Jeff Koopersmith

Grandpa Don
What was Donald Rumsfeld doing in Iraq back in 1988?
Everyone's favorite "television grandfather" may be a demon in disguise... or is he?
by Jeff Koopersmith

Oct. 8, 2002 -- WASHINGTON (APJP) -- The other day I watched Secretary of Defense -- now Secretary of War -- Donald Rumsfeld cut a mighty appealing posture during a news conference.

He was, as usual, moaning about Saddam Hussein, amusing some reporters, and annoying others with his half-baked midwestern-style cracker pose as he explained the nuances of difference between weapons of mass destruction owned by Iraq, and WMDs owned by the United States military.

The man is disarming. He is always well-dressed, a ruggedly handsome guy -- the kind of fellow you want with you on a long sail in the Caribbean when a bad squall comes roaring in from the South. One can easily picture him in a yellow slicker, like the label on a tuna fish can, hauling the sheets and luffing the mainsail.

Rumsfeld, even facially, resembles a famous forerunner -- Bob McNamara. You may remember him: he was the Secretary of Defense who brought you the Vietnam "conflict".

There isn't an American alive who quite understands what we are up to in Iraq -- and that includes this writer.

I know of not a single American anywhere -- including within the CIA and the State Department -- that has one scintilla of proof that Saddam Hussein not only has these WMDs but the ability to deliver them.

I am also unaware of any evidence that Iraq has planned, is planning or supports terrorist activities aimed at the United States.

In fact, it seems fairly obviously that George W.'s Poppy went after Saddam in defense of Kuwait -- meaning merely to maintain Kuwait's stranglehold over Saddam's export of oil. Saddam paid a hefty tariff to ship his oil from the Iraqi border through Kuwaiti-American owned pipelines, and had some historic claim to at least a "runway" into the Persian Gulf and on to the Arabian Sea. The Emir of Kuwait refused to deal fairly on the issue, and Saddam decided to take what what he felt was his -- wrongly perhaps, but wrongly especially since he was "messin' with Texas" at the time.

It's clear that W.'s father, George Herbert Walker Bush, wasn't interested in eliminating Saddam and just wanted his Kuwaiti friends kept happy. And thankfully, few Americans were killed in Desert Storm -- but sadly, many of them died from from friendly fire. Saddam was pushed back, and the weapons inspectors emerged complete with a severe set of fiscal punishments from the US-UN cadre Bush had neatly sewn together before launching the first US missile.

Now, for some reason neither I nor most can fathom, George W. wants to "finish a job."

So be it.

We may never know the entire truth about this rush into the Middle East, but suffice it to say that this is one writer who has tired from hearing about it.

My suggestion might be to simply invade all the Arab states at once and crush them -- installing feminist women as president of each. That way we could have all the oil we want, not to mention great olives, some camels, and plenty of sand to replenish the eroding beaches of our eastern shores.

Five years before Saddam ostensibly gassed the Kurds in 1988, Ronald Reagan sent a former secretary of defense to Baghdad, Iraq with a letter Reagan had written by hand to Saddam.

That man was Don Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld and Reagan told Hussein that the Administration was ready resume diplomatic relations.

After returning from Iraq, Rumsfeld, in an interview with the New York Times, said:

"It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems."

Just a few years earlier -- in 1984 -- other Persian Gulf statesmen were given a message: defeat of Iraq by Iran in a war already going for three years would be contrary to U.S. interests. The White House, the CIA and the Pentagon took steps to insure that Iraq would not be defeated -- and it wasn't.

That year Rumsfeld rushed back to Iraq for meetings with none other than Tariq Aziz, then the Iraqi foreign minister. While Rumsfeld was in Iraq, it was reported that Iraq's armed forces had used mustard gas laced with nerve gas on Iranian soldier sporadically during the war. While Rumsfeld was in Baghdad, the Iranians announced that 600 of their men had been gassed with chemical weapons from bombs, with mustard gas and Tabun, a nerve agent. Rumsfeld was surely aware of this at the time -- and sure enough, our American State Department issued a statement that Iraq was using lethal chemical weapons. The Ice Queen, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, told The Times that this was a "very serious matter... and we've made that clear..."

That's it?

Now, Junior and Rumsfeld are practically hysterical over the potential that Saddam has the same weapons -- but never mentions that such "friends of the US" as North Korea, China, Libya, and most developed nations also have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, many of which we sold them!

Rumsfeld resigned from the Reagan Administration in the late spring of 1984 and planned to run for president in 1988. Rumsfeld touted that he was the man who help open US-Iraqi relations. What Rumsfeld failed to say then -- and fails to say now -- is that he did so with full and complete knowledge and therefore tacit support of Saddam's own chemical weapons program. What Ambassador Kirkpatrick had said from her perch at the UN was merely a smokescreen to cover our diplomatic behinds at the time.

Not only that, but Rumsfeld also was involved in a push by the State Department to sell 45 Bell Helicopters to Iraq for nearly $300 million dollars for "civilian use" -- and of course these were almost immediately put into use by Hussein's must trusted forces to gas the Kurds in 1988.

Imagine that: grampa Don, in Iraq while she was gassing Iranian soldiers, selling them military helicopters and then ignoring the fact that the "Hueys" were used to kill innocent women and children of Kurdish decent.

The US Senate, under Daddy Bush, placed massive and sweeping sanctions on Iraq including the end to selling Saddam US technology. The White House stopped it cold.

The long and short of it is that Rumsfeld knew all of this and never, ever said a word.

He isn't talking now about his role, nor is offering any evidence of his current position against Iraq. His mouth is loud today -- but without proof on any kind -- about Saddam, about Al Qaeda allegedly being in cahoots with Saddam, about practically anything.

One wonders if George W. -- my peer, and probably an all-around okay guy if you get him out of elected office -- even knows any of this, or frankly cares.

What's worse is that none of the media sources Americans generally rely on are telling the truth about Rumsfeld.

Have you heard Tim Russert ask Don Rumsfeld where he was when this mess started -- and about his role in starting it? Have you heard the same question from George "Little Brutus" Stephanopoulos at ABC's This Week? Have we seen old Roger Ailes direct his overpaid puppet Brit Hume to ask the tough questions on FOX News Channel?

No. And you won't.

These men in Washington, these practitioners of Hitler's Big Lie theory, have everyone spooked. Reporters are holding conferences about it. Editors with any decency are leaving in disgust.

Meantime, an ungodly alliance between the war machine and the media-advertisement-sales-infotainment machine has been created.

It's not what's good for General Motors any longer; it's what's good for Lockheed Martin.

And that is why you never, ever hear them utter word one about Grandpa Don schmoozing with Saddam's boys.