Truthout: Puppet Kills Puppet

[marmar]

Puppet Kills Puppet
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 01 January 2007

Shortly after Saddam Hussein was hanged at a US installation in Baghdad, the New York Times called him a "Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence." The Washington Post dubbed Hussein an "Architect of ruthless Iraqi dictatorship." President Bush said, "Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial."

Curiously absent from US mainstream media accounts were a few additional details. Saddam was indeed a ruthless dictator, true, but specifically ruthless on behalf of his benefactors: US multinational petroleum and arms dealers and their patrons well-placed in Washington.

As long as Saddam obediently protected and facilitated the economic and territorial interests of the American (and European) colonialists who backed him, his ruthlessness was their profit, and clearly tolerable. When Saddam said he needed assistance to quell internal resistance, he got all the help he needed in the form of cash and training for his security forces. If that meant 143 Shiites received "red cards," that was no problem for his backers.

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries ousted the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and with him foreign corporate domination. He was replaced by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who hated the US. None other than Donald Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad as Reagan's "special envoy," to make sure Hussein understood that he had a friend in Washington. Saddam reciprocated by promising to defeat the very same Iranian revolutionaries. What followed was a long, bloody, regionally devastating stalemate.

Puppet exits the reservation.

Saddam was less obedient than Reagan and Rumsfeld had hoped. Hussein dreamed of "reuniting Mesopotamia," a plan not in keeping with the designs for the region held by his foreign partners. Saddam decided to hedge his bets and began accepting favors from the Soviets as well, which had a chilling effect on his relationship with Washington, to be sure. However vile and objectionable Saddam Hussein's methods were, he clung to his dream of ridding his region of foreign domination. Saddam Hussein's final words were, "Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians."

The game came to a screeching halt shortly after midnight August 2, 1990, as Saddam's army crashed into the territory of the US-Western protectorate of Kuwait. It had become time for George H. W. Bush to dispatch the former puppet, and the price would be high for the human instruments of war. ......(more)

The rest of the article is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010107Y.shtml

[dave_p]

1. No puppet

Saddam was no puppet. True, the US acquiesced in his actions until 1990 and encouraged some (the absurd Iran war, most obviously). But you've only to read the exchanges to see this was no one-way street. There was collusion, just as between the US, Israel and Khomeini's Iran in 1986. But Saddam never made a secret of his willingness to do business with whoever was useful. He and Washington were for a time useful to each other.