whether radioactive material was deliberately left there to expose people to dangerous levels.

"You couldn't do scientific work in levels like that. You would die."

Capt. John Seegar, a combat engineer commander from Houston, is currently running the operation in Al Tuwaitha. "I've never seen anything like it, ever," he told the Tribune-Review. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"

Fox News' Carl Cameron contributed to this report.

Good or bad, from a political point of view, Saddam kept the different factions in the country in check as well as the forces in Iran. The reason why Iran has become so powerful today is because there is no Moslem country willing to take it on.