For Seamus: Putting his dog on the roof Mitt Romney drove his family on a 12 hour run to Canada in 1983 -- and put his dog on the roof, in a dog-carrier. Now, the family swears that poor Seamus LOVED it -- which might even be believeable, it's just like a dog sticking his head out the window and enjoying the fresh air, but more so, right? Except for the REST OF THE STORY. While they were driving, Romney's oldest son Tagg noticed a brown liquid running down the window of the car. That's right, Seamus was making it very clear to the family that he was not enjoying his view perch. But that's still not the weirdest part of the story. Mitt Romney pulled the car over, got a hose, and washed down the car and the dog. Fair enough. But then he put the dog back on the roof and drove the rest of the way!! That's the kind of cold, heartless logic that made Mitt so good at carnivorous capitalism. Now (February 2012) there's a new twist. Romney has always insisted the dog loved riding on top of the car (despite the fact that he defecated himself, and Mrs. Romney told reporters that Seamus "lived to a ripe old age." But the New York Observer reports that two of Romneys' sons told reporters, off the record, that Seamus actually ran away when they got to Canada. The Romney campaign has no comment. -- Sources =========================================================================== Predatory Capitalism Romney brags about his business success, but the vast majority of his money comes from technically legal, completely predatory and unethical business pillaging. He was very successful at leveraged buyouts -- not investing in new companies, but using borrowed money to buy established companies, strip them of resources, and quickly sell them for a profit. How can you make money off a company that fails, you might ask? It's simple -- have it borrow a lot of money and give it to you, take its pension money and any cash in the bank, then sell it or take it public, quickly before it goes bankrupt. If you sell when the economy is good, people will go for it, and you get rich. Sure, a lot of people lose their jobs, and other people lose their money, but you're rich! The most famous example is an office supply company called American Pad and Paper. Romney and Bain Capital bought it from Mead Company, when it had total debts of $11 million. By the time they sold it, the company had $400 million in debt -- and Bain had earned $100 million off the deals, between fees it charged the company for managing it and for buying other companies, and profits from selling the company's stock after they took it public (for yet another fee). Bain was later sued by stockholders for fraud in overstating the value of the company. -- Sources ====================================================================== Medicare Fraud That Made Him Rich In 1989, Romney led Bain Capital's purchase of Damon Corp., a medical testing company, and took a seat on the Board of Directors to better manage it. During Romney's four years, Bain tripled its investment, and Romney personally made $473,000 -- while Damon plumped its profits with Medicare fraud (running thousands of medical tests doctors didn't want, and billing Medicare for them). The company pled guilty to crimes committed during his tenure and paid a record fine of $119 million. Company President Joseph Isola pleaded no contest to fraud, and a vice president was also convicted. Romney claims he "uncovered" the fraudulent claims and "took corrective action," but court records show that he did not notify prosecutors or stop the fraudulent billing. He just asked company lawyers what changes they could make to avoid prosecution, after the feds' LABSCAM prosecution targeted a different medical testing firm. The cheating continued, prosecutors say, until the day Bain sold the company to Corning. Furthermore, Damon Corp. was required to list in various SEC filings any significant legal risks it faced. Romney made no mention of the fraud he "uncovered," even though it led to a $119 million fine, the largest in history. Damon Corp. is another Bain acquisition that later went bankrupt, killing over a thousand jobs -- but not before Bain made $7.4 million in profit. By amazing coincidence, Rick Santorum also made a lot of money off of a company involved in Medicare fraud: Universal Health Care. -- ====================================================================

Scandals: ......................................... -- Shady Money -- Dog on the Roof -- Medicare Fraud -- Predatory Capitalism -- Out of Touch -- Hired Illegal Immigrants -- Impersonating Police Officers Sources Home Mitt Romney's Skeleton Closet: Scandals, Quotes, and Character But there was a prophecy, the White Horse Prophecy spoken by Joseph Smith himself on May 6,1843 in the presence of Edwin Rushton and Theodore Turley. It holds: "A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America, such as has never been seen before; for the land will be literally left without a supreme government. And every species of wickedness will run rampant." Anyway, Mormons (the White Horse) will get rich with gold and minerals, This prophecy was discussed when Mitt's dad, George, ran for president, and again when Orrin Hatch ran, and Glenn Beck dogwhistled it after Obama was elected. (No one brought it up with with John Huntsman, though.) The Mormon Church does not endorse it formally, But Mitt Romney and his father admit discussing it during George's presidential run. Is now the time for Mitt Romney to ride to America's rescue? For "when the Constitution of the United States hangs, as it were, upon a thread as fine as a single silk fiber, they will have to call for the 'Mormon' Elders to save it from utter destruction; and they will step forth and do it." --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quotes "Buenos dias!" -- Mitt Romney's regular greeting to the illegal Guatemalan immigrants who work on his lawn "Aw, geez." -- Romney to a reporter who asked him about the lawn workers. He then walked away. "I get speakers fees from time to time but not very much.” -- Mitt Romney. ("Not very much" was over $500,000 in 2010.) "I'm not a big-game hunter. I've made that very clear. I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter. Small varmints, if you will. I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times." -- Mitt Romney, failing. "Corporations are people, too, my friend." -- Romney "Maybe I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed." -- Romney, forgetting his $500,000 a year in speaking fees. "He grabbed my shoulder, and I was like 'boom get off of me.' The man assaulted me. I was protecting myself." -- Rapper Sky Blu of LMFAO, describing a tussle with Romney in the first class section of an airplane. "I have always felt that [the White Horse Prophecy] meant that sometime the question of whether we are going to proceed on the basis of the Constitution would arise and at this point government leaders who were Mormons would be involved in answering that question." -- George Romney "I haven't heard my name associated with it [the White Horse Prophecy] or anything of that nature. That's not official church doctrine. There are a lot of things that are speculation and discussion by church members and even church leaders that aren't official church doctrine. I don't put that at the heart of my religious belief." - Romney, not really denying anything "[I don't follow NASCAR] as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners." - Romney “I was a severely conservative Republican governor. I fought against long odds in a deep blue state.” -- Romney, protesting too much. "He is the most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics." - Barney Frank, former congressman from Massaschusetts "I'm a normal person.I have emotions." -- Mitt Romney, protesting too much. "“I’m not in favor of his religion by any means. But he [L. Ron Hubbard] wrote a book called ‘Battlefield Earth’ that was a very fun science-fiction book.” - Romney -- Quote Sources -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Out of Touch It's not just that Mitt Romney is incredibly rich with ill-gotten money -- though he certainly is that. Earning about $380,000 puts you in the top 1% of American earners. Romney makes that every WEEK. But the real problem is that -- unlike, say, Newt Gingrich or Bill Clinton or Barack Obama who started poor and got rich -- Romney has lived in a strange bubble of wealth for his entire life. He simply doesn't know what it's like to live as a normal person. He tries hard to hide this -- way too hard -- but glimpses alip through all the time: offering to bet Rick Perry $10,000 (who has $10,000?), insisting that he has had to worry about pink slips (with $250 million stashed away, much of it in the tax-sheltered Cayman Islands, calling $347,000 earned in one year by giving speeches "not much", offering a $1.5 million reward for the "consulting" invoices Newt submitted to his lobbyist boss at Freddie Mac. (Hey, Mitt, I get that it's the amount Newt made, but most hired killers get around $10,000 for a job that invites the death penalty, so a million and a half might be kind of overkill for some paperwork.) Romney spent $42 million dollars of his own money running for president in 2008, and it barely made a dent in his fortune. Now, some people are exaggerating his wealth. He does not have 15 homes -- now. That's how many he has ever owned, and many of us have owned a few if you count every time we move as owning another house. He only has two main houses now, and he sold his ski chalet. And while it's true that Romney is tearing down his $12 million mansion in Country Club, California to build one 3 1/2 times larger (11,000 SF) on the same land, his other house on a lake in New Hampshire is only worth $10 million. And come one, we all know that most of the value of expensive houses is in the land anyway. So, pretty much like any other struggling family. But incidents keep happening, like when a young boy gave him an origami-folded $1 bill, and it took Romney a couple of minutes digging through his wallet to find anything smaller than a $100 bill. Or when he told a crowd, ""I know what it’s like to worry whether you’re going to get fired,. There were a couple of times I wondered whether I was going to get a pink slip." But, pressed by reporters, he couldn't name any such time. Or the time he got into an altercation with rapper Sky Blu of LMFAO, up in first class, when Mr. Blu (sitting in front of Romney) reclined his seat before takeoff, leading Romney to yell at him. -- Sources =========================================================================== Ill-Gotten Gains Mitt Romney was born rich -- his dad was the the CEO of American Motors, and later governor of Michigan -- but Mitt got much richer by through ill-gotten gains. In some cases, the companies that he ran made him rich through outright fraud and criminal behavior, but most of the time he it was his technically legal predatory capitalism at Bain & Co.-- leveraged buyouts, taking over companies by borrowing against their own assets, stripping them of resources, firing workers, busting unions and getting rid of workers' pensions. Meanwhile, he himself gets a multimillion dollar annual pension from Bain, which he pays minimal taxes on due to tax shelters and hiding his money in shady, foreign tax havens (such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Swiss bank accounts) that have extreme secrecy. In fact, Romney moved many of Bain's investment funds to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, and has somewhere between $13 million and $33 million of his $250 million fortune hidden there. He earns more than $1 million per year just in the interest, dividends and capital gains from these tax haven funds. Romney is earning extraordinary returns on these funds -- 20% to 30%, according to Brad Malt, the manager of his trust. Romney fiercely resisted releasing his tax returns, and then only released one year -- 2010 -- when it looked like he might lose the presidential race if he didn't. This, even though his dad George Romney started the practice of politicians releasing tax returns in the first place, when he ran for president in the 1960s. Since Mitt has been running for President since 2006, he had plenty of time to make sure that one year looked good. Now we have an idea why he didn't release any returns earlier. Because even that one, carefully prepared year has plenty of dangerous items. It revealed his overseas secret bank accounts, and his low overall tax rate of under 15%. But there's worse. Romney was also required to file a financial disclosure form, less detailed than taxes, when he filed for president. In fact, he argued that he should have to release his taxes because the disclosure form showed everything important. But 23 different investment funds shown on his taxes did not appear on his disclosure form -- and 11 of those are in those overseas, secret banking centers. That's a sign of what he's embarrassed to reveal -- and it's also a felony, if the government can prove it was deliberate and not just a sloppy oversight. The biggest concern is that Swiss bank account, one of the items not on his financial disclosure. Mitt had it from 2003 to 2010, when his adviser shut it down. He closed it in the middle of an amnesty that the IRS had declared for owners of previously unreported Swiss bank accounts -- if they came clean, they would not face criminal prosecution for not reporting it in previous years (which was illegal - plus most weren't paying taxes on that money). Was the sudden shutdown of Romney's secret Swiss bank account part of this amnesty program? We can't know unless and until he releases prior returns, like his dad who released 12 years of prior returns. And Mitt is still fiercely refusing to do so. Note: Bain Capital was not "venture capital" investment, as many news stories have incorrectly said. That's an essential part of new company formation in today's economy. Romney practiced what is known as "private equity" takeovers, the kind of leveraged buyouts that Kolberg, Kravis and Roberts are infamous for. -- Sources =========================================================================== ============================================================================ Hired Illegal Immigrants Romney makes a big issue of being tough on illegal immigrants. He has pushed for a wall on the Mexican border so hard that Bill O'Reilly offered to call it the "Mitt Romney Memorial Wall." The only problem is, Romney has hired illegal immigrants to tend his gardens for over 10 years. Three illegal immigrants interviewed by the Boston Globe said they have worked on Romney's lawn for years, that he greets them with a "Buenos dias", and that his wife was friendly and often asks how they are. Two were interviewed back in Guatemala, where they have returned. They made $8 to $9 per hour working 11 hour days. "They wanted that house to look really nice," said one worker, now back in Copado, Guatemala. "It took a long time." The other, Rene Alvarez Rosales (now in Suchitepequez, Guatemala) said it cost him about $5,000 to have a smuggler take him across the border. They all work for "Community Lawn Care with a Heart," a small company run by legal Colombian immigrant Ricardo Saenz. Asked about his workers' statements that they were illegal immigrants, Saenz said "What you've heard is not my problem. ... I don't need to tell them to show me documents. I know who they are, and they are legal." When Romney was asked about the workers, he said "Aw geez" and walked away. On one occasion, a (real) state trooper with the Romney security detail asked about the workers' immigration status. Saenz said they were legal but forgot their papers that day, and the matter was dropped. -- Sources Flat-Out Liar In his 2008 presidential campaign, Romney simply lied repeatedly while trying to reinvent himself as a conservative. For example: -- "I have a gun of my own." (Not true. He was talking about a gun one of his grown sons own.) -- "I've been a hunter pretty much my entire life." (He hunted once at 15, and a second time in his late 50s.) -- "I told you what my position was, and what I, what I did as governor; the fact that I received the endorsement of the NRA." (No - and his Democratic opponent actually had a higher NRA rating) -- "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King." (No, they never marched together. They were both in Michigan at the same time once, but Mitt was in France on his mission.) -- "My father and I marched with Martin Luther King Jr. through the streets of Detroit." (even more false...) This last lie was the funnest because of all the waffling that Romney did trying to explain it. After a Boston newspaper showed that they couldn't have marched together, Mitt's spokesman said that "George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 -- although possibly not on the same day or in the same city." And Mitt then explained "I've tried to be as accurate as I can be. If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of ? in the sense I've described. I'm an English literature major as well. When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn't necessarily mean you were there -- excuse me, the Super Bowl. I saw my dad become president of American Motors. Did that mean you were there for the ceremony? No, it?s a figure of speech." -- Sources -- Sources Top Aide Illegally Impersonating Police Officers ================================================= The most bizarre scandal of Romney's 2008 campaign involved Jay Garrity, Mitt's director of operations (basically, his right-hand man.) Garrity resigned from the campaign after several allegations that he claimed to be a policeman, and used that authority to intimidate people. In one case, Garrity pulled over a New York Times reporter, ran his plates and ordered him to stop following the campaign caravan. In another, he allegedly called a plumbing company to complain about one of their employees, whose driving upset him, and identified himself as "Trooper Garrity of the Massachusetts State Police." Garrity denied that allegation, but he was cited by Boston police in 2004 for having police equipment -- including flashing lights -- in his Crown Victoria sedan without authorization. The phone call was recorded because an answering service actually fielded the call, which the person who called himself "Trooper Garrity" apparently didn't notice. Despite his resignation, Garrity remains under investigation in two states for impersonation of police. Well, it gets worse. According to three different anonymous sources, one who works for the Romney campaign, Garrity made up fake police badges -- bright silver plates with the seal of Massachusetts on them -- and gave them to several other staffers, who used them to order reporters and other people out of events, get past security guards, and avoid paying highway tolls. In fact, Garrity has been handing out badges since Romney was governor of Massachusetts. So this was not just one staffer's personal fetish. Sources named at least two other Romney staffers who used the badges -- Mark Glanville and William Ritter. "They knew the badges were fake and probably illegal," the campaign source said. In fact, Garrity was Romney's right-hand man and rarely left his side. It's hard to believe that Mitt Romney himself did not notice the fact that Garrity was constantly flashing a police badge as they blew through security into various events. The Romney campaign has not commented on whether Mitt Romney knew about the badges. Using fake badges is, of course, illegal. -- Sources -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources White Horse Prophecy: The White Horse Prophecy, The Relief Mine website, Sunday, 09 March 2008 "Romney candidacy has resurrected last days prophecy of Mormon saving the Constitution", by Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake Tribune, 06/04/2007 The White Horse Prophecy, research paper by George Cobabe, FAIR (a Mormon apologetics organization), 2011 White Horse Prophecy, MormonWiki, viewed January 18, 2012 " Did Mitt Romney’s Dog Seek Asylum In Canada?, by Hunter Walker, The New York Observer: Politicker NY, 1/31/2012 Seamus -- dog on a roof sources -- Back What our fascination with Mitt Romney’s dog Seamus says about our culture, By Neil Swidey, BOSTON GLOBE MAGAZINE, January 08, 2012 Out of Touch Sources -- Back Romney to quadruple La Jolla home size, by Christopher Cadelago, San Diego Union Tribune, August 20, 2011 Romney Paid 13.9% Tax Rate on $21.6 Million in 2010, By Richard Rubin, Bloomberg News Service, Jan 24, 2012 Sky Blue -- LMFAO's Sky Blu and Mitt Romney Scuffle on Flight to L.A.", By Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone magazine, February 19, 2010 Romney Camp Offers ‘Reward’ For Missing Newt Freddie Mac Docs, by Thomas Lane, Talking Points Memo, January 24, 2012 Mitt Romney's Most Out-of-Touch Moments, by Julian Brookes, Rolling Stone magazine, January 12, 2012 Misleading Readers on Romney’s “$12 Million Teardown”: The value is almost all in the land, By Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review, January 12, 2012 Romney's $12 Million Tear-Down: His Small Way To Boost Housing Sector?, by Frank James, NPR News, August 22, 2011 Ill-Gotten Gains Sources -- Back "Island tax havens factor into Romney's business success", by Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2007 "Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands," by MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS and MEGAN CHUCHMACH, ABC-News: The Blotter, Jan. 18, 2012 Romney Conference Call: Why Did Romney's Trustee Close The Swiss Bank Account? by Pema Levy, Talking Points Memo, January 24, 2012 Romney tax returns detail funds not identified in ethics forms by Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2012 Predatory Capitalism Sources -- Back Plenty of 'pitting' preceded Romney's profits, By Robert Gavin and Sacha Pfeiffer, the Boston Globe (reprinted in the Utah Deseret News), July 3 2007 "Fake Cop Sources" -- Back "Romney aide, targeted in probe, takes leave of absence", by Stephanie Ebbert, Boston Globe, June 22, 2007 "Romney aide?s bogus badges: Sources detail ?illegal? security tactic"",By Casey Ross, Boston Herald, July 20, 2007 "Romney Aide Resigns",By Sarah Wheaton, New York Times -- The Caucus Blog, July 21, 2007 "Liar Sources" -- Back "Romney Aims Again to Explain Hunting -- Republican Presidential Hopeful Romney Takes Second Shot at Explaining His Hunting Experience", by Emily Udell, Associated Press on ABC-News web site, April 6, 2007 "Guns, trust, and Romney, By Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, April 8, 2007 "The Trail: Romney Claims NRA Endorsement He Didn't Receive," by Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, December 16, 2007 "Did Romney Actually See His Dad March With MLK?", by Scott Conroy, CBS-News website, December 20, 2007, 2:03 PM "Romney never saw father on King march - Defends figurative words; evidence contradicts story", by Michael Levenson, Boston Globe, December 21, 2007 Medicare Fraud Sources -- Back Plenty of 'pitting' preceded Romney's profits, By Robert Gavin and Sacha Pfeiffer, the Boston Globe (reprinted in the Utah Deseret News), July 3 2007 Romney Supervised Medical Testing Company Guilty Of Massive Medicare Fraud, by Rick Ungar, Forbes Magazine, 1/21/2012 Romney profited on firm later tied to fraud, by Frank Phillips, Boston Globe, 10/10/2002 "Hunting Sources" -- Back "Romney Aims Again to Explain Hunting -- Republican Presidential Hopeful Romney Takes Second Shot at Explaining His Hunting Experience", by Emily Udell, Associated Press on ABC-News web site, April 6, 2007 "Guns, trust, and Romney, By Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, April 8, 2007 "The Trail: Romney Claims NRA Endorsement He Didn't Receive," by Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, December 16, 2007 "Romney Hunting License", WIBW-TV News, Jan 18, 2012 "Illegal Immigrant Sources" -- Back "Romney aide is the focus of probe - Allegedly acted as State Police trooper", By Stephanie Ebbert and Scott Helman, Boston Globe, June 22, 2007 "Illegal immigrants toiled for governor: Guatemalans say firm hired them", by Jonathan Saltzman, Maria Cramer and Connie Page, Boston Globe, December 1, 2006 "Romney's lawn firm draws new scrutiny: Massport, Chelsea eye workers' legal status", By Jonathan Saltzman and Maria Cramer, the Boston Globe, December 2, 2006 Quote Sources -- Back "Ann Romney Criticized for Cancer Comment "ABC-News Political Radar, July 31, 2007 Sky Blue -- LMFAO's Sky Blu and Mitt Romney Scuffle on Flight to L.A.", By Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone magazine, February 19, 2010 The Big Money", by Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, January 17, 2012 Congressman Frank blasts the ?real Romney?, Boston Herald, Monday, June 11th, 2007 White horse quote -- "Romney candidacy has resurrected last days prophecy of Mormon saving the Constitution", by Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake Tribune, 06/04/2007 NASCAR: Romney: I have friends who own NASCAR teams By Sarah B. Boxer, CBS News, February 26, 2012 severely conservative -- Appealing to Activists, Romney Calls Himself ‘Severely Conservative’ By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, New York Times, February 10, 2012 "Candidate Has Another Teary Moment", By Michael Levenson, Boston Globe, December 19, 2007 "Romney Favors Hubbard Novel" by Jim Rutenberg, New York Times Caucus Blog, April 30, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return To Top << Return To Skeleton Closet Main Page Copyright 2012 Mark Saltveit Photo of Romney by Matthew Reichbach licensed under [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

How Saddam Happened ... America helped make a monster. What to do with him—and what happens after he’s gone —has haunted us for a quarter century
CDickey and EThomas NEWSWEEK

Sept. 23 issue — The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by NEWSWEEK. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President’s greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America’s big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the—theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam’s armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions.

http://news_3.tripod.com

FORMER ALLIES

Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat to wish for the demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold war, the Soviet Union was America’s partner against Hitler in World War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations have no permanent friends, just permanent interests. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld’s long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that today’s friend can be tomorrow’s mortal threat. As President George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam’s successor’s regime, they would do well to contemplate how and why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of Baghdad to stay in power so long.

The history of America’s relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam’s predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons. But it happened.

America’s past stumbles, while embarrassing, are not an argument for inaction in the future. Saddam probably is the "grave and gathering danger" described by President Bush in his speech to the United Nations last week. It may also be true that "whoever replaces Saddam is not going to be worse," as a senior administration official put it to NEWSWEEK. But the story of how America helped create a Frankenstein monster it now wishes to strangle is sobering. It illustrates the power of wishful thinking, as well as the iron law of unintended consequences.

TRANSFIXED BY SADDAM

America did not put Saddam in power. He emerged after two decades of turmoil in the ’60s and ’70s, as various strongmen tried to gain control of a nation that had been concocted by British imperialists in the 1920s out of three distinct and rival factions, the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds. But during the cold war, America competed with the Soviets for Saddam’s attention and welcomed his war with the religious fanatics of Iran. Having cozied up to Saddam, Washington found it hard to break away—even after going to war with him in 1991. Through years of both tacit and overt support, the West helped create the Saddam of today, giving him time to build deadly arsenals and dominate his people. Successive administrations always worried that if Saddam fell, chaos would follow, rippling through the region and possibly igniting another Middle East war. At times it seemed that Washington was transfixed by Saddam.

The Bush administration wants to finally break the spell. If the administration’s true believers are right, Baghdad after Saddam falls will look something like Paris after the Germans fled in August 1944. American troops will be cheered as liberators, and democracy will spread forth and push Middle Eastern despotism back into the shadows. Yet if the gloomy predictions of the administration’s many critics come true, the Arab street, inflamed by Yankee imperialism, will rise up and replace the shaky but friendly autocrats in the region with Islamic fanatics.

While the Middle East is unlikely to become a democratic nirvana, the worst-case scenarios, always a staple of the press, are probably also wrong or exaggerated. Assuming that a cornered and doomed Saddam does not kill thousands of Americans in some kind of horrific Gotterdmmerung—a scary possibility, one that deeply worries administration officials—the greatest risk of his fall is that one strongman may simply be replaced by another. Saddam’s successor may not be a paranoid sadist. But there is no assurance that he will be America’s friend or forswear the development of weapons of mass destruction.

 

A TASTE FOR NASTY WEAPONS

American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country’s de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam’s early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session of his party’s congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot. The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam’s taste for nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam’s use of chemical weapons might "inhibit" American assistance. But top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iraq into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981.

But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran’s "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam’s armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld’s visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal—American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam’s Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

‘WHO IS GOING TO SAY ANYTHING?’ …. The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam’s own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam’s men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. "Who is going to say anything?" he asks. "The international community? F—k them!"

Sept. 23 Issue Cover Package: Target: Iraq • Selling the World on War • How Saddam Happened • Alter: Washington's History Test • Samuelson: A War We Can Afford • The Baghdad I Knew

Newsweek …. The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam’s megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world’s attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

AMBIVALENT ABOUT SADDAM’S FATE

Some American diplomats suggest that Saddam might have gotten away with invading Kuwait if he had not been quite so greedy. "If he had pulled back to the Mutla Ridge [overlooking Kuwait City], he’d still be there today," one ex-ambassador told NEWSWEEK. And even though President George H.W. Bush compared Saddam to Hitler and sent a half-million-man Army to drive him from Kuwait, Washington remained ambivalent about Saddam’s fate. It was widely assumed by policymakers that Saddam would collapse after his defeat in Desert Storm, done in by his humiliated officer corps or overthrown by the revolt of a restive minority population. But Washington did not want to push very hard to topple Saddam. The gulf war, Bush I administration officials pointed out, had been fought to liberate Kuwait, not oust Saddam. "I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit—we would still be there," wrote the American commander in Desert Storm, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, in his memoirs. America’s allies in the region, most prominently Saudi Arabia, feared that a post-Saddam Iraq would splinter and destabilize the region. The Shiites in the south might bond with their fellow religionists in Iran, strengthening the Shiite mullahs, and threatening the Saudi border. In the north, the Kurds were agitating to break off parts of Iraq and Turkey to create a Kurdistan. So Saddam was allowed to keep his tanks and helicopters—which he used to crush both Shiite and Kurdish rebellions.


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