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Jorvik, you made some fairly mean assumptions about me and about Quakers in general. Please respond to my post in answer to your post of earlier this week.

BTW, Massad Ayoob is a writer on the use of firearms in self-defense and is also a recognized expert witness in court cases in such matters. And, no, I am not aware of his having ever made any claim to being an expert in Scriptural studies, but he can read the Scriptures as well as anyone else.

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Trying to Walk in the Light, Hugh
1 John 1:5

Hugh
I am not being mean to you or Quakers generally. I think that the bible is very precise in certain of the things that it says, they are not open to interpretations. I do not believe that you can pick the bits that you like and ignore the ones that you don't like. If you join an army then you do not have the choice to say no I will not kill this person or that, and so I see a dilema for anybody doing such a thing. I myself am a vegetarian, I would not consider butchery as a job ....As to Saddam if he was so evil why did the US put him in power and supply him with weapons?

Jorvik, the US sought individual states for each ethnic group after WWI, but the other victorious nations decided upon a different route. Britain and France divided up the old Ottoman territories in the Mid-east with Britain getting what is now Iraq, Jordan and Israel and France getting Lebanon and Syria. As they were pushed out of their "Mandates", Britain attempted to establish monarchies friendly to Britain in them. The one in Jordan held but the one in Iraq was overthown in a violent coup in 1958. Saddam eventually rose to power and he was backed very heavily by the Soviet Union up until its collapse as well as. to a degree, by weapons from France. But, during the Iran-Iraq War, the US and most other Western nations chose to back Saddam against the ayatollahs of Iran in an effort to keep their Islamic Revolution from expanding throughout the Arab Gulf region. We were less supporting Saddam than we were opposing Iran in support of our Arab "friends" in the area.

After the Iran-Iraq War, we halted any support to Iraq, as did just about everyone else. This led to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the First Gulf War. That war was not an effort to topple Saddam as both Margaret Thatcher and George H. W. Bush realized that he was what was holding Iraq's various ehnic/religious groups in one nation and keeping Iraq's Shi'a out of the ayatollahs' camp. It was, instead, an effort to support our Arab "friends" in the area and it was successful.

So, your charge that they US has supplied Saddam with arms was true only in the most limited extent during its war with Iran and that was because we saw Iraq as the lesser of two evils. Now, I cannot take responsibility for US policy, although I happen to agree with George H. W. Bush's policy during the First Gulf War, because it was set by a president whom I opposed, Ronald Reagan.

I must ask you, Jorvik, why you are participating in this forum if you feel as you say that you do. I participate because I remain interested in various aspects of military history and because, several years ago, John came over to another board in which I am active and invited us to participate in this forum.

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Trying to Walk in the Light, Hugh
1 John 1:5