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

[IndianaGreen]

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.

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.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.

"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"

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

[cyclezealot]

1. vital column

thanks for posting.

[Gregorian]

2. Several miscellaneous thoughts

Fisk is a gem.

Saddam isn't the only one. And besides, we know most of the information already.

Bill Krystol has a smile that betrays his evil.

The Bush family should have been stopped long long ago.

They are spending OUR money doing their war. First they trashed the country with Saddam. Then the horribly damaging sanctions (which only hurt the sick, poor, and children. Nice going assholes!). And now they're literally exploding bombs in their land. And it's OUR money they're doing it with. I don't think I'm getting my sentiment across the way it felt when I realized this. There are many ways to realize the same thing. What I feel is that they are spending our money all while doing something illegal with it. That alone should be enough to land them all in jail.

The legal system doesn't work. Or it works too well. Pinochet had a team of lawyers who nitpicked away at the tiniest errors of the case. But he was the man who ordered deaths. Eventually he was convicted. Half a lifetime later.

First, all of the members of the PNAC should just simply be tossed into a cell. I almost want to do away with due process, yet I know good justice doesn't work that way. When you see the hypocrisy, it makes one want to suspend the rules and do what is right. Not a lot different than the cases of Limbaugh compared to Tommy Chong. Trivial in comparison, but an example of how one gets off and one does time for a noncrime.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Excellent post, Gregorian

Pinochet escaped justice. The last chance we had to put in front of a court of law was when he was in the UK, but Tony Blair let him leave the country despite Spain's request for extradition.

The law must apply equally to all if it is to survive. Nothing but a Nuremberg war crimes trial can redeem our nation from all the crimes it has committed in the name of "freedom and democracy."

More Iraqis have been killed by US in 3 years than they were in 25 years of Saddam's rule.

[cyberpj]

7. More Iraqis have been killed by US in 3 years than they were in 25 years of Saddam's rule.

Thank you. Link for this info? (I'd like to share it with a conservative officemate and a source would be helpful.)

[struggle4progress]

3. Dead men tell no tales.

[IndianaGreen]

8. What became of Iraqi government records of its dealings with US?

I am sure that they are records from the Iraqi government containing all the gory details of Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad and all the deals made between the US and Saddam. The US has custody of those records. What became of them? How can we get the US government to make them public? Will the Maliki regime conspire to keep those records secret in order to protect Bush?

[Jcrowley]

4. K&R n/t

[jazzjunkysue]

5. K&R& saved on my hard drive. Thanks. n/t.