Call it leftist propaganda, but it is an undisputed fact that the U.S. created Saddam Hussein, armed him, and allowed him rain chemical weapons down on Iran with our blessing. If we take care of Hussein now, I guarantee you we will be talking about going back there in another 10-15 years to do it all over again.
Actually, I will dispute that here and now.
The United States did not create Saddam. That is a leftist canard. Saddam came up the old Baathist Party way, through assassination and outright murder of his colleagues. We had nothing to do with it.
At the time of Saddam's ascension, we had very little influence among the Baathist generals. The Soviet Embassy was the most important foreign post in those days.
Most of Saddam's weapons, if not 95 percent of them, came from Soviet war stocks. When they invaded Iran, they were driving T-55's, T-62's, and BMP's. Their aircraft were MiG 21's and 23's. When Saddam wanted to get some Western goodies, the CIA ran interference for him and help him arrange shipments with such upstanding citizens as the Greek arms dealer Sarkis Soganalian.
We did look the other way when Saddam gassed the Iranians and the Kurds. That was a fatal mistake on our part.
Be Seeing You,
Chris