Hi Scott,

I didn't say "we" put him in power. I think the quote you are referring to is this one:

"The fact that the US helped create a Frankenstein does put a high responsibility quotient on the US to rectify things and make things better for the Iraqis."

Saddam has received our support (primarily technical and logistics) during his war with Iran. As such, he became emboldened and drunk with power. Since the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran, we have used Iraq as a destabilizing force, (Saddam's first term as Iraqi president began July 16, 1979) even though they never got along with our primary allies Israel and Saudi Arabia and were considered "radical".

By encouraging Saddam's war with Iran - we hoped to "payback" Iran for the hostage fiasco. After the Carter malaise our military hardware was certainly not yet in a position to do anything impressive in the middle east, since we couldn't even fly some helicopters across a desert successfully. So Iraq was a convenient "enemy of my enemy" to deal with clandestinely.

Unfortunately, as soon as Reagan was out of power (1988) - the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) abruptly ceased, leaving Saddam time on his hands and a momentary respite to prepare for other military goals. Kuwait was a plump morsel for the plucking and Saddam was seriously surprised to see that we defended Kuwait after having supported his previos campaign.

However, we did so not out of love of Kuwait - but because Kuwait was the portal to our even closer ally, Saudi Arabia.

We did not put Saddam in power yet, unlike many other nations, we did not attempt to withstrain his militaristic tendencies either.

Saddam, in his own mind, probably feels we betrayed him. That we encouraged his war with Iran, yet as soon as he is no longer useful - we turn on him and try to displace him.

However, we did not displace him in 1991. In part, due to the awareness of our previous relationship.

However, dealing with military despots is dealing with the devil and now we are going to pay the price.

SDAI-Tech1