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Wolfowitz on Shiite contacts in Iraq; and on How He is the Only Patriot

...A student asked:
Q: I'd just like to say that people like Ruthy and myself have always opposed Saddam Hussein, especially when Saddam Hussein was being funded by the United States throughout the '80s. And -- [Applause] And after the killings of the Kurds when the United States increased aid to Iraq. We were there opposing him as well. People like us were there. We are for democracy. And I have a question. What do you plan to do when Bush is defeated in 2004 and you will no longer have the power to push forward the project for New American Century's policy of American military and economic dominance over the people of the world? [Applause]

Wolfowitz: I don't know if it was just Freudian or you intended to say it that way, but you said you opposed Saddam Hussein especially when the United States supported him. It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies. [Applause] And it seems to me a time to have supported the United States and to push the United States harder was in 1991 when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering those innocents so viciously.

You know, as a historian I try to be as even-handed as I can, and I don't like to demonize people. There are things I admire about Paul Wolfowitz. But this exchange is just so ugly and ruthless that it made my blood boil when I read it. Wolfowitz doesn't seem to get it, that the student is referring to the period 1983-1990 when the US was a close ally of Saddam's, when it authorized the sale of chemical and biological precursors to Saddam, when it had the US navy function essentially as an auxiliary of Saddam's military. Either he didn't get it or he was using misdirection to shift attention away from his own former alliance with Saddam (I wonder if he's managed to have all those files shredded?)

That is bad enough. But then he said, "It seems to me that the north star of your comment is that you dislike this country and its policies." And you know, I want to puke at a statement like that. Objecting to the Bush administration's policies is not the same as to "dislike this country." That is sickening demagoguery. Objecting to the Reagan-Bush alliance with Saddam, of which Wolfowitz was part given that he served in those administrations, is certainly not unpatriotic. In any case, Paul Wolfowitz does not own this country. He does not have a patent on patriotism. No one appointed him High Inquisitioner to examine the consciences of other Americans. That comment was despicable. And I guarantee you, it will come back to haunt him. Because charges of working against the interests of your own country are very slippery things, and may get the one making the charges hoisted by his own petard someday. Nixon used to pull that crap too....