] AN ARTICLE by former National Security Council staffer
] Roger Morris in the New York Times recently described how
] Hussein came to power: in the aftermath of a
] CIA-engineered coup orchestrated exactly 40 years ago by
] then - president Kennedy, which brought Hussein's
] anti-communist Baath Party to power. Later, according to
] Urquhart, the US backed Hussein when he attacked Iran,
] gave him economic aid, helicopters, and licences for
] exports that were crucial to his development of chemical
] weapons (Rumsfeld is said to have personally delivered
] word of arrangements for these.) It looked away when he
] used those weapons against Iran (half-a-million people
] were killed in that US proxy war) and later, when he
] killed 200,000 Kurds with poison gas. "In return,"
] Urquhart writes, "Hussein paid off his US loans, gave
] [the US] a one-dollar-per-barrel discount on oil, reined
] in Iraq-based Palestinian groups, and even supported the
] Arab-Israeli peace process..."