NON-EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
From the new Expanded Election Edition of Greg Palast's
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Plume)
Available In Stores Monday April 26, 2004

I avoid The New York Times but lately, it's become a compulsion, though only for the new daily column titled, 'Names of the Dead.' Today's listing: 'DERVISHI, Ervin, 21, Pfc, Army. Fort Worth.'

I'm not one of those cynical people who thought Bush sent us into to Iraq for the oil. To me, Saddam Hussein was always a Kurd-killing cockroach with a Hitlerian mustache. I never liked the guy -- not even when he worked for George Bush Sr.

It's worth going over the work the Butcher of Baghdad did for his Texas patrons when he was their butcher:

1979: Seizes power with US approval; moves allegiance from Soviets to USA in Cold War.

1980: Invades Iran, then the 'Unicycle of Evil,' with US encouragement and arms. (In fairness, credit here goes to Nobel Peace Laureate, James Carter.)

1982: Bush-Reagan regime removes Saddam's regime from official US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

1983: Saddam hosts Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad. Agrees to 'go steady' with US corporate suppliers.

1984: US Commerce Department issues license for export of aflatoxin to Iraq useable in biological weapons.

1988: Kurds in Halabja, Iraq, gassed. 1987-88: US warships destroy Iranian oil platforms in Gulf and break Iranian blockade of Iraq shipping lanes, tipping war advantage back to Saddam.

1990: Invades Kuwait with US permission.

US permission? On July 25, 1990, the dashing dictator met in Baghdad with US Ambassador April Glaspie. When Saddam asked Glaspie if the US would object to an attack on Kuwait over the small emirate's theft of Iraqi oil, America's Ambassador told him, 'We have no opinion.... Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction ... that Kuwait is not associated with America.' Saddam taped her.

Glaspie, in 1991 Congressional testimony, did not deny the authenticity of the recording which diplomats worldwide took as a Bush Sr's OK to an Iraqi invasion.

So where is Secretary Baker today? On the lam, hiding in deserved shame? Doing penance by nursing the victims of Gulf War Syndrome? No, Mr. Baker is a successful lawyer, founder of Baker Botts of Houston, Riyadh, Kazakhstan. Among his glinting client roster, Exxon-Mobil oil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. Baker's firm is protecting the Saudi royal from a lawsuit by the families of the victims of September 11 over evidence suggesting that Saudi money ended up in the pockets of the terrorists.

And Baker has just opened a new office ... at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is a White House first: the first time a lobbyist for the oil industry will have a desk right next to the President's. Baker's job, to 'restructure' Iraq's debt. How lucky for his clients in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq. Apparently this includes their $7 billion send to Saddam to fund his bomb [see Chapter 2].