The fate of puppets

The US put Saddam Hussein in power with two CIA-backed coups, encouraged him to attack Iran and Kuwait, supplied him with weapons (of mass destruction and otherwise), and did him the great honor of sending Donald Rumsfeld to visit him as a personal envoy of President Reagan. Then, in 1990, we pulled the puppet out of his happy play (for him) and started dangling him over the fire. We told him to get out of Kuwait, and then destroyed a lot of his toys when he didn't do so fast enough. We told him to get rid of even more of the toys we gave him, and, being a good puppet, he did. But we still dangled him over the fire for twelve years before dropping him into it in 2003. Chris Floyd recounts transcripts of discussions in Iraq in the 1990's:

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. At another meeting, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether UN inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

In another meeting, deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (a Christian by the way; when do you think we'll next see a Christian as deputy prime minister of Iraq?), pipes up: "We played by the rules of the game. In 1991, our weapons were destroyed."

They didn't realize that when you play with the US government, every game is Calvinball.