Airstrip One

Being Fair to Rumsfield

Tom Fox tears at Rumsfield for doing dirty deals with Saddam during the Gulf War.

One phrase forcefully struck me "Saddam was an ally of the Reagan administration". Was he?

He certainly invaded Iran with America's blessing and it started on September 22 1980. Now Ronnie was elected in November 1980 and inagurated in January.

The point of this? In the end administrations and elected governments rarely have their own foreign policy except at the margins. The interests, and perceptions of those interests, change on non-electoral cycles.