In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein -- not long after Iraq used mustard gas on Iranian troops, civilians and Kurds, in the Persian Gulf War -- a war that became the longest running conventional war in modern times, resulting in over a million dead. The meeting was a sign of restored diplomatic relations between the US and Iraq -- the US at the time were not happy with the newly minted Islamic Republic of Iran. The war eventually ended in a stalemate. The resulting political ramifications however, led to the second Persian Gulf War, in which, in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the US led a multinational force that decimated Iraq's military, pushing them out of Kuwait.
Fast forward to today. Hussein has now been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity -- that's what he was doing when he was using chemical weapons against Iranians and Kurds, for which the Americans, via Rumsfeld, was congratulating him for. The trial is a result of an American invasion of Iraq to eliminate Iraq's WMD (aka chemical weapons), which deposed Saddam and led to the US supervised trial to convict Saddam of murdering Iranians. At the same time, the Americans are just not getting along with Iran, with some believing that if the mess in Iraq can be cleaned up quickly, an invasion of Iran will follow.
OK, bad guys are bad guys. They deserve what they get. But what about the likes of Rumsfeld? With friends like that, it's not your enemies you have to be afraid of.
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