- 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...
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- 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.
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- Here's what they didn't tell you: Saddam and the United
States share a long and mutually beneficial alliance.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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
Dick Cheney, were well aware of.
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- 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."
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- Rumsfeld never mentioned Saddam's chemical weapons. Diplomatic
relations between the two countries were restored the next year.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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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- © MediaChannel.org, 2003. All rights reserved.
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- http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert122.shtml
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