NP US & Hussein

[pynchonoid]

" [...] look at how the United States characterized
and treated Saddam Hussein himself, before August
1990, when he was serving U.S. interests. It was in
this period that his worst atrocities took place --
his invasion of Iran, his use of chemical weapons
against both Iran and Iraqi Kurds, his Anfal campaign
of slaughter against the Kurdish population. Again,
not only did Washington refrain from denouncing him as
a monster, it provided him with economic aid, military
intelligence, diplomatic support, and equipment that
could be (and presumably was) used for his weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) programs. Indeed, when the
Ba'ath party (later to be headed by Saddam Hussein)
first came to power in a bloody coup back in 1963, the
coup had U.S. backing and, reportedly, the United
States provided the Ba'athists with names of leftists
to murder (see Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn,
Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein,
New York: HarperPerennial. 1999, p. 74).

Two of Hussein's atrocities deserve special mention.
In 1975, the United States which, together with Iran
and Israel, had been aiding a Kurdish revolt in Iraq,
abruptly cut off its support for the Kurds when the
Shah of Iran, Washington's close ally, struck a deal
with Iraq. As Baghdad turned its full wrath on the
Kurds, many of the latter sought U.S. assistance in
obtaining asylum. In closed-session testimony,
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained why the
U.S. rejected their appeal for help: "covert action,"
he declared, "should not be confused with missionary
work" (Select Committee on Intelligence, 1/19/76 [Pike
Report] in Village Voice, 2/16/76, pp. 85, 87n465,
88n471; William Safire, Safire's Washington, New York:
Times Books, 1980, p. 333).

In 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Hussein
ruthlessly suppressed uprisings -- encouraged by U.S.
propaganda broadcasts -- by Kurds in the north and
Shi'ites in the south. U.S. officials permitted
Hussein to use helicopters (in fact, U.S. warplanes
flew overhead watching the Iraqi helicopters carry out
their slaughter) and refused to allow the rebels
access to the vast store of Iraqi weapons that the
U.S. military had captured.

So, yes, Saddam Hussein is a monster in moral terms.
But that is not his crime in the eyes of U.S.
officials, for many of Hussein's most monstrous deeds
were committed with U.S. backing. For the U.S. he only
became a monster when he would not follow orders.
[...] "

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2448


 


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