From The Independent UK
By Rupert Cornwell

When they hanged him, he was America’s vanquished foe, likened to Hitler and Stalin for the murderous evil of his ways. What is forgotten is that once, for more than a decade, Saddam Hussein was staunchly supported by the US.

Indeed, it was Washington that supplied him with many of the weapons of mass destruction the dictator used against his foes - weapons that one day would serve as a pretext for the US-led invasion that toppled him.

The dealings between the US and Saddam’s Iraq over the quarter of a century before 2003 are a story of deceit, miscalculation and strategic blunders by both sides. And they began, as they would end, in the shadow of a common enemy: Iran.

Saddam seized complete power in 1978. Two years later he attacked Iran, in what he called an “Arab war against the Persians”, to overthrow the Islamic revolutionary regime.

Washington was under no illusions about the brutality of Saddam’s regime. But as Tehran gained the upper hand in the fighting, he came to be seen as the lesser of two evils - a vital bulwark against domination by a radical, anti-Western Iran of the strategically vital Gulf region, with its colossal oil reserves.

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