Or so Chris believes:
http://www.habitablezone.com/currentevents/messages/342534.html
It got me interested enough to look; here is interesting history of Saddam:

"What initially hurt Saddam’s career within the Ba’thist Party was his supposed connection with the CIA. When Saddam was living in Egypt he frequented the U.S. embassy. Why he did this we do not know, but it aroused suspicion at the time. It has been alleged that the CIA gave Saddam a list of Iraqi communists. It is said that possession of this list gave Saddam Hussein a degree of power within the Party, and it also gave him a special clean-up mission that he dutifully performed.
...
The deal with Russia, which effectively put Iraq’s security services in Moscow’s hands (thereafter tying Iraq to Moscow without any hope of deliverance), served to shelter Iraq from the political and economic fallout that followed the June 1972 looting and robbing of the Western oil interests who had built Iraq’s oil infrastructure in the first place. To rob the Western businessmen of their investment, Baghdad needed an Eastern protector."
...
"As Saddam discovered to his horror, the Soviets were infiltrating the Iraqi military. “They won’t be satisfied until the whole world becomes communist,” he remarked bitterly in a 1978 interview. At about this time twenty-one communist military officers jailed since 1975 were hauled out and shot. When the Soviet ambassador visited Saddam to lodge a protest, the defiant Iraqi leader had ten more communist officers shot. He also learned that the Russians were taping his private conversations in his residence. And why not, the Soviet embassy was located next door to the Presidential Palace! So the Iraqi dictator forced the Russians to move their embassy across town.

But how could Saddam switch sides in the midst of the Cold War and join the West? It would prove a difficult trick given the Arab hatred of Israel. Egypt had done it, but Egypt had first thrown out the Soviet advisors. But Saddam wasn’t willing to do that. He wasn’t willing to part with the war machine the Russians were helping him build. On what basis could he form a new tie with the West? Perhaps that is why he eagerly grasped at the chance to attack Iran in the midst of the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis in September 1980. At America’s moment of need Saddam Hussein was there. Perhaps, in his sick way, he was demonstrating his good intentions. But this drastic move did not free him from Moscow."

Read rest:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2003/0104.htm