birth defects

very belated<div>
</div><div>919<div>
</div><div>---no lnx<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/climate/epa-mercury-coal.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/climate/epa-mercury-coal.html</a>E.P.A. Weakens Controls on MercuryThe agency is changing the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls, a move that would effectively loosen the rules on other toxic pollutants.By Lisa Friedman and Coral DavenportApril 16, 2020
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Thursday  weakened regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic.The new Environmental Protection Agency rule does not eliminate restrictions on the release of mercury, a heavy metal linked to brain damage. Instead, it creates a new method of calculating the costs and benefits of curbing mercury pollution that environmental lawyers said would fundamentally undermine the legal underpinnings of controls on mercury and many other pollutants.By reducing the positive health effects of regulations on paper and raising their economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control.“That is the big unstated goal,” said David Konisky, a professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University. “This is less about mercury than about potentially constraining or handcuffing future efforts by the E.P.A. to regulate air pollution.”The proposed change is the latest in the Trump administration’s long-running effort to roll back environmental regulations and reduce regulatory burdens, particularly on the coal, oil and gas industries. Over the past three years the administration has weakened rules to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, restrict coal companies from dumping debris in streams and claimed falsely that that President Trump has revived the dying coal industry.Over the past few weeks as the nation struggled with the coronavirus, the administration has also rushed to loosen curbs on automobile tailpipe emissions, opted not to strengthen a regulation on industrial soot emissions and moved to drop the threat of punishment to companies that kill birds “incidentally.”The deregulatory push appears designed to secure less restrictive rules quickly, in case Republicans lose control of Congress and the White House in November. A new government could move quickly under the Congressional Review Act to overturn any regulation or federal rule within 60 days of it being finalized — making any rule completed after late May or early June vulnerable.The mercury rollback is a particular victory for Robert E. Murray, the former chief executive of Murray Energy Corporation and a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump. Mr. Murray personally requested the rollback in a written “wish list” to top officials shortly after the president took office. The company has since declared bankruptcy and is undergoing a reorganization.“Under this action, no more mercury will be emitted into the air than before,” Andrew R. Wheeler, the E.P.A. administrator said in announcing the rule.  
Climate and Environment ›[Keep Up on the Latest Climate NewsOnce nonexistent, campaign cash earmarked as "climate donations" is flowing to Joe Biden as a small but growing counterweight to the monied muscle of fossil fuels.Environmental lawyers and public health leaders called the timing of the final mercury rule, as well as its substance, an attack on air quality.]“What is most disconcerting to me is this administration’s lack of interest in science and, frankly, their lack of concern for our nation’s children,” said Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Mercury pollution in the United States damages our children’s brains before they even come into the world, and estimates are that that cost is in the billions of dollars.”Patrick Parenteau, a professor at the Vermont Law School, noted that in virtually every environmental rollback, Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. has acknowledged in the fine print that enormous increases in health problems and deaths will occur because of increased pollution.A plan to weaken carbon dioxide emissions at power plants, for example, predicted as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths a year. A draft analysis of the soot policy put forward this week showed that tightening the existing standard by 25 percent could save as many as 12,150 lives a year.Two people close to the administration said the White House was concerned enough about the public perception of loosening environmental rules during the outbreak that it held the mercury plan for several weeks after it passed a review from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. E.P.A. officials assured the White House that the agency was merely responding as required to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that found it must justify the economic impact of the mercury standards.The weakening of the mercury rule would be one of the most significant regulatory rollbacks engineered by the Trump administration. The existing federal regulation on mercury pollution, completed in 2012, is the most expensive clean air regulation ever written by the E.P.A.When it published its draft cost-benefit changes last year, the Trump administration’s E.P.A. said the cost of cutting mercury from power plant emissions “dwarfs” the economic benefits and argued that the Obama rule could not be justified as “appropriate and necessary.”The E.P.A.’s 2012 regulation was the first federal standard to require power plants to install pricey pollution controls to limit mercury emissions — at a cost to industry of $9.6 billion a year. The Obama administration justified that cost with some mathematical legerdemain of its own. The Obama E.P.A. tallied not just the benefits of reducing mercury but also “co-benefits” like reducing sulfur dioxide, fine particulate matter and other pollutants that were also curbed by the equipment.In his announcement on Thursday, Mr. Wheeler called the Obama administration’s accounting of health benefits “dishonest.”Driving down mercury emissions alone, the studies at the time found, would yield a $6 million annual benefit, a fraction of the cost of the controls. But by adding in co-benefits like projected gains in avoided heart disease, asthma attacks and other health problems, the total benefits reached $80 billion over five years. Overall, the Obama administration estimated that the rule would prevent 4,700 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks and 11,000 premature deaths each year.Under the Trump administration’s new rule, such co-benefits will no longer be calculated with cost, only direct benefits.While coal producers urged Mr. Trump to roll back the rule, the vast majority of electric utility companies have agreed the cost-benefit changes may be of little help to them, because they have already spent the billions of dollars needed to come into compliance. Many of those companies urged the Trump administration to leave the mercury measure in place.Coal plants subject to the rule “have already spent millions of dollars to install mercury equipment to reduce mercury emissions,” wrote Scott A. Weaver, the director of air quality services for American Electric Power, an Ohio-based electric utility company that operates power plants in 11 states, in a public comment on a draft of the rule.“Rescinding the standards at this point will create new problems” Mr. Weaver wrote, noting that companies that have sought to recoup the cost of installing mercury control equipment through bills to customers may no longer legally be able to do so. That means the new rule could actually cost companies more money.Yet in comments to the E.P.A, major coal companies and the United States Chamber of Commerce also supported changing the underlying cost-benefit analysis to prevent future rules that they might consider onerous.Matthew Davis, a former E.P.A. scientist who worked with the agency’s office of children’s health protection to develop the original rule, said weakening the rule still represented a threat to children’s health.“The reason we did this rule is because children and developing fetuses are harmed by mercury,” said Mr. Davis, who now works at the League of Conservation Voters.Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an attorney for the electric utility industry who served in the E.P.A. under the second President George Bush, rejected the idea that the decision was a cynical calculation to set the stage for other regulatory rollbacks.“It’s not as if the administration has been shy about rolling back other things,” Mr. Holmstead said, dismissing environmental concerns. “I don’t think there’s any impact whatsoever from this.”In Congress, the Obama-era mercury rule has bipartisan support. Senator Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works committee, and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the chairman of an energy and water appropriations subcommittee, wrote an opinion piece in USA Today in November urging the Trump administration to leave the regulation unchanged.“Changing the rule after billions of dollars have already been spent means that utilities will have less certainty about federal regulations,” they wrote. “The gains we have made over the past decade to protect children and families from dangerous mercury pollution should not be lost.”
=5/20 kid killer Mick M is opus dei? PRO-LIFE?!
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-epa-moves-jettison-any-regulation-of-a-chemical-linked-to-child-brain-damage-report/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-epa-moves-jettison-any-regulation-of-a-chemical-linked-to-child-brain-damage-report/</a>no lnxtrump’s EPA moves jettison any regulation of a chemical linked to child brain damage: report[ June 3, 2019: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler speaks at the National Press Club.Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams May 15, 2020Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President Donald Trump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate does not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.According to the New York Times, the EPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all, a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate....<div> </div> =<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-decision-is-grave-heres-how-trumps-white-house-gave-the-green-light-to-a-dangerous-chemical-linked-to-fetal-heart-defects/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/this-decision-is-grave-heres-how-trumps-white-house-gave-the-green-light-to-a-dangerous-chemical-linked-to-fetal-heart-defects/</a>
no lnx
‘This decision is grave’: Here’s how Trump’s White House gave the green light to a dangerous chemical linked to fetal heart defectsPresident Donald J. Trump listens to a reporter’s question after his announcement of the proposed changes to National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations Thursday, Jan. 9, 2020, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)Written by Alex Henderson March 2, 202079The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), founded half a century ago in 1970, has existed under nine different presidents including Donald Trump. One of the people who has been encouraging the EPA to weaken its environmental standards is John DeSesso, who has a long history of lobbying on behalf of chemical companies. And science reporter Elizabeth Shogren, in an article for Reveal News, describes DeSesso’s campaign to persuade the EPA that trichloroethylene or TCE — a toxic chemical linked to fetal heart defects — is perfectly safe.
DeSesso, Shogren reports, met with “a dozen EPA scientists and officials” in the hope of convincing them that TCE is not dangerous. According to Shogren, DeSesso has “primarily earned his living” as a “contract scientist for chemical companies and their trade associations, promoting their positions on toxic chemicals from arsenic to Roundup. As cancer clusters, immune disorders and fetal abnormalities mounted in communities contaminated by TCE, DeSesso was paid to cast doubt on the research establishing TCE’s toxic effects on the human body.”
In making his case for TCE to the EPA, Shogren notes, DeSesso set out to “undercut” a 2003 study that was led by scientist Paula Johnson for the University of Arizona and was “a landmark in establishing that TCE exposure at trace levels was highly toxic to developing embryos.” John’s study, according to Shogren, “had been pivotal in past EPA evaluations of TCE’s risks.”
In February, the EPA released an evaluation of the effects of TCE — one that, Shogren warns, “appears to show the influence of DeSesso and his chemical company sponsors.”
“Dismissing the findings of the Johnson study and decades of scientific research, the published evaluation rejects fetal heart malformations as a benchmark for unsafe exposure levels to TCE,” Shogren observes.
Jennifer McPartland, a senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Reveal News, “This decision is grave. It not only underestimates the lifelong risks of the chemical, especially to the developing fetus — it also presents yet another example of this administration bowing to polluters’ interests over public health.”=ew 220 
https://www.ecowatch.com/highly-hazardous-pesticides-investigation-2645202101.html
Poor people in developing countries are far more likely to suffer from exposure to pesticides classified as having high hazard to human health or the environment, according to new data that Unearthed analyzed.
The analysis shows that the world's top five pesticide makers are making billions, accounting for more than 36 percent of their income, from chemicals that are proven to hazards to humans and the environment and are contributing to the precipitous demise of bee populations, as Unearthed reported.
The researchers found that the sale of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), disproportionately occurred in poorer nations, which often have fewer regulations than industrialized nations, according to The Guardian. In India, for example, sales of HHPs were nearly 60 percent, while in the UK it was just 11 percent.
The report from the investigative team at Unearthed focused on the practices of Bayer, BASF, Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), FMC and Syngenta, which are continuing to sell HHPs like neonicotinoids and glufosinate that have been banned in other parts of the world, according to the produce industry publication Fresh Produce Journal.
Unearthed dove into data collected by Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, from buyer surveys that concentrated on the best sellers in the top 43 pesticide buying countries, as The Guardian reported.
While regulations have stopped the sale of certain pesticides in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, it has hardly slowed down chemical companies, which sold $4.8 billion worth of products containing HHPs in 2018, as The Guardian reported. guk] Bayer called the analysis "misleading" but did not offer proof of that assessment.
Since the investigation focused on just 43 countries, it covered less than half of the companies' global sales. That suggests that the companies actually made billions more from pesticides that regulatory agencies have said pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife, according to Unearthed.
The investigation found that pesticide manufacturers sold the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest, according to Unearthed. The biggest market for HHPs were for corn and soya crops.
About a quarter of sales were from products known to be human carcinogens or dangerous to reproductive health. Another 10 percent were toxic to bees. An additional 4 percent of chemicals sold are acutely toxic to humans. Every year, nearly 200,000 suicides are linked to pesticide poisoning, almost entirely in developing countries, according to The Guardian.
"This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing," Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to the Pesticide Action Network, said to Unearthed.
Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations' special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, told Unearthed, "There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture."
"Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother's breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago," Tuncak said....<div></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-destruction-of-a-society-first-the-u-s-invaded-iraq-then-we-left-it-poisoned/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/the-destruction-of-a-society-first-the-u-s-invaded-iraq-then-we-left-it-poisoned/</a>no lnx‘The destruction of a society’: First the U.S. invaded Iraq — then we left it poisoned
Written by David Masciotra / Salon September 8, 2019The political and moral culture of the United States allows for bipartisan cooperation to destroy an entire country, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process, without even the flimsiest of justification. Then, only a few years later, everyone can act as if it never happened.In 2011, the U.S. withdrew most of its military personnel from Iraq, leaving the country in ruins. Estimates of the number of civilians who died during the war in Iraq range from 151,000 to 655,000. An additional 4,491 American military personnel perished in the war. Because the bombs have stopped falling from the sky and the invasion and occupation of Iraq no longer makes headlines, Americans likely devote no thought to the devastation that occurred in their name.With the exception of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is currently polling at or below 2 percent, no candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination has consistently addressed the criminality, cruelty and cavalier wastefulness of American foreign policy. Joe Biden, the frontrunner in the race, not only supported the war in Iraq — despite his recent incoherent claims to the contrary — but as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acted as its most effective and influential salesman in the Democratic Party.The blasé attitude of America toward the death and destruction it creates, all while boasting of its benevolence, cannot withstand the scrutiny of science. Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan and recipient of the Rachel Carson Prize, has led several investigative expeditions in Iraq to determine how the pollutants and toxic chemicals from the U.S.-led war are poisoning Iraq’s people and environment. The health effects are catastrophic, and will remain so long after the war reached its official end.I previously interviewed Savabieasfahani about her initial research, and recently acquired an update regarding her team’s latest discovery that there is a close correlation between proximity to a U.S. military base and birth defects in Iraqi children.Average Americans, even many who opposed the war in Iraq, seem to believe that once the military campaign is over the casualties of war stop accumulating. What is the purpose of your general research regarding the toxicity of the Iraqi environment resulting from American bombs, munitions and other materials? How does the American invasion and occupation continue to adversely affect the health of Iraqis?
Bombs and bullets have been used on an extreme scale in Iraq. Dropping tons of bombs and releasing millions of bullets leaves toxic residues the in air, water and soil of the targeted population. These pollutants continue to poison those populations years after the bombing stops.
What’s more, the United States imported thousands of tons of military equipment into Iraq to use in their occupation. They include, tanks, trucks, bombers, armored vehicles, infantry weapons, antiaircraft systems, artillery and mortars — some of which are coated with depleted uranium, and much more. These eventually find their way into U.S. military junkyards which remain across Iraq.
There are unknown numbers of military junkyards scattered across the Iraqi landscape.
Fluctuations in temperature facilitates the rusting and weathering of military junk, releasing toxic pollutants [including radioactive uranium compounds, neurotoxic lead and mercury, etc.] into the Iraqi environment.
Uranium and its related compounds remain toxic for millennia and poison local populations through food, air and water contamination.
The exposure of pregnant mothers to the pollutions of war, including uranium and thorium, irreversibly damages their unborn children. We found thorium, a product of depleted uranium decay, in the hair of Iraqi children with birth defects who lived in Nasiriyah and Ur City, near a U.S. military base.
The destruction of a society does not stop after U.S. bombs stop falling. Environmental contamination which the U.S. leaves behind continues to destroy our environment and poison our people decades after the bombs have stopped falling. The U.S. has a long history of irreversibly destroying human habitats. That must end.
In your groundbreaking new research, you discover that the teeth of Iraqi children have 28 times more thorium if they live near a U.S. military base. What is the significance of that conclusion, and what does the presence of thorium indicate about a child’s health? What kinds of abnormalities and health problems will they experience?
The Iraqi population is potentially contaminated with depleted uranium decay products. Baby teeth are highly sensitive to environmental exposures. Such high levels of thorium simply suggest high exposure at an early age and potentially in utero.
We found uranium and thorium in these children’s teeth and hair. Uranium and thorium were also in the bone marrow of children, all of whom had severe birth defects. The magnitude of public contamination caused by these alpha-emitting radioactive compounds is a serious question to be answered. Our bone marrow data is still unpublished, but we hope to publish it separately.
Thorium is an alpha emitter and, once in the body, it can cause cancer and other anomalies. Impacts can vary depending on the timing and amount of exposure. Childhood leukemia, which has been rising in southern Iraq, is a verified outcome of thorium exposure.
In our study, children with high levels of thorium had multiple birth defects. Our studies show that, across Iraq, children exposed to U.S. war contamination suffer primarily from congenital heart defects and neural tube defects.
Forty-four years after U.S. forces left Vietnam, there are still Vietnamese babies born with birth defects from the American military’s use of Agent Orange. How long do you believe Iraqis will continue to suffer from the American-led war?
If left unmitigated, the population will be permanently exposed to elevated toxic exposures which can impact the Iraqi gene pool.
Through the use of the scientific method, you are gaining the ability to identify a severe problem in Iraq. Considering that the problem is a result of the U.S. invasion, what could the U.S. do to solve or at least mitigate the problem?
The U.S. must be held responsible and forced to clean up all the sites which it has polluted. Technology exists for the cleanup of radiation contamination. The removal and disposal of U.S.-created military junkyards would go a long way towards cleaning toxic releases out of the Iraqi environment.
You are a scientist, not a political analyst, but you must have some thoughts regarding the political implications of your work. How do you react to the lack of substantive conversation about the consequences of war in American politics and the press, and the American establishment’s evasion of responsibility on this issue? 
I expect nothing from the American political establishment or their propaganda machines which masquerade as “news media” and feed uncritically off State Department press briefings.
Fortunately, there is a movement to criminalize environmental contamination caused by war. Damage to nature and the human environment must be considered a war crime.
Scientists are currently asking international lawmakers to adopt a fifth Geneva Convention which would recognize damage to nature as a war crime, alongside other war crimes. I hope that will make a difference in our ability to protect human lives and our environment.<div></div><div><a href="https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/06/03/the-view-from-tehran-americas-sordid-history-of-meddling-in-iran/">https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/06/03/the-view-from-tehran-americas-sordid-history-of-meddling-in-iran/</a></div><div>
</div><div>The </div><header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="entry-title" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.27273; hyphens: none; padding: 0px;">View From Tehran: America’s Sordid History of Meddling in Iran</h1></header><footer class="entry-footer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.61538; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/author/danny_sjursen/" title="Posts by Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)</a> Posted on<a href="https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/06/03/the-view-from-tehran-americas-sordid-history-of-meddling-in-iran/" rel="bookmark" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2019-06-03T21:00:24-07:00" style="box-sizing: inherit;">June 04, 2019</time></a></footer><div class="entry-content" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-color: rgb(209, 209, 209);">No war yet! That’s the good news…for now. A few weeks have passed since unhinged National Security Advisor John Bolton – who never saw a regime he didn’t want to change – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/world/middleeast/us-military-plans-iran.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">reportedly</a> ordered the Pentagon to update plans to send 120,000 additional troops into the Persian Gulf. All this preparation and the inherent threat to strike Iran was ostensibly based on vague and unsubstantiated intelligence that Tehran had planned attacks on U.S. troops in the region. Murky and secretive intelligence, preemptive war plans, and <a href="https://original.antiwar.com/danny_sjursen/2019/03/18/empire-of-absurdity-recycled-neocons-recycled-enemies/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">unrepentant</a> neocons sowing fear within the American populace. We’ve all seen this movie before, in Iraq, just sixteen years ago, and it didn’t end well. US troops are still there and may be so indefinitely.If the purported Iranian threats seem manufactured, its because they likely are. And all the wrongs Tehran allegedly perpetrated against the US are exaggerated and overblown. Sure, Iran is, like all countries, an imperfect actor. The Islamic Republic did hold America’s embassy staff hostage during the Carter years. Tehran has backed Hezbollah and Hamas, both of whom once specialized in suicide bombing attacks on civilians.Still, its worthwhile – particularly in the serious business of war and peace – to step back, slow down, and walk a proverbial mile in others’ shoes. Let me offer, then, the view from Tehran; to see the world and the US through Iranian eyes. An honest historical appraisal of the complicated U.S.-Iranian relationship demonstrates that it was often Washington and its western allies that meddled in the region and acted as the aggressors.Let us begin in 1941. Though Tehran declared neutrality in that war, Russia and Britain jointly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">invaded</a> and occupied the country to secure control of its oil reserves. Then, in 1953, when a democratically elected prime minister – Mohammad Mossadegh – dared <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthrew-irans-democracy-in-four-days" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">nationalize</a> Iranian oil (which had been largely under foreign, Western corporate control) the CIA coordinated a coup with MI6 to overthrow the government. The dictatorial Shah was promptly put in power and ruled with an iron fist for the next 26 years. So much for America’s self-proclaimed title as the "beacon of democracy."Then, in 1980, when Iraq invaded and threatened to destroy Iran, the US openly backed the Saddam Hussein’s aggressive regime. The US <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859238" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">provided</a> key intelligence in the form of satellite photos to the Iraqi Army, and granted Baghdad over $1 billion in economic aid. President Reagan, in absurd twist of irony, sent a special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to meet with Saddam. Their now infamous picture shaking hands is all over the web. Saddam regularly employed poison gas to attack Iranian formations. It is largely <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859238" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">agreed</a> that U.S.-supplied satellite imagery allowed Iraq to better calibrate these illegal, immoral, chemical attacks. Remember how this was viewed from Tehran: the American superpower, which had already overthrown Iranian democracy, was now backing Saddam in an aggressive war that posed an existential threat to the Islamic Republic.During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which caused perhaps a million deaths, the US Navy waged an undeclared maritime war in the Persian Gulf. In the "Tanker War," theUS again tacitly backed Iraq, flew the stars and stripes on Kuwaiti vessels to protect them from attack, and, finally, overtly <a href="https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1988/may/tanker-war" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">sank</a> the majority of the Iranian Navy in a one-sided sea battle. At the end of the war, a US naval vessel even shot down a civilian Iranian airliner, killing 290 people. The US commander, Captain Rogers, claimed his crew mistook the jet for an Iranian fighter, but even so the plane was fully in Iranian airspace.In a final twist of the diplomatic "knife," then Vice President George H.W. Bush <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/01/george-hw-bush-quotations.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">refused</a>, during a presidential campaign stop, to apologize for the shoot-down. He callously announced "I will never apologize for the United States – I don’t care what the facts are. … I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy." Oh, and as for Captain Rogers – he was awarded the Legion of Merit for "exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service." This, despite the fact that his ship, the USS Vincennes, was actually in Iranian territorial waters when it murdered the innocent civilians onboard the flight.Then, after the 9/11 attacks – which Iran had nothing to do with – Bush the Younger counted Tehran among Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil." Soon enough, Bush II illegally invaded Iraq and toppled America’s one-time friend, Saddam Hussein. By 2003, Iran had American armies stationed on its western (Iraq) and eastern (Afghanistan) borders. It felt genuinely threatened, which was understandable given recent American military actions nearby and the fact that administration neoconservatives were <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4122038?seq=1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">itching</a> for regime change in Iran. "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran," was a common trope around neocon circles in Washington. Given this history, it becomes rather more understandable that Iran would back militias and seek to keep the US military mired in an Iraqi quagmire. If it didn’t, Iran’s leaders worried – they might be next!None of this sordid history should be misconstrued to obviate Iran of responsibility for its own imperfect foreign affairs, but it does add complexity and nuance to a challenging relationship. Remember that the USstill imposes crippling sanctions on Tehran, surrounds Iran with its military bases, and maintains a naval presence along its coastline. Combined with America’s nefarious history of meddling in and threatening Iran, its hard not to empathize with the Iranian point of view.Seen in this light, one understands why an average Iranian sees America as the aggressor in the Mideast. Well, frankly, it sort of is!Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to <a href="http://antiwar.com/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Antiwar.com</a>. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Riders-Baghdad-Soldiers-Civilians/dp/1611687810" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge</a>. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/SkepticalVet" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">@SkepticalVet</a>.</div><div></div></div></div>