Throughout the 1980s, Washington supported Saddam's war on Iran. Not only was he our vehicle for revenge against the ayatollahs who had deposed the shah, stormed our embassy, humiliated American hostages, and expelled our oil companies, but also he sat on the world's second-largest oil reserves. The Economic Hit Man's (EHMs) went to work on him. We gave him billions of dollars. Bechtel built him chemical plants that we knew would produce sarin and mustard gas for killing Iranians, Kurds, and Shi'a rebels. We provided him with fighter jets, tanks, and missiles and trained his military to operate them. We pressured the Saudis and Kuwaitis to lend him $50 billion.
Watching events unfold in Iraq, I often thought back to the words of that Iranian engineer, back when the Shah ruled Iran, who escorted me and the other two MAIN employees from Kerman to Bandar-e Abbas. "Iranians are not Arabs, we're Persians, Arians," he had said. "The Arabs threaten us. We're with you guys 100 percent." Suddenly after Iranian revolution, the tables had turned. The Iranians had become the bad guys and an Arab named Saddam was our ally.
The eight-year Iraq-Iran war was one of the longest, costliest, and bloodiest in modern history. By the time it ended in 1988, more than a million people were dead. Villages, farms, and the economies of both countries were devastated. But the corporatocracy had enjoyed another victory. Military suppliers and contractors profited handsomely. Oil prices were up. Throughout, the EHMs tried to convince Saddam to accept a deal similar to SAMA, the one I had helped forge with the House of Saud. They wanted him to join the empire.
But Saddam kept refusing. If he had complied, like the Saudis, he would have received our guarantees of protection as well as more U.S.-supplied chemical plants and weapons. When it became obvious that he was entrenched in his independent ways, Washington sent in the jackals. Assassinations of men like Saddam, usually have to involve collusion by bodyguards. In the cases I knew personally - Ecuador's Roldós and Panama's Torrijos - I was certain that bodyguards trained at the United States' School of the Americas were bribed to sabotage the airplanes. Saddam understood jackals and their techniques. He had been hired by the CIA in the sixties to assassinate Qasim and had learned from us, his ally, during the eighties. He screened his men rigorously. He also hired look-alike doubles. His bodyguards were never sure if they were protecting him or an actor.
The jackals failed. So in 1991, Washington chose the option of last resort. We used the Kuwaiti's as a bait to provoke him. Saddam fell in trap and made the mistake of attacking Kuwait. The first President Bush sent in the U. S. military. At this point the White House did not want to take Saddam out. He was their type of leader: a strongman who could control his people and act as a deterrent against Iran. The Pentagon assumed that by destroying his army, they had chastised him; now he would come around. Down the line it was believed sanctions might break his backbone and hence he would fall in line. EHMs went back to work on him during the nineties. He did not buy their package. Once again the jackals failed. A second President Bush deployed the military. Saddam was deposed and executed. It has been a warning to other states who do not cooperate.
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