Saddam: The monster we helped create

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The monster we helped create By Robert Scheer
For the White House, a complete investigation into those who abetted Saddam's crimes against humanity would prove an embarrassing two-edged sword.

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That administration's eye was not on the carnage from chemical weapons but rather the profit to be obtained from the flow of oil. In a later meeting with an Iraqi representative, as recorded in the minutes, "Eagleburger explained that because of the participation of Bechtel in the Aqaba pipeline, the Secretary of State is keeping completely isolated from the issue. Iraq should understand that this does not imply a lack of high-level interest." (Shultz had been chief executive of Bechtel before joining the Reagan administration and is currently a director of the company, which is signing contracts for work in Iraq as fast as U.S. taxes can be allocated.)

Minutes of that meeting and others in which the United States ignored Saddam's use of banned weapons while extending support to the dictator mock the moral high ground assumed by George W. Bush in defense of his invasion. If, as Bush II says, Saddam acted as a "Hitler" while "gassing his own people," during the 1980s, we were fully aware and implicitly approving, via economic and military aid, of his most nefarious deeds.

Saddam's crimes were committed on our watch, when he was a U.S. ally, and we knowingly looked the other way.



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