Global Policy Forum

By Brian Urquhart *

Review of
The Threatening Storm:The Case for Invading Iraq
By Kenneth M. Pollack
Random House/A Council on Foreign Relations Book494 pp., $25.95

In the current fury against Saddam Hussein, it is ironic to be reminded how much the United States, as well as Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, has done to build him up; how much those nations cared about his oil and other commercial possibilities, and how little about his ghastly human rights record. In the 1970s the so-called "twin pillars" of US policy in the Persian Gulf were Saudi Arabia and the Shah's Iran. When the Islamic Revolution removed the Shah in 1979, Saddam Hussein gained a new importance as a bastion against revolutionary Iran. His staggeringly inept and overconfident invasion of that country in 1980 had the tacit support of the United States as well as some very practical US assistance in the form of intelligence, economic aid, helicopters, and licenses for exports that were crucial to his development of, among other things, the chemical weapons that he later used with great success to blunt Iranian counterattacks and to subdue the Kurds of northern Iraq.

Washington turned a blind eye to the Iraqi missile attack in 1987 that killed thirty-seven sailors on the USS Stark, and to Saddam's use of chemical weapons against Iran, as well as in a murderous campaign that killed 200,000 Kurds and displaced 1.5 million more. In return Saddam Hussein paid off his US loans, gave a one-dollar-per-barrel discount on oil, reined in Iraq-based Palestinian groups, and even supported the Arab–Israeli peace process that he had led the Arab world in denouncing only a few years earlier. In those days he was certainly a pragmatic fellow.

* Brian Urquhart was UN Undersecretary General Special Political Affairs

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.