WHY DID SADDAM NOT USE BLACKMAIL TO SURVIVE?

In The Independent on Sunday today Robert Fisk tells us a fraction of the story of the collaboration between Saddam and the West. The whole story would be very good blackmail material for Saddam to use against his jailors. There's bound to be some interesting receipts in a drawer somewhere...

But ponder this.

In 1991 the US Army was at the gates of Saddam's palace, but it turned around and left Saddam in power. The USA then encouraged a revolution and thousands of rebellious Iraqis rose up expecting US backing. But it never came, and Saddam having been left in power then consolidated his position by massacring the rebels. The USA was then governed by President George HW Bush. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was Colin Powell. The Commander of the Coalition in The Gulf War I was Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf. All three received an honorary Order of the Bath from HRH.

From this it would appear that leaving Saddam in power and then helping to consolidate his position by encouraging a rebellion and then betraying it was part of 'the plan'.

Fisk does not ask the question why potentially life-saving material has not been released to the world press to save Saddam's neck.

Perhaps he did use it and that Saddam did not swing, but a double did (for whatever reason).

Perhaps he didn't use it because he knew he wouldn't swing because he was part of an op.

What needs to be explained is why Saddam was left in power in 1991 with his power consolidated, and the people who could and should have took him out received honorary Orders of the Bath from our Queen.


From http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2114403.ece

Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal

Published: 31 December 2006

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and...