Reply #13: Alan Simpson - Lover of Saddam Hussein

[HootieMcBoob]

Saddam Hussein's Republican press agent

During a visit to Iraq in April 1990 (four months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait), Republican Senator from Wyoming Alan Simpson told Hussein:

"I believe that your problems lie with the Western media, and not with the U.S. government. As long as you are isolated from the media, the press and it is a haughty and pampered press -- they all consider themselves political geniuses. That is, the journalists do. They are very cynical. What I advise is that you invite them to come and see for themselves."

Simpson later disputed the overall accuracy of the text, saying Hussein "manipulated and abridged" the transcript. However, the Wyoming legislator conceded that his comments about the press were quoted correctly.

Simpson's statement looks even worse when you consider that in the previous month Saddam had executed an Iraq-born reporter on trumped-up charges of espionage. Farzad Bazoft, who worked for the leftish British newspaper The Observer, had been investigating Saddam's weapons-development programs.

During the Iraq war itself, however, Simpson was among the loudest to condemn that press for "supporting Saddam". Simpson was no longer buddying up to Saddam, but he kept his hatred of the press intact:

"Peter Arnett, the Madman of Baghdad, has been taking direct B-52 carpet-bombing hits the past month from Congressmen, "media watchdog" groups, and assorted froth-mouth loonies from rural Indiana over just exactly how much "propaganda" he spewed out for Saddam Hussein. Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming even said that Arnett was acting as an Iraqi 'sympathizer.'"

http://www.johnjemerson.com/zizka.idiots.htm