We Finally Got Our Frankenstein... and He Was In a Spider Hole! -- by
Michael Moore

December 14, 2003


Thank God Saddam is finally back in American hands! He must have really
missed us. Man, he sure looked bad! But, at least he got a free dental exam
today. That's something most Americans can't get.

America used to like Saddam. We LOVED Saddam. We funded him. We armed him.
We helped him gas Iranian troops.

But then he screwed up. He invaded the dictatorship of Kuwait and, in doing
so, did the worst thing imaginable -- he threatened an even BETTER friend of
ours: the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, and its vast oil reserves.  The
Bushes and the Saudi royal family were and are close business partners, and
Saddam, back in 1990, committed a royal blunder by getting a little too
close to their wealthy holdings. Things went downhill for Saddam from there.

But it wasn't always that way. Saddam was our good friend and ally. We
supported his regime. It wasn?t the first time we had helped a murderer. We
liked playing Dr. Frankenstein. We created a lot of monsters -- the Shah of
Iran, Somoza of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile -- and then we expressed
ignorance or shock when they ran amok and massacred people. We liked Saddam
because he was willing to fight the Ayatollah. So we made sure that he got
billions of dollars to purchase weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. That's
right, he had them. We should know -- we gave them to him!

We allowed and encouraged American corporations to do business with Saddam
in the 1980s. That's how he got chemical and biological agents so he could
use them in chemical and biological weapons. Here's the list of some of the
stuff we sent him (according to a 1994 U.S. Senate report):
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal
cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.

And here are some of the American corporations who helped to prop Saddam up
by doing business with him: AT&T, Bechtel, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical,
Dupont, Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM (for a full list of companies and
descriptions of how they helped Saddam, go to:
www.laweekly.com/ink/03/23/news-crogan.php )

We were so cozy with dear old Saddam that we decided to feed him satellite
images so he could locate where the Iranian troops were. We pretty much knew
how he would use the information, and sure enough, as soon as we sent him
the spy photos, he gassed those troops. And we kept quiet. Because he was
our friend, and the Iranians were the "enemy." A year after he first gassed
the Iranians, we reestablished full diplomatic relations with him!

Later he gassed his own people, the Kurds. You would think that would force
us to disassociate ourselves from him. Congress tried to impose economic
sanctions on Saddam, but the Reagan White House quickly rejected that idea
-- they wouldn?t let anything derail their good buddy Saddam. We had a
virtual love fest with this Frankenstein whom we (in part) created.

And, just like the mythical Frankenstein, Saddam eventually spun out of
control. He would no longer do what he was told by his master. Saddam had to
be caught. And now that he has been brought back from the wilderness,
perhaps he will have something to say about his creators. Maybe we can learn
something... interesting. Maybe Don Rumsfeld could smile and shake Saddam's
hand again. Just like he did when he went to see him in 1983 (you can find a
photo at: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/ )

Maybe we never would have been in the situation we're in if Rumsfeld, Bush,
Sr., and company hadn't been so excited back in the 80s about their friendly
monster in the desert.

Meanwhile, anybody know where the guy is who killed 3,000 people on 9/11?
Our other Frankenstein?? Maybe he's in a mouse hole.

So many of our little monsters, so little time before the next election.

Stay strong, Democratic candidates. Quit sounding like a bunch of wusses.
These bastards sent us to war on a lie, the killing will not stop, the Arab
world hates us with a passion, and we will pay for this out of our pockets
for years to come. Nothing that happened today (or in the past 9 months) has
made us ONE BIT safer in our post-9/11 world. Saddam was never a threat to
our national security.

Only our desire to play Dr. Frankenstein dooms us all.

Yours,

Michael Moore
[log in to unmask]
www.michaelmoore.com



For a look back to the better times of our relationship with Saddam Hussein,
see the following:

Patrick E. Tyler, "Officers say U.S. aided Iraq in war despite use of gas,"
New York Times, August 18, 2002.
www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0818-02.htm

"U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and
their possible impact on health consequences of the Gulf War," 1994 Report
by the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affiars.
www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/report/report_index
.. tm

William Blum's cover story in the April 1998 issue of The Progressive,
"Anthrax for Export.?
www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html

Jim Crogan's April 25-May 1, 2003 report in the LA Weekly, "Made in the USA,
Part III: The Dishonor Roll."
www.laweekly.com/ink/03/23/news-crogan.php

"Iraq: U.S. military items exported or transferred to Iraq in the 1980s,"
United States General Accounting Office, released February 7, 1994.
www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9498.htm

"U.S. had key role in Iraq buildup; trade in chemical arms allowed despite
their use on Iranians and Kurds," Washington Post, December 30, 2002.
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer

"Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. policy and the prelude to the Persian Gulf
War, 1980-1994," The National Security Archive, 2003
www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iraqgate/iraqgate.html