Neil Clark: The war we never should have fought

[dudeness]

December 17, 2003
It didn't take long for the capture of Saddam Hussein to be hailed as a great triumph by coalition leaders and the pro-war lobby.

The news, we are told, will be a powerful boost for President George W. Bush's re-election prospects, and will increase public support for the hard-line positions of John Howard and Tony Blair.

In the short term, this may well be true. But if we look beyond the next few weeks, there are strong grounds for believing that last weekend's dramatic developments will only add to the coalition's problems.

First, the unpalatable fact for those crowing most loudly over Hussein's capture is that the worst of the crimes he is likely to be charged with took place at a time when he was enthusiastically sponsored by the West. If Hussein does receive a fair and open trial, as both Bush and the Iraqi Governing Council have promised, it will surely reveal just how much support, both moral and material, the Iraqi dictator received from Washington and its allies during his murderous heydays of the 1980s.

Details of how the US encouraged Hussein to attack Iran in 1980 and start a war that would cost a million lives, and how the US Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad in December 1983, not only to assure the Iraqi dictator of continued US support in the Iranian war, but also to tout the case of a specific US co-operation for building a new pipeline in his country.

snip.http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8183793^7583,00.html

[jbfam4]

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