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Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America
Published: 30 December 2006



Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.
But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?
No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead - and thousands of Western troops are dead - because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.
In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created.
Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.
And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our "victory" - our "mission accomplished" - who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement.
Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family - his first wife, Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives - had given up hope.
"Whatever could be done has been done - we can only wait for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last hours on earth. His last trial appearance - that wan smile that spread over the mass-murderer's face - showed us which path Saddam intended to walk to the noose.
I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us - and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.
I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own - and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator's soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels.
It was my colleague, Tom Friedman - now a messianic columnist for The New York Times - who perfectly caught Saddam's character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, "part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck". And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity.
But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".
When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there's a thought. So many crimes avenged.
But we will have got away with it


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fis ... 112555.ece

Although I follow and read most of Robert Fisk writing on the Middle East, and I do like and respect this really descent Journalist, However, I do not subscribe to the notion that Saddam was created and destroyed by America.
It is of common and agreeable interests that driven America and Saddam to meet at certain time and space rather than of Ideology and long term commitment. During the seventies Saddam got red of the Iraqi communists that threatened his leadership and régime. This was not done to please the Americans. During the Iraq- Iran war, America helped Saddam against Iran because they wanted to help the Gulf States who were very much threatened by Iran and to secure the cheap supply of oil.
The strategic policy of America was, parallel containment to both Iran and Iraq. The objective was to weaken both countries which were acting against US interests.

Great post kanan

Kanan,

I assume you must agree that Saddam was destroyed by America, therefore you are taking exception to Fisk's arguement that Saddam was 'created' by America. I think you are saying that Saddam was supported by the US when it was in their interest to do so.

What is problematic to many is this latter fact - the US was supporting the regime when most of the horrific crimes against humanity took place. Only when Saddam turned against the economic interests of the US did he become an imminent threat that needed to be dealt with. The charges that the US went after him because he was a tyrant ring hollow when we look at current and historic US foreign policy and actions and count the millions that have been killed by direct US actions (Indo-China, Iraq, Afghanistan) and in actions supported by the US (eg wars in South America).

Therefore, if you respect Fisk as you say you do and only object to his portrayal of Saddam being put in power by the US (something that I think he has a very good point, btw) - I hope you will at least share Fisk's sense of outrage at the hypocrisy of the US actions.

Cheers,
Shafique

kanan wrote:During the seventies Saddam got red of the Iraqi communists that threatened his leadership and régime. This was not done to please the Americans. During the Iraq- Iran war, America helped Saddam against Iran because they wanted to help the Gulf States who were very much threatened by Iran and to secure the cheap supply of oil.

Communists were in fact not just only threating Saddam's leadership, but also the relationship with the former Soviet union. before we start repeating with others are saying, i believe we should know what and whom we are talking about.

Just FYI, Henry Kissinger - at the time Iraq and Iran were in War - stated that: "its the only war that we dont want to have a victorious party". in other words, we need them both to destroy each others.

Help the gulf state!!! thats a good one Dear.. its called: protecting the American interests in the region.. thats the term used by the american Gov.

Kind of says it all

But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead

Great comment in retrospect.

I'm sure Fisk, like all other loons, touted the 650,000-1,000,000 million dead Iraqis from the start of the war to 2005 and 2006.

It just goes to show how seriously one should take these loons' analysis of history when they have no current perception of reality.

To be sure, anyone who believed that 650,000 Iraqis, from 2003-2005, violently died from the war is a loon.

You dug up a thread from almost 4 years ago to try and bad-mouth Robert Fisk! On the Iraq war? And by producing a bar graph that Fisk doesn't mention, or imagining what Fisk may have said..?

Why not actually refer to Fisk's article - which states Saddams crimes, who supported them and the historical fact he was put into power by the US.

But the article is worth another read - so, for that I'm grateful.

It is worth re-reading the accusation:

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbade any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

But for more on the US support for Saddam and why the 'official' figures of arms sales from 1973 hides this fact:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

And on the arms sales:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRI_Arms ... %80%931990

I guess next week we'll have the 'corrected' version of the Napoleonic wars according to Bob Spencer. LOL



Cheers,
Shafique

And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did.

East German companies sold Saddam chemical weapons. But perhaps (unsurprisingly) you've bought into the way Fisk misleads. I guess you won't be coming to Fisk's defense over his loon belief I exposed above.

And as that graph shows, the vast lion share of weapons Saddam received were from the SU, China and France.

Weaponry from the US came in under one percent.

That should show who, if anyone, could be 'blamed' for putting Saddam into power.

And does Fisk actually say the US put him in power...or is this based on your own faulty knowledge of recent history?

And on the arms sales:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIPRI_Arms ... %80%931990

I guess next week we'll have the 'corrected' version of the Napoleonic wars according to Bob Spencer. LOL

I take it you didn't read the link you provided.

You didn't read the information in the links did you?

When you do, let me know. You really shouldn't believe the filtered info you get from Bob Spencer and his pals.

Edit: You then may wish to address the wealth of evidence here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... 93Iraq_war

(Oh, and yes I did indeed read the link about the 'official' arms sales and the explanations and breakdown, but the first link shows the 'unofficial' support according to US govt sources.)

Cheers,
Shafique

Still waiting for you to show where the US supplied Saddam with his chemical weapons.

I'm hoping you're actually reading the Wiki links before you post them.

LOL - as I said, when you have read and addressed the info about US support of Saddam's regime, I'll be happy to discuss this further (including the US supply of chemical weapons).


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... al_exports

[I fully expect I won't need to reply again in this thread - but will do so if you have any argument against the info in the links provided]

Cheers,
Shafique

Oh dear, you're starting to embarrass yourself more than usual (if that's even possible). I can't find any reference to the US government supplying chemical weapons to Iraq in your first link, but perhaps you only linked to it in the hope no one would read it and therefore you could 'win' the argument.

Your second link talks about the US supplying strains of *bacteria* (not chemicals) which Iraq subsequently used in the civilian sector for vaccination and medical research (I'm not aware of Saddam using biological weapons against his enemies, so it's a moot issue in any event). There's no information to suggest that the US supplied Iraq with chemical weapons, let alone that the US was a primary supplier as Robert Fisk would mislead his readers when he claims that 'we' (being the US and Britain?) armed Saddam with chemical weapons.

So, again, instead of posting links you didn't read yourself prior to linking, show that the US supplied Hussein with chemical weapons.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/nyt-041303.gif