Juan Cole writes about the "Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein". An excerpt:
Saddam Hussain was one of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants, though the death toll he racked up is probably exaggerated by his critics. The reality was bad enough.
The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one's mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad.
3 comments :
All of this may or may not be true, and there's no way to know. It amounts to nothing more than rumor and hearsay. This is a prime example of the internet as echo chamber. If we take the time to track down the first nugget of info by clicking through to the initial UPI article, we find that it's based on comments by "current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity". In other words, there's no way to check the facts. After that, you lose me. I'll say whatever, as long as I can remain anonymous. Oh, and I'm a former official of the Iraqi Baath party.
They were often quick to hang Saddam. They charged him with one of his relatively minor offenses, rather than the genocide against the Kurds. It seems to me they executed a cover-up here, particularly if you compare it to Nuremburg or the Milosevic trial.
Basically, hanging Saddam for what they did, would be like hanging Hitler for the night of the broken glass.
The National Security Archives at George Washington University are, as always, a good place for more information on the relationship between Saddam Hussein and US officials like Donald Rumsfeld.
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