A question and answer with Noam Chomsky speaks volumes to the fluid nature of America’s relationship with Saddam.
OK, I’ll stick my head in the noose.
First of all, there is no question posed here. This probably doesn’t belong in General Questions, and I would ask the mods to consider whether there is a more appropriate forum it could be moved to.
Second, my understanding and recollection of the events of 1991 is that Bush the Elder had no sympathy for Saddam, and would have loved to see him topple, but was constrained from doing anything overt by A) the UN mandate which only called for the liberation of Kuwait, and B) our allies in the region, who feared a revolution in Iraq would further destabilize the region.
Immediately after the war, there were uprisings in both the north and south, and for a brief period there was some hope these might succeed. With 20/20 hindsight, it would seem that a little more aid then might have prevented a lot of the issues we face now.
I agree. There isn’t a question here and this belongs in GD.
What Chomsky is presumably alluding to is the fact that during the ceasefire negotiations in 1991 the US negotiators, headed by Schwarzkopf, conceded the Iraqi request that they be allowed to fly helicopters within Iraq. Those helicopters were then used to suppress the uprisings. With hindsight, it is easy to see that the negotiators made a mistake, but the worst that can be said about them is that they failed to foresee an unintended consequence. It takes a particularly overheated imagination to twist this to mean that they ‘authorised Saddam to crush the rebellions’ or, paraphrasing the thread title, that the USA supported Saddam.
We have a couple of problems here.
First, I have deleted most of your quotation because it is from a copyrighted source. We take intellectual property rights very seriously around here. It’s okay to quote a small part of a copyrighted work. It’s always okay to provide a link to the source, if it’s online. The rest of the interview can be read here: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/interviews/story/0,11660,888651,00.html
Second, this forum is for questions with factual answers. There is no question here so it doesn’t belong in GQ. I could move this to the Great Debates forum, but I’ll close it instead. You may post a new thread in GD if you like, but you are generally expected to argue your side of the issue there, not simply to cut and paste an interview.
bibliophage
moderator GQ