George Bush’s New Year’s present to the world was the deathof Saddam Hussein by hanging in Iraq on December 30. Ofcourse the argument will be made that it wasn’t the U.S. thathanged Saddam, but the Iraqi people who tried and found himguilty of crimes against humanity in an Iraqi court. Yeah,and the moon is made of green cheese, too.

The Iraqi government and the court that tried Saddam areconstructs of the Bush administration and survive onlybecause of the force of U.S. arms. The charges and theproceedings of the trial itself were no doubt vetted andapproved by U.S. authorities.

The fact that Saddam wasrailroaded through this kangaroo court instead of beingtaken before the International Criminal Court and tried forhis crimes speaks volumes about the disrespect that the U.S.has for the international community, internationalstandards and the rule of law on an international scale.

There is no doubt that Saddam was a brutal tyrant, and nodoubt that he should have been held responsible for hiscrimes against humanity. The problem for the U.S. though,and many other western nations, was how to hold himresponsible without having to share some of the responsibility.

The things that Saddam did were little different than someof the things that the U.S. and other powers have done, evenin the recent past, and those who helped him do thesethings when it was to their convenience and profit are noneother than the U.S. and other powers that are now condemninghim.

Iraq, from conception after the First World War to 1958 wasa monarchy controlled by British and American interests whowere in it for the oil. The vast majority of Iraqis livedin poverty, most were illiterate, and medical services werescarce.

Into this cesspool of poverty and despair steppedIraqi General Abdul Karim Kassem who overthrew the monarchy and established a republic. The western allies wentberserk and sent troops to Lebanon and Jordan to containthe spread of the revolution. They also planned aninvasion of Iraq, which they never executed, and fundedKurdish guerillas to fight the Iraqi government.

Enter Saddam Hussein, who as a CIA assassin was part of aplot to kill Kassem in 1959. The plot failed and Saddamwas whisked away to exile, eventually winding up in Egypt.In 1960 Kassem helped to found OPEC which challengedwestern control of oil, and in 1962 he formed a state-ownedIraqi oil company, threatening the dominance of western oilcompanies in Iraq. Kassem also laid claim to Kuwait, and in1963 he was overthrown by the Ba’ath Party in a CIA-backedcoup that included Saddam Hussein.

Part of the arrangement between the CIA and the Ba’athParty was that the Party would eliminate Iraq’s leftists.Thousands of names were provided by the CIA to the Party asa death list, and the killings commenced under thedirection of Saddam. United Press International quotes oneU.S. State Department official at the time as saying “We werefrankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get afair trial? You have to be kidding. This was seriousbusiness.”

By 1979 Saddam had risen from head of Iraqi security toPresident of the republic. Also in that year Iran seizedthe U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking Americans hostage.Subsequently in 1980, conveniently for the U.S., Saddamstarted a war with Iran that dragged on for eight years andkilled almost two million people. Saddam was aided, evenencouraged, in this crime against humanity by the U.S.,Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other countries, a crime whichincluded the use of poison gas — use condoned by theUnited States.

In 1988 Saddam used poison gas against Kurds in Iraq whowere seen to be friendly to Iran. Again the U.S. condonedthis use and even planted false stories laying the blame onIran.

At the end of the Iran/Iraq war Iraq was broke and oilproduction was down due to war damage. Kuwait, whichhistorically could be considered a part of what is nowIraq, held a huge chunk of the Iraqi debt. It refused togive Iraq relief and refused to cut oil production to raisethe price of oil and help Iraq.

In a meeting between Saddam and U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie on July 25, 1990, Saddam asked, “We will give up all of theShatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole ofIraq in the shape we wish it to be. What is the UnitedStates’ opinion on this?”

Glaspie replied: “We have noopinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your disputewith Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasizethe instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, thatthe Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

On July 31, the Assistant Secretary of State for NearEastern affairs, testified to Congress that the “UnitedStates has no commitment to defend Kuwait and the U.S. hasno intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked byIraq.”

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and startedthe Gulf War. It was an American set-up.

As a result of the Gulf War, the period of sanctions thatfollowed, and the current war which was started based on falsepretenses, hundreds of thousands of people have been killedand those who have been maimed and rendered homeless are beyondcounting. Who is to blame, and who are the criminals?

A kangaroo court has condemned, and an American puppetgovernment has hanged, Saddam Hussein. And they hanged himnot for his many crimes against humanity, but for theexecution of 144 people in 1982, during a war, who wereaccused of plotting to kill him. Does this make sense? Isit a worse crime than the thousands that he killed in 1963at the behest of the U.S. government? Is it worse than thethousands gassed while the U.S. stood by and covered for him?

Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and was brutal in a brutal world.But his crimes are also those of the United States thatused and encouraged that brutality to further its owngoals. With the death of Saddam the cases against him offar more grievous crimes will vanish from the docket,cases that the U.S. certainly does not want to seeinvestigated and exposed to their full extent.

The tragedy of Saddam Hussein is not that he was hanged,but that he was made a scapegoat to protect others far moreguilty than himself. There are people in the west at thehighest levels of government who should have been standingon the scaffold beside him with nooses also about theirnecks. Justice has not been served, it has been denied.