Saddam’s Unindicted Co-Conspirator: Donald Rumsfeld 
by Norman Solomon
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 7, 2006



 

Saddam Hussein has received a death sentence for crimes he committed more than a year before Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand in Baghdad. Let’s reach back into history and extract these facts:

*  On Dec. 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld “visited Iraq in what U.S. officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving U.S. relations with that country.”

*  Two days later, the New York Times cited a “senior American official” who “said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis.”

*  On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: “American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name.” Washington had some goodies for Saddam’s regime, the Times account noted, including “agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million.” And while “no results of the talks have been announced” after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, “Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq.”

*  A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a New York Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the U.S. government “granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years.” The story recalled that “Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here,” and the dispatch mentioned in passing that “State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state.”

*  Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld’s December 1983 visit with Saddam – who went on to use poison gas later in the decade, actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration. 

*  As the most senior U.S. official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan’s point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam’s military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to U.S. intelligence sources. “In response to the gassing,” journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, “sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the U.S. Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most U.S. technology. The measure was killed by the White House.”

These are facts that the public should know about the current defense secretary of the United States.

Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published in paperback this summer. For information, go to: www.normansolomon.com.

Related Article

* Dead Dictator Talking by Ahmed Amr

Other Recent Articles by Norman Solomon

* Bush vs. Ahmadinejad: A TV Debate We’ll Never See
* The Mythical End to the Politics of Fear
* Applauding While Lebanon Burns
* The Most Dangerous Alliance in the World
* Media Memorial Day
* When “Diplomacy” Means War
* How Long Will MoveOn.org Fail to Oppose Bombing Iran?
* Digital Hype: A Dazzling Smokescreen?
* Mahatma Bush
* Cheney’s Dodge: Taking Responsibility
* The Iran Crisis -- “Diplomacy” as a Launch Pad for Missiles
* Smothering the King Legacy With Kind Words
* Other Shoe Dropping on Classified Leaks and Journalists
* The Crime of Giving Orders
* Media New Year’s Resolutions for 2006
* A New Phase of Bright Spinning Lies About Iraq
* Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2005
* Hidden in Plane Sight: US Media Dodging Air War in Iraq
* The Woodward Scandal Should Not Blow Over
* Getting Out of Iraq
* Axis of Hardliners, From Tehran to Washington
* After the Libby Indictment, the Press Is Acquitting Itself
* At the White House, the Spin Doctor Is Ill
* Media at a Huge Crossroads, 25 Years After Reagan’s Triumph
* Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State
* What’s Happening Out of Camera Range?
* The News Media and the Antiwar Movement
* Dodging the Costs of the Warfare State
* The Occasional Media Ritual of Lamenting the Habitual
* 9/11 and the Manipulation of the USA
* The National Guard Belongs in New Orleans and Biloxi, Not Baghdad
* Triangulation for War 
* The Iraq War and MoveOn
* Blaming the Antiwar Messengers
* Rage Against the Killing of the Light
* Media Flagstones Along a Path to War on Iran
* The Incredible Blight of TV Punditry
* In Praise of Kevin Benderman
* “Wagging the Puppy” -- and Unleashing the Deadly Dogs of War
* Thomas Friedman, Liberal Sadist?
* General Westmoreland's Death Wish and the War in Iraq
* Sidney Blumenthal vs. Norman Solomon on Karl Rove, the Democrats and Iraq
 

HOME