Representative Press Blog

Doug Harper writes, "The fixation with "corrupt rulers" is an immediate response to the anger of Arabs and Muslims who want a better life for themselves and their children. It is a legitimate grievance, and ought to be a source of shame to the United States, though many of the most brutish secular regimes -- Syria, Libya, Saddam's Iraq -- came to power without our intention and often persisted in spite of our opposition."

All three of those countries were hurt by Western powers who undermined progress when the severely manipulated their internal affairs. The amount of evil that US policy makers have inflicted upon the Middle East is perhaps more than you want to deal with.

Take Iraq. The US supported Saddam the murderous thug starting with using him as an assassin to try to kill the Iraqi Prime Minister. The CIA even provided Saddam with an apartment in Baghdad according to a former senior State Department official. The US helped Saddam from as early as the late 50s even though it was know that he was "a thug-- a cutthroat" with "no class". The CIA plotted to install the Ba'ath party and Saddam one of the party members colluding with the CIA at that time. This fact was revealed in testimony and documents produced during the hearings of the Congressional Select Committee on Intelligence in 1975 also known as the Pike Committee. The CIA actively supported the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath party to power and the CIA made lists of people it labeled as communists and gave these lists to "the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen". The people on these CIA lists were "jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions." The usual "we had to" crap is offered as an excuse for these crimes. UPI Pro-Nasser Arab nationalists were able to remove the Ba'ath party from power and to jail Saddam only to have the US once again back another coup and instal the Ba'ath party back in power over Iraq in 1968. Ever step of the way there were opportunities not to help Saddam or even to undermine his power. In the early 70s the US backed the Kurdish Rebellion but cruelly dropped them when the Shah and Saddam worked out a deal. Dropping the Kurds was cruel and Another opportunity to counter Ba'athist power was lost when the US abandoned the Kurds. When questioned by the Pike Committee about the US abandonment of the Kurds in 1975, Kissenger's cynical and amoral response was, "Covert action should not be confused with missionary work"