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• Tuesday, September 12, 2006 11:16 PM

  Taking out Saddam

  The right justifies the mess in Iraq by stating that Saddam was a genocidal maniac and that the Iraqi people are now free from this madman. Yet they seem to have lost their long-term memory. The Reagan-Bush administration actively supported Saddam during the 1980s. So, the Repubs (presumably some of the same ones who wanted his head on a platter in 2002) were the ones who supported and strengthened his dictatorship 20 years earlier.

  Below transcripts of an interview with Alan Friedman author of Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq:

  Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush, and James Baker who was Secretary of State, and Robert Gates, who was the C.I.A. Director in the 1980's, how they met what was called a tilt policy in favor of Iraq and against Iran in the 1980's ...

  In the 1980's, the Reagan White House wasn't just busy defeating the so-called evil empire of the Soviet Union and out spending and bankrupting the Soviets, they were also engaged in a Middle East Policy in Iraq and Iran, that was aimed at obviously trying to defeat and neutralize the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran which were Americas perceived enemy at the time. To defeat Iran, we will fortify Saddam, he may be a killer. He may be a butcher, but he's our guy. We will keep him to keep a balance of power between Iran and Iraq.

  http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/1445208

  —djr41den Read djr41den's other letters
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