Saddam Hussein was just one of the too many dictators in the last 50years the USA colluded with for its own $$$ and geopolitical interests.
A few other examples:
Chile (Sept 11, 1973) Pinochet supported & assisted by Kissinger/CIA for the sake of a couple of US Mining Corporations, resulted in 30,000 deaths.
Then we have Cambodia, Guatemala, Iran, El Salvador, etc, I won´t even try to list them all.
Back to Saddam:
In 1959, Saddam Hussein was shot in the leg during a US-backed assassination attempt on the Soviet-aligned Prime Minister of Iraq. He was evacuated under US diplomatic cover to Syria, and eventually made his way to Cairo, where he spent the next three years studying law. His studies were funded by the Cairo "station" of the CIA.
In 1963, he returned to Iraq with the assistance of the US Sate Department, after a CIA sponsored coup which briefly brought the Ba'ath party to power. In 1968, Saddam's uncle became the ruler of Iraq after the Ba'ath party, again with the backing of the CIA, seized power.
Saddam took control of the secret police, who were supplied with intelligence by the CIA on the activities of the communist party and socialist elements within the Ba'ath party. The purges conducted using the information supplied by the CIA allowed Saddam to ensure that he was well positioned to inherit the presidency from his uncle in 1979.
During the early 1980's, Saddam consolidated his power by using CIA-supplied databases to identify and eliminate most of the remaining members of the communist party, which represented the major resistance force against Saddam's rule.
see also the article:
"U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds" - which appeared in the Washingtonpost --
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...ode=&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29¬Found=true
Oh, and speaking of mass murder:
A 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report estimates that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the U.S.-forced sanctions.
Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, "We Think the Price Is Worth It", calmly asserted that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children.