Home About Chat Users Issues Party Candidates Polling Firms Media News Polls Calendar Key Races United States President Senate House Governors International

New User Account
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource." 
Email: Password:

  Archive Offers Glimpse Inside the Mind of Hussein
NEWS DETAILS
Parent(s) Candidate 
ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  Oct 25, 2011 07:21pm
Logged 0
CategoryNews
MediaNewspaper - New York Times
News DateWednesday, October 26, 2011 01:20:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionBy MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: October 25, 2011

WASHINGTON — On Nov. 15, 1986, Saddam Hussein gathered his most senior aides for a important strategy session. Two days earlier, President Ronald Reagan had acknowledged in a televised address that his administration had sent weapons and spare parts to Iran.

“It can only be a conspiracy against Iraq,” said Mr. Hussein, who inferred darkly that the United States was trying to prolong the Iran-Iraq war, already in its sixth year, and increase Iraq’s enormous casualties.

In truth, the Reagan administration had arranged the arms shipment for a variety of reasons that had little to do with Iraq: to secure the release of American hostages in Lebanon, to open a private channel to the new rulers in Tehran and to generate secret profits that could be sent to rebels fighting the Nicaraguan government.

But Mr. Hussein would not be moved from his conspiratorial view. He mentioned the arms sales again in his fateful meeting on July 25, 1990, with April Glaspie, the American ambassador in Baghdad, when he again misread Washington and assumed the United States would stand aside when his army invaded Kuwait a week later.
Share
ArticleRead Full Article

NEWS
Date Category Headline Article Contributor

DISCUSSION