Saddam put himself into power in a putsch in July 1979. As to who supported him and helped keep him in power - particularly after they knew what he was, they ought to apologize for that. But they won't.
And it remains untrue that Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years..
we all have our little biases Glad to see you admit you have biases.
If you're looking for fair and balanced, Said Aribush's 2000 interview with PBS was closer to that than the UPI article you posted. You might like it a little as there is criticism of the US there. But there is also:
While he was in Cairo, there's some belief that he may have had contact with Americans, with the CIA. What can you tell us about that?
There is very good reason to believe that Saddam Hussein was in contact with the American embassy in Cairo when he was in exile. This is not strange, because alliances of convenience were taking place every day, and the United States was afraid that Iraq, under Kassem, might be going communist. So was the Ba'ath Party. So they had a common enemy, a common target -- the possibility of a communist take-over of Iraq.
So there is a record of Saddam visiting the American embassy frequently, and there is a record of the Egyptian security people telling him not to do that. However, one must remember that at that time, Saddam was a minor official of the Ba'ath Party. He was not terribly important. And he was really following in the footsteps of other people who are much more important.
There was a coup in Iraq in 1963. What do we know about the U.S. involvement in that coup?
The U.S. involvement in the coup against Kassem in Iraq in 1963 was substantial. There is evidence that CIA agents were in touch with army officers who were involved in the coup. There is evidence that an electronic command center was set up in Kuwait to guide the forces who were fighting Kassem. There is evidence that they supplied the conspirators with lists of people who had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success. The relationship between the Americans and the Ba'ath Party at that moment in time was very close indeed. And that continued for some time after the coup. And there was an exchange of information between the two sides. For example it was one of the first times that the United States was able to get certain models of Mig fighters and certain tanks made in the Soviet Union. That was the bribe. That was what the Ba'ath had to offer the United States in return for their help in eliminating Kassem.
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However, the communists are hardly thrown out and not long after, they turn to Saddam, and he personally leads a delegation to Moscow, and there's a development of a relationship between the two. What game was he playing?
Well, alliances of convenience don't last very long. The Ba'ath Party was committed to certain things which American foreign policy could not tolerate. In this particular case it lasted a very short time, really a matter of two weeks. And Saddam got rid of all of the pro-American elements in the government and he asserted his authority on the country. He was not the president. He was the second man, after a relation of his from Tikrit, President Ahmed Bakr. But what happened immediately after that is the things they needed, they couldn't get from the United States anymore. They needed help economically. They needed arms. And the United States were not in the business of openly supplying arms to Arab countries to re-equip themselves for another round of fighting. That was the major issue between the two sides. Saddam knew he could get the arms from Russia and he journeyed to Russia -- this was his first trip outside Iraq, outside of exile of course -- and he got what he wanted. And the alliance of convenience disintegrated as they always do.
So, there was a new alliance, this time with the Soviets.
In 1972, Iraq and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation. They wanted to seal the cooperation taking place between them in a formal alliance. The reason Saddam signed that treaty of friendship and cooperation was because that obligated the local communist party, which was very strong, to cooperate with the Ba'ath Party, which was not so strong at that time.
Of course the Russians loved an opportunity to have a hold on Iraq and they signed the treaty and told the local communist party to join the Iraqi government. That alliance internally did not last very long. But the external one was on and off for a very long time. And the Soviet Union at one point thought Iraq was a more important ally than Egypt. Its army always acquitted itself better than the Egyptian army. It was a wealthy country that didn't need a lot of aid, like Egypt. And it was the gateway to the Gulf, to oil. It represented a more immediate threat to the West's lifeline than Egypt did.
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Why were you working for the regime of Saddam?
There is a whole generation of people like me. We are about the same age as Saddam -- I'm two years older actually -- who believe that is where the Arab dream was -- in Iraq. Iraq had wealth, it had population, it had prospects, it had a strong army. They were not backward -- and I will use the word "backward" -- like some of the oil-producing countries. They offered us a future. And we took that chance. We were enamored with what Saddam was doing. Make no mistake about it. Anybody who tells you otherwise didn't know what Saddam was about. He's not telling the truth.
We knew Saddam was tough. But the balance was completely different then. He was also delivering. The Iraqi people were getting a great deal of things that they needed and wanted and he was popular. He eliminated people here and there. With time, as with all dictators, the balance switched. And all we saw of Saddam was elimination and very little benefit to the people.
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Regarding the building of weapons of mass destruction, when it came to an atomic weapon, why did you still believe that that was okay?
I don't think there was any Arab in the '70s who did not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon. They wanted him to have military parity. Israel had atomic weapons. The Arabs wanted an Arab country to have atomic weapons. Iraq was the head of the pack and therefore all Arabs supported Saddam Hussein. I have news for you: I don't think there are many Arabs at this moment in time -- you can exclude me out of this statement at this moment in time -- who do not want Saddam Hussein to have an atomic weapon now. They don't look at it as weapons of mass destruction. They look at it as transfer of technology. That the Arabs have done it, the Arabs have joined the modern world. That's the way they see it. And that pleases them. The fact that Saddam Hussein eliminates people, kills innocent men, uses a chemical weapon against his own people, is actually in a way secondary to this image. The Iraqi people are concerned with the latter. They suffer because of the latter. But the Arab people outside of Iraq do not suffer because Saddam Hussein eliminates people, because he doesn't eliminate them. He eliminates Iraqis.
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And to what extent did you regret your involvement with the regime, not just this time, but also back in the 1970s?
Well, people who support dictators always come round to regretting it, unfortunately. In the 1970s, we supported him because the Arabs were defeated and humiliated in 1967, and we wanted one Arab country to move ahead and be strong, economically and militarily. And we saw Iraq as that one country. That's why we supported him. We were not blind to what he was.
The scale tipped in other directions. He became more dictatorial with time. He eliminated more people with time. And he stopped delivering the benefits to the Iraqi people with time. This sounds like a German talking about aiding and abetting the, rise of Hitler -- it is pretty much the same -- or somebody helping Stalin get there. But, in my case, it was better late than never and I walked out.
But, we had no one to look to. There was a vacuum in Arab leadership, particularly after Nasser died. There was no Arab leader that my generation could look to. And suddenly there was this fellow in Iraq in a very serious way. He represented potential. And we loved the idea of him being there, because we looked at Egypt, it wasn't working. We looked at Saudi Arabia, they were in another century. We looked at Arab countries, they are not capable of anything. Iraq had the potential. Suddenly had a man at the helm who could realise that potential. And that was Saddam Hussein. And believe me, he came very close, let's make no mistake about that. Saddam Hussein came very close to realizing the potential of Iraq and dragging it into the 20th century.
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