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During trial, Hussein may try to implicate Western leaders
U.S. and other nations that supported him in past could be vulnerable

WASHINGTON - The trials of Saddam Hussein and other Iraqi leaders could produce embarrassing reminders of past American support for his government and of the West's failure to punish him despite mounting evidence of Iraqi atrocities.

Lawyers familiar with war crimes trials say attorneys for Hussein and his aides might try to introduce damaging evidence against Western leaders as a pressure tactic against their accusers or to shift responsibility away from the dictator's actions....

...In 1988, Reagan administration officials found persuasive evidence that Hussein had used poison gas against Kurds in the village of Halabja, in northern Iraq, and joined with allies in seeking a United Nations inspection. Hussein refused to allow inspectors in. That same year, the United Nations found that Iraq had used poison gas in the final throes of its war against Iran.

But the Reagan administration resisted an effort by some in Congress, led by Sen. Claiborne Pell, a Rhode Island Democrat, to impose sanctions on Iraq, preferring to use diplomacy in a bid to halt Hussein's use of chemical weapons.

The Reagan administration and its successor under President George Bush granted billions of dollars in credits to Iraq, enabling it to buy U.S. agricultural products, while Hussein simultaneously expanded his weapons arsenal and tried to develop nuclear weapons.

A 1990 Human Rights Watch report quoted a senior State Department official as describing the Iraqi government as "possibly the worst violator of human rights anywhere in the world today."...