萨达姆处死许多颇耐人寻味的事当中有项是，虽然他的死亡似乎肯定增加逊尼和叶什之间的流血宗派斗争，他一向却以能够团结国内敌对宗派的伊拉克人和阿拉伯民族主义者自居——当年美国就喜欢他这一套。

　

这个伊拉克独裁者引起美国政策者注意的其他本领包括反共的辉煌成绩和备抗伊朗穆斯林叶什派最高领袖科梅尼。

　

在所有日子中偏偏在今日，美国政府当然不会让人提起它曾在两伊战争积极站在伊拉克一边的——供给信用、情报、直升机甚至包括美国海军的战斗性协助。

　

但那是真正发生过的事情。这在拉姆斯菲尔德二次以里根总统中东特使前往巴格达前，国务卿舒尔兹（Schultz）1984年3月发给他的一封电报里，把这些关系作了一个总结。虽然美国刚刚公开地谴责伊拉克使用化学武器，舒尔兹告诉拉姆斯菲尔德说，这个谴责多多少少是形式上的，“我们的利益在1）阻止伊朗胜利，2）根据伊拉克选择的进度，继续与伊拉克改进双方关系保持不变……，在你的讨论中，应该强调这些信息。”

　

美国与萨达姆多年来关系的关键在于他们分享共同的敌人。侯赛因早期政治生涯是充当复兴社会党的打手。1961（译者：也有报道说“1959年”），他企图暗杀当年伊拉克领袖卡希姆（译者：也有人写“Kassem”）失败后，逃亡埃及。当时，左倾的卡希姆将军在共产党支持下统治伊拉克，华盛顿认为他是最不喜欢的人。

　

其实，1963年，当他的复兴社会党同志在美国暗中协助下夺权成功，侯赛因的放逐生活也就结束了。“我们乘着CIA的火车去夺权的。”该党总书记萨阿迪（Saadi）后来这麽解释说。

　

一旦政权在手，侯赛因和他的政党追求一个民族主义议程，有时令到美国不满——如当他成功地国有化伊拉克的所有石油资产。在1970年中期，美国对他忍无可忍时，竟然短期暗中协助库尔德叛乱势力。但几年后，伊朗激进叶什主义胜利，侯赛因又再一次成为美国的盟友了。

　

起初，不清楚侯赛因为何要与科梅尼的伊朗打起来。因为伊拉克国内的叶什宗教领导从未对侯赛因的统治有何威胁。但当叶什群众跟随的共产党被彻底消灭后，情势开始变化了。叶什派宗教领导看到邻国伊斯兰革命成功，开始在政治上维护自己的权益了。

　

侯赛因感到局面紧张，在1980年先发制人向伊朗开战，美国也在暗中鼓励。

　

除去那古怪偏差的伊朗－抗它拉事件（Iran－Contra affair）外，美国在两伊战争8年中一直支持伊拉克对付激进的伊朗政权，尽管侯赛因曾经利用毒气对付自己人民的一事都是家喻户晓的，这事布什总统今天老在提醒我们。

　

其实，那个始终如一的支持令使侯赛因眼花花，以为1990年从侵占科威特撤退，美国可能准予他一些特权的。如果他除了埃及流亡和到莫斯科和巴黎购买武器外，多与外界接触，或他的顾问敢在面前多说实话，他一定会了解到，苏联在冷战失败后，第三世界独裁者如再向美国挑战而不遭遇惩罚是不可能的。

　

虽然他从科威特被赶走，同时，经济也遭到制裁严重的破坏，侯赛因侥幸生还，因为美国认为侯赛因还是有用的，主要是对付境外的伊朗和境内的激进什叶主义。但911袭击后，新保守主义者抛弃这个政策后，这个独裁者的日子就不多了。

　

曾经一个时期，侯赛因是美国在中东传统控制工具的最佳例子：对听从美国利益而采取高压手段的领袖静静地支持。现在，那个方法显而易见地被另一个取代了，一个导致民间不合和破裂（有意或无意）的法子，最近在伊拉克、黎巴嫩和阿富汗的事件便是证据。

　

在他最后时刻，萨达姆·侯赛因也许可能从这些变化对他过去在华盛顿朋友带来令人不愉快的惊奇而得到一些满足。

　

By Andrew Cockburn
ANDREW COCKBURN is the author of "Rumsfeld, His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy," to be published by Simon & Schuster in February.

December 30, 2006

AMONG THE MANY ironies of Saddam Hussein's execution is that, although his death seems certain to boost sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, he always posed as an Iraqi and Arab nationalist who could unite the rivalrous sects in his country — an attribute that initially recommended him to Washington.

Other qualities of the Iraqi dictator that appealed to U.S. policymakers included his sterling record in eliminating communists and his readiness to confront the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the militant Shiite leader of Iran.

Today of all days, the administration has no desire to be reminded of the era when the U.S. actively intervened on Iraq's side in the Iran-Iraq war, supplying credit, intelligence, helicopters and, finally, active combat assistance from the U.S. Navy.

But that is indeed what happened. Something of the flavor of the relationship is summed up in a March 1984 cable from Secretary of State George Shultz to Donald Rumsfeld, who was about to visit Baghdad for the second time as President Reagan's Middle East envoy. Although the U.S. had just publicly condemned Iraq's use of chemical weapons, Shultz told Rumsfeld that the condemnation had been more or less pro forma and that "our interests in 1) preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve bilateral relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's choosing, remain undiminished…. This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The key to the relationship between the U.S. and Hussein over the years was that they shared the same enemies. Hussein's early political career was as a hit man for the Baath party. In 1961, he fled into exile in Egypt after botching an assassination attempt against the then-leader of Iraq, Abdul Karim Qassim. Qassim, a leftist general who ruled with the support of the Communist Party, was regarded with extreme disfavor in Washington.

In fact, Hussein's exile ended in 1963, when his Baathist colleagues seized power with covert U.S. assistance. "We rode to power on a CIA train," the party's secretary general, Ali Saleh Saadi, admitted later.

Once in power, Hussein and his party pursued a nationalist agenda that sometimes irked Washington — as when he masterminded the full nationalization of Iraq's oil assets. In the mid-1970s, the U.S. got so irritated with him that it briefly gave covert assistance to Kurdish insurgents. But the triumph of militant Shiism in Iran a few years later guaranteed Hussein a place among Washington's allies once again.

Initially, it wasn't clear that Hussein would have to go to war against Khomeini's Iran. That's because the Shiite religious leadership in Iraq posed little threat to Hussein's rule. But that began to change when the communists — who had commanded the allegiance of the Shiite masses — were crushed and liquidated. The Shiite religious hierarchy, encouraged by the success of the Islamic Revolution next door, then began asserting itself politically.

Panicked by this internal threat, Hussein decided on a preemptive attack against Iran in 1980, a move that came with covert U.S. encouragement.

Apart from the eccentric deviation of the Iran-Contra affair, Washington's support for Iraq against the militant Iranian Shiite regime remained firm during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, despite Hussein's well-publicized use of poison gas against, as President Bush likes to remind us, his own people.

That consistent support, in fact, appears to have deluded Hussein into thinking that the U.S. would grant him concessions in return for withdrawing from Kuwait after his 1990 invasion of that country. Had he any experience of the outside world beyond his exile in Egypt and brief arms-shopping trips to Moscow and Paris — or had his advisors not been too frightened to tell him the truth — he might have understood that, with the Soviet Union's defeat in the Cold War, Third World dictators could no longer defy the U.S. and escape unpunished.

Though he was expelled from Kuwait and his economy wrecked by sanctions, Hussein was allowed to survive because Washington for a time continued to believe that he was useful as a bulwark against Iran abroad and militant Shiism at home in Iraq. When that policy was discarded by the neoconservatives after the 9/11 attacks, the dictator's days were numbered.

Hussein was for a period the prime example of the traditional U.S. means of control in the Middle East: quiet support for a repressive leader respectful of U.S. interests. That approach has now apparently been replaced by one that induces civil discord and breakdown (deliberately or otherwise), as evidenced by recent events in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

In his final hours, Saddam Hussein may have derived some satisfaction from the unpleasant surprises this change has produced for his former friends in Washington. (December 31, 2006, Los Angeles Times)