We weren't always enemies with Iraq. Saddam had good reason to believe that when he invaded Kuwait America could be bought off. Here is the link plus excerpts which provide some history on the basis of Saddam's misunderstanding about us.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from...ent/2694885.stm

Saddam offered America a deal:

We keep Kuwait, he said, though we are not sure yet what to do with it. And if you Americans don't make a fuss, we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement about cheap oil supplies and, in addition, we Iraqis will promise not to threaten Saudi Arabia.

Why did Saddam believe the United States would be amenable to such an offer? It was not simply that he was surrounded by terrified yes men. It also reflects the way he understood his relationship with the United States.


Iraq's 'special relationship'

The coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power in 1963 was celebrated by the United States.

The CIA had a hand in it. They had funded the Ba'ath Party - of which Saddam Hussein was a young member - when it was in opposition.

US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time.
"I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them," he told me.

"The CIA were definitely involved in that coup. We saw the rise of the Ba'athists as a way of replacing a pro-Soviet government with a pro-American one and you don't get that chance very often.

"Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us". This happy co-existence lasted right through the 1980s.

When the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran in 1979, America set about turning Saddam Hussein into Our Man in the Gulf Region. Washington gave Baghdad intelligence support. President Reagan sent a special presidential envoy to Baghdad to talk to Saddam in person.

The envoy's name was Donald Rumsfeld.

Blind eye

Everyone knew that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian conscripts.

When 5,000 Kurds were gassed at Halabja in 1988, Kurdish leaders turned to America for help. Mahmoud Osman was one of them.

"I couldn't get any of my friends in the State Department to return my calls," he said. "They told me we cannot listen to you when you talk about chemical weapons because we do not want to jeopardise our relations with the Iraqis".

So this also explains why Saddam got it all so badly wrong in 1991.
America and the West had turned a blind eye to everything he had done for over a decade.

I agree that U.S. support helped Saddam Hussein gain power. However this article you cite does not seem to back up the tone of your post. I read comments about a dictator who consulted only his family members when making policy. Then after he was told by the U.S. that his invasion of Kuwait was not acceptable he told us we would stop whining when he sold us a sea of oil. This was not realistic foreign policy and this article says that top advisors could not come out and tell Hussein that he was making a mistake. It says that a general was fired for saying the Iraqis could not defeat the United States.

Fiore Cartoon
It is the one titled Whoops.

Sadam Hussein was never a "friend" of AMerica, like Great Britain or Israel are the US's friends. During the 1970's many of the Middle East countries, Iraq included played the US off against Russia, Kuwait especially was good at this tactic. All this prattle about Iraq using US weapons against Kuwait and against the US during Desert Storm is insignificant. THe Iraqis were supplied weapons by the Soviets and CHinese as well. Because of oil, the superpowers were always trying to get in Iraq's good graces. Now that the Russians are no longer a superpower, the US doens't have to play up the ante in its dealings with Saudi ARabia, Kuwait and Iraq. This gives us tremendous advantage when dealing with Iraq, and with North Korea as well. I can't stand all this hindsight being used today, mostly by liberals, to try to blame the first Bush Administration for Sadam HUssein. The Democrats in Congress wanted to sit on their hands back in 1990, it is so easy to be a fan and criticize, when the real players are the ones doing the job.








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I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but SH came to power by keeping his own counsel and not always listening to his advisors. He had plenty of evidence from his past experience that despite warnings to the contrary US would ultimately go along with his program. They always had before.

HeatherRob,

The events I refer to most happened during the Reagan administration. My main point usually is that it is frustrating to see that often when you overturn the stones, the United States previous foreign policy helped cause the problems that we later have to deal with. Maybe we should stop sending guns around the world. There are too many Husseins, bin Laden, and Noriegas our there.

In politics "friendship" is just a euphemism for mutual self-interest. It was a Brittish political leader, whose name escapes me, who stated succinctly his attitude toward relations with other countries, "We have no friends, only interests."



Strange that you want to make this a partisan issue. Our "friendly" policy toward SH existed through a variety of administrations. Apparently our going along with Saddam's gassing attacks doesn't bother you a bit.

The fact that we cause our own problems by arming fighters and governments in the Middle East may not seem important to you but it's a major problem to the rest of the world and resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths on 9/11. If you don't like hindsite and history you should turn your attention to our 'friend' Israel. Look closely at how giving military supplies and money to the Israeli army and ignoring the problems of the Palestinians is causing deep resentment from every corner of the world.

Keep in mind that Sharon is using our weapons to kill civilians with no intereference by the U.S. Keep in mind that the U.N. cannot enforce the resolutions that Israel ignores because we will not allow it. As the death tolls rise we are being blamed as much as Israel itself. What is happening in Israel is a preview of our future occupying Iraq. We are one and the same as far as the M.E. is concerned. Their enemies are ours and vice versa.

Keep in mind that the stack of dead Israeli civilians is getting pretty high.


With Iraq was being supported by us, we were doing what we thought was right at the time. When you do what you think is right people will hate you. When you do nothing people will hate you. When you travel the world brown-nosing whatever country comes along.... people will still hate you.

Blaming the U.S. for all the things that happens to us is not only ludicrous, it is unsupportable. All those countries that hate us, supposedly over the Israeli issue, should put together their oil money and help the Palestinians instead of paying them to have their children blow themselves up, like Iraq has done.

Sometimes occupying other people's land gets you killed.



So what does that have to do with the price of eggs in China?



Who is blaming the U.S. for our bad weather?



We are responsible for what WE do. And what WE are doing is subsidizing Israel's illegal West Bank occupation policy. We are on record, having voted for UN resolution 242, as requiring Israel return to her pre-1967 border as part of a negotiated peace. Israel refuses under ANY circumstances to honor that resolution, even as part of a peace negotiation. To repeat, we are subsidizing her flouting of that resolution that we are on record as supporting. How does that self-defeating hypocrisy grab you?

Maybe we better clean up our own act before we tell other nations to clean up theirs.

I think P Ex was trying to answer your original question, which I understood to be about US/Iraq relations. If we are wrong, please clarify.



Perhaps we should keep the Israel/Palestine discussions to Those pesky UN resolutions, What to do about Israel and/or Yassar Arafat, Terrorist or not?, The U. S. definition of terrorism.

I couldn't find an answer in his statement, just a platitude that lacked anything to hang your hat on.

I said "trying"

(Edit to add:) Despite the cliched nature of P Ex's post, there is a bit of truth in what he said. For nearly three centuries the US has made allies and then yanked the rug out from under them when it suited us. We Americans seem to tolerate this

I am inclined to agree with Rob's statement. We were never a "friend" to Iraq, we simply sold them arms, at the same time, selling arms to Iran in hopes that they'd destroy each other completely. Isn't it funny now that both countries are included in the "Axis of Evil"? We 'jumpstarted' their weapons programs, and now they have their weapons pointed at us. This really shouldn't come as any great shock to anyone. I suspect that any two western countries would respond similarly if conned in this way.

I don't suggest that the US is totally to blame for everything they've done with their weapons, but I do suggest that if we had kept our nose out of their conflict, neither country would be significant enough to be involved in an axis of anything.

I find this foolishness that states we are somehow at fault for all the world’s ills simply because sometime in the past we were an ally with Saddam, no matter the level of commitment.

Using THIS flawed logic we are wholly responsible for Hitler since we were a trading partner and ostensibly an ally before WWII started! Or are responsible for all the murders Stalin perpetrated since we were an ally with him against Hitler!!

If we are expected to peer into our crystal ball to decipher just who in the future might turn into a ‘’bad guy’’ or base our policy on who is a bad guy now we would never be able deal with ANYONE! Remember, England was our dire enemy for the first 50 years we were a country! They fought a war with us TWICE!

No, allies are created by CURRENT situations. Not past or future ones.

Just so I'm clear on this, Bush is wrong. Saddam is not evil he is just our "nonfriend" of the moment. Back when he was gassing Kurds and Iranians he was our friend because he was gassing Iranians, our nonfriends of the time, and we kinda didn't want to upset him about his gassing the Kurds, so he would not be inhibited in gassing the Iranians who we wanted dead REAL BAD. Good strategic thinking I say.

I think I'm getting the picture. With your help I'll get over my foolishness and political immaturity. I just don't quite understand why we don't hedge our bets. With that "axis of evil" country nearby, Iran - whose mullahs keep running around calling us the "Great Satan", it seems they could become like our serious unfriends again. Don't we need to keep our former friend Saddam in a reasonably good mood so we could recycle him as a strategic ally if need be?

I'm just trying to be realistic.

Iraq was never our "ally." Iraq was a buffer for Saudi Arabia and Israel against Iran, which was thought of as a real danger. Our agreements with Saudi Arabia included the pact that an attack on SA would be treated exactly as if it were an attack on the USA. Hussein, with his secular government, no matter how iron-fisted, was allowed to remain in power because he was so opposed to Iran. I imagine that the reason we chose containment rather than annihilation at the end of the Gulf War was because of this. There was a worry that he could be replaced by fundamentalists in line with Terhan's government. A united Iraq-Iran under an Ayatollah would have been a huge threat to our gulf allies. We helped arm Hussein because 1) the arms trade is immensely profitable, and 2) a strong Iraqi army would be more successful at holding off Iran.

Of course, this balance of power really brings to light how horribly reprehensible the Iran-Contra scandal was.