Rumsfeld returns to Baghdad

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Henry Kissinger once said during the war between Iran and Iraq, that it was the kind of conflict where you want to supply both sides with arms and hope they keep fighting as long as possible, because they were both enemies.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't have that particular Kissinger quote - but I will not dispute it : It sounds exactly like the kind of self-effacing, profile-mending statement that the old war criminal would make after the fact.

The truth, of course, is that, at the time, the United States regarded the radical regime in Tehran as Enemy Number One and wanted to see it defeated in the Iraq-Iran war, and if possible eliminated totally. This is why the U.S. propped up Saddam Hussein's regime repeatedly during the war, sometimes offering direct help.

If the Iraqis were at any time close to winning the war, the U.S. would NOT have stopped them, as Kissinger's logic would have it.