How do you squeeze baseless assertions, factual errors and misconceptions into one little post?
Hussein always was a dictator, but we put him in power, in I believe 1964.
Wrong. Saddam was a law student in Cairo 1962-1963 and returned to Iraq that year after the Baath Party came to power. That gov't fell in Nov. 1963. Saddam was jailed in Iraq in 1964 for participation in a Baathist coup attempt and escaped in 1966. A relative of his, Gen. Ahmad Hassan al Bakr, siezed power in 1968 and Saddam was appointed to the ruling Revolutionary Command Council in 1969. He became Vice President in 1972 and President in 1979, after "encouraging" Bakr to resign "for health reasons." He then proceeded to slaughter his opponents in the Baath Party, accusing them of plotting a coup, to consolidate his power.
Sorry to contradict, but he's a wholly home-grown despot.
"Him governing Iraq served our national security interests for quite a long time, until he invaded Kuwait in fact."
He invaded Iran in 1980, not awfully long after we finally got our embassy workers back, but the US didn't take sides until Iran was on the verge of taking Basra in 1982 and potentially destabilizing friendly states in the region like Kuwait, Saudi and others. At that point, we took sides. Enemy of our enemy stuff. His was a purely secular government in any case and clearly opposed the kind of theocratic state Iran had become and we were worried about at the time.
We had valid reasons for working with him at the time, but that is irrelevant now. Situations change.
"As I understand it we were fully aware of his little not-nice traits like gassing the Kurds (I read somewhere that we supplied the chemicals for that). Certainly we helped in any way we could..."
"Fully aware" meaning implicit approval? That's what your statement implies. I think you'd better find some evidence to back up a nasty accusation like that. What I've read indicates that the US gov't found out about the Iraqi attacks on the Kurds, who were allied with Iran, after they happened toward the end of the war in 1988. Congress considered sanctions, but they went nowhere. Saddam was still viewed as the lessor evil in the region at the time, but again, situations change. |
