Posted by Iranian on February 21, 2007, 8:37 pm EVER SINCE the Islamic Revolution of 1979 took Tehran out of Washington's orbit, the United States has run its Iraq policy with one eye firmly planted on Iran. In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein's war against Iran and protected him in the United Nations Security Council even after it became clear the Iraqi regime had used chemical weapons. Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait made Washington much more hostile towards Baghdad but its preferred policy became that of "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran rather than of rapprochement with Tehran. After evicting the Iraqi army from Kuwait in 1991, George Bush Sr. had the option of pressing ahead till Baghdad. He chose not to because he did not wish to create a situation that might favour Iran, a country the U.S. considered a more challenging adversary than Iraq. Regime change was still a goal but the thought that the downfall of the Ba'athist regime would lead to the rise of Iraqi political forces sympathetic to Iran acted as a deterrent against full-scale aggression, even for the "liberal internationalist" Bill Clinton. Throughout the 1990s, then, the White House used sanctions and air power to keep Saddam Hussein "in his box." More than half-a-million Iraqis died during this period as a direct result of the U.N.-enforced embargo or because the air strikes launched by U.S. pilots often missed their intended targets. Link: http://www.payvand.com/news/07/feb/1104.html
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From mega surge to dual rollback
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