Oil-Slick Jim Moves In

[RedEarth]

Oil-Slick Jim Moves In

By Greg Palast, AlterNet
April 26, 2004

Editor's Note: This piece is excerpted from the new edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Plume), by Greg Palast.


I usually avoid the New York Times, but lately it's become a compulsion, though only for the new daily column titled, "Names of the Dead." Today's listing: "DERVISHI, Ervin, 21, Pfc, Army. Fort Worth."


I'm not one of those cynics who thought Bush sent us into to Iraq for the oil. To me, Saddam Hussein was always a Kurd-killing cockroach with a Hitlerian mustache. I never liked the guy – not even when he worked for George Bush Sr.


It's worth going over the work the Butcher of Baghdad did for his Texas patrons when he was their butcher:



1979: Seizes power with U.S. approval; moves allegiance from Soviets to U.S. in Cold War.



1980: Invades Iran, then the "Unicycle of Evil," with U.S. encouragement and arms. (In fairness, credit here goes to Nobel Peace Laureate, James Carter.)



1982: Bush-Reagan regime removes Saddam's regime from official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.



1983: Saddam hosts Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad. Agrees to "go steady" with U.S. corporate suppliers.



1984: U.S. Commerce Department issues license for export of aflatoxin to Iraq useable in biological weapons.



1988: Gasses Kurds in Halabja, Iraq.



1987-88: U.S. warships destroy Iranian oil platforms in Gulf and break Iranian blockade of Iraq shipping lanes, tipping war advantage back to Saddam.



1990: Invades Kuwait with U.S. permission.


U.S. permission? On July 25, 1990, the dashing dictator met in Baghdad with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie. When Saddam asked Glaspie if the U.S. would object to an attack on Kuwait over the small emirate's theft of Iraqi oil, the ambassador told him, "We have no opinion.... Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America." Saddam taped her.

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