Juan Cole on the Top 10 Ways the U.S. Supported Saddam

Whenever I discuss Saddam here in New Zealand, people always want to know to what extent the U.S. supported his regime. Fortunately, I can now refer them to Juan Cole’s recent post “For Whom the Bell Tolls: Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein.” Summarizing, the ten ways are as follows:

1. The CIA was involved in Saddam’s (failed) attempt in 1959 to assassinate Abdul Karim Qasim, whom the U.S. believed coddled terrorists.
2. The CIA paid Saddam a stipend after he fled Iraq in the wake of the assassination attempt.
3. The CIA funded the military’s successful, but short-lived, 1963 coup against Qasim, which led to Saddam returning to Iraq.
4. The CIA encouraged and supported the successful 1968 coup against Qasim,which brought Saddam’s mentor, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, to power.
5. The U.S. acquiesced in Saddam’s 1975 invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan.
6. During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. encouraged Iraq and made clear to Saddam that his use of chemical weapons — many created with materials provided by western pharmaceutical companies — was not a bar to friendly diplomatic relations with the U.S. (Rumsfeld’s infamous meetings with Saddam took place here.)
7. During the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. provided Iraq with billions of dollars of credit, helped it arrange to purchase the arms it needed for the war, and gave the Iraqi armed forces critical battlefield intelligence.
8. The U.S. worked to prevent the U.N. from censoring Iraq for its use of chemical weapons against Iran.
9. During the Iran-Iraq war, U.S. officials encouraged its allies — including Israel, which was willing — to provide Iraq with arms.
10. After the Gulf War, the U.S. allowed Saddam to crush the Shiite and Kurdish rebellion, even though Bush the Elder had encouraged it.

After his initial post, a U.S. government insider wrote to Cole claiming that the CIA had not supported Saddam between 1959 and 1963. Cole discusses the insider’s e-mail — and concedes that it has shaken his confidence in the first three points — in a second post that is available here.

I highly recommend both posts, which are as well-sourced as they are provocative. As some of our readers may know, last year Cole was up for a tenured position at Yale in the history and sociology departments, both of which voted to appoint him. (He was then, and is now, a tenured professor at Michigan.) Cole’s appointment was ultimately sunk by the university-wide senior appointments committee, which took the unusual step of overruling the individual departments. As this article recounts, that decision was based not on Cole’s scholarship but on his blog, which is often vilified by the right as anti-Israel. Whatever one thinks of Cole’s views, his willingness to change them in response to contrary evidence is a testament to his academic integrity. We’re still waiting for Cole’s detractors — such as self-appointed Middle East “expert” Jonah Goldberg — to admit that they were wrong about the Iraq war.