Who's Keeping Saddam's
Secret Safe? - The US Media
By Rory O'Connor
MediaChannel.org
12-24-03
Most Americans don't know the hidden history of Saddam's relations
with America, because it has been kept from them by administrations of
both parties and their cronies in the press...
NEW YORK -- In the week since Saddam Hussein was captured, the news
pages and airwaves of the mainstream media have been filled with
instant histories, purporting to tell you everything you need to know
about the evil Iraqi dictator.
Here's what they didn't tell you: Saddam and the United States share a
long and mutually beneficial alliance.
It began as far back as 1959, when the CIA put young Saddam on its
payroll as part of a plot to assassinate then-Iraqi Prime Minister
General Abd al-Karim Qasim. Although the coup failed, Saddam survived
and later succeeded in seizing control of Iraq. As its ruler, he did
business with a succession of United States presidents, from Jimmy
Carter to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
The relationship flourished after Iran's radical Islamic government
kidnapped 52 Americans in Tehran, and began holding Carter's
presidency hostage as well. The Iranians also acted belligerently
toward neighboring Iraq, encouraging its Shiite and Kurdish
populations to rise up. Communicating through Saudi intermediaries,
Carter gave Saddam a 'green light' to invade Iran, and on September
20, 1980, he did. The war continued for eight years and took an
estimated one million lives, as the United States cynically armed and
assisted both sides.
The US- Saddam connection continued throughout Ronald Reagan's
presidency. When Iran appeared to be winning the war, the
Administration began secretly supplying technology that helped Saddam
to build biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction -- which
he used, both against Iran and Iraq's own Kurdish minority.
At the same time, (as revealed by this reporter in a nationally
broadcast PBS Frontline program) our friends the Saudis gave Saddam
more than five billion dollars to help build his nuclear capability --
an arrangement that, according to still-classified documents, both the
CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, headed by then-Secretary of
Defense ***** Cheney, were well aware of.
Current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is also implicated in
Saddam's secret history. As Reagan's special envoy in 1983, Rumsfeld
hand-delivered a letter from the president to Saddam, telling the
Iraqi "that the United States and Iraq shared interests in preventing
Iranian expansion."
Rumsfeld never mentioned Saddam's chemical weapons. Diplomatic
relations between the two countries were restored the next year.
The US coddled Saddam throughout his eight-year war with Iran -- and
beyond. In 1989, President Bush signed a top-secret directive allowing
even closer diplomatic ties and continuing economic assistance to
Iraq, which had been devastated by the war.
Keeping Iraqi markets open to American producers was one major
concern, as demonstrated in April, 1990, when a delegation of
farm-belt senators, led by Robert Dole, met with Saddam. One delegate,
Republican senator Alan Simpson, actually appeased Saddam by
explaining that Iraq's problem was not with the US government, but
with the "haughty and pampered" Western media.
Shortly thereafter, US Ambassador April Glaspie effectively gave
Saddam a green light for another invasion: this time of Kuwait,
telling him "we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your
border disagreement with Kuwait."
The rest, as they say, is history. But most Americans don't know the
hidden history of Saddam's relations with America, because it has been
kept from them by administrations of both parties and their cronies in
the press.
We have been "fed a steady diet of distortions, simplifications, and
outright lies," as one truth- telling reporter, Robert Parry, puts it.
Parry, who as an Associated Press and Newsweek correspondent in the
1980's broke many of the Iran-Contra affair stories, has written
extensively about Saddam's hidden history. His reporting can be found
on his web site Consortiumnews.com, and in the biweekly paper In These
Times.
The truth about Saddam's secret history with the United States is out
there. Like those weapons of mass destruction, you just have to search
for it!
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