The real reason Saddam was dispatched

[MN ChimpH8R]

with such speed:

Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him

How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal

Published: 31 December 2006

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

More at:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2114403.ece

[kath]

1. K & R. Fisk is SO good at telling it like it is. Very important article.

more excerpts:
Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

<snip>

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

[earlybelle]

17. Maybe Saddam was not the only one who knew the secrets. Where is Aziz?

Or was Aziz really a double agent working for the US who helped get Saddam?

[Fridays Child]

2. Saved to read, later. But it WAS awfully convenient that Saddam...

...was tried for the Dujail crimes before they tried him for gassing the Kurds. Were they afraid that too much information would be revealed about how Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush I were criminal co-conspirators in that grisly enterprise?

[kath]

4. you bet your ass they were afraid:

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs - the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows - and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

[Totallybushed]

delete, dupe

[Totallybushed]

3. You know, it could well

be so. Probably is, in fact.

I still can't be sorry that this man no longer pollutes the planet.

[NNN0LHI]

8. Does it bother you our taxes are paying the retirements of his co-conspirators?

So they can live the fine life?

Or does that not bother you as much?

Don

[Totallybushed]

10. I'm not sure

that I understand the question?

Does it bother me that what? Bush isn't going to jail or the gallows? Is that what you are asking me? Or that my taxes are being misused? Of course it does?

But what does one have to do with the other?

As for Saddam's death, well that doesn't bother me at all.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. The only surprise is that he wasn't "suicided" in a cheap motel.

[shance]

6. They aren't "our" secrets. They are Bush & Co secrets.

Lets be clear.

[WillyT]

7. K & R !!!

:kick:

[Qutzupalotl]

9. K&R

That was one fast trapdoor.

[Bozita]

11. Fisk is simply the best English-speaking reporter in that part of the world

Amen.

[fortyfeetunder]

12. And there are no other witnesses to this?

I can't believe Saddam Hussein was the only one who had any details. Probably a prime witness, but not the only witness.

[Selatius]

13. Many of his henchmen are either dead, victim of these militias no doubt, or in prison about to die.

I cite, of course, the infamous deck of cards the US released with the names and pictures of top Iraqi leaders the US wanted when Iraq was invaded.

[exlrrp]

15. What about the American witnesses?

Saddam's death doesn't necessarily end all lines of investigation and neither would the death of any other Iraqis. There were American parties to these agreements--what about them? The problem is that, immoral aand reprehensible as selling the makings for WMD's to Saddam was, it was probably not illegal.Whats to stop the new Democratic Congress from calling Rummy to acccount (he was Reagan's Special envoy to the Middle east who pimped for American intertsts and set up these deals) abot this? Bush couldn't claim executive privilege on this, this was before his time.
Fisck ascribes all motives in this lynching to Americans--yet the Iraqis were the ones who did it. Maybe they had motives of their own? Maybe they didn't give a shit about all the 1980's stuff, took it as read, and just thought they were better off with Saddam dead.

[Selatius]

19. There's no political will to prosecute Americans involved in the crime.

The thought of prosecuting major members of the Reagan administration, some of them still in power, for doing something such as green-lighting the sale of anthrax and botulinum cultures to the Iraqi regime is one thought many Democrats probably don't have the political fortitude to have out in public. It's probably easier to say, "Let's move on," then it is to dig up a bitter past. I'm not saying whether it is right or not, but I'm saying Dems probably don't have it in them to go the whole nine yards and see exactly how much blood is on the hands of the US government during the Iran-Iraq War.

[Dangerman]

14. Those bastards want Saddam dead...

So George H.W. Bush and his cronies could live their lives happily ever after.

They'll won't get away with this.

[Recursion]

16. *cough* nobody look at Milosovic *cough*

another dictator the great powers used, turned on, and dispatched quickly.

[Jcrowley]

18. K&R n/t