THERE GOES Robert Fisk again, mourning the death of Saddam and regurgitating the canard that the US had collaborated with him and how he just took all the secrets with him to the grave. Silly because while it's true that the US collaborated in the past, the countries who have good reasons to be relieved are the ones opposing the military intervention, most notably China, Russia and France. I'd say it's the leaders of these countries who sleep better at night now (not much, though; there's still paperwork!)

But more than that: what gives if the US 'collaborated' with Saddam's Iraq several decades ago? To begin with, the era of the Cold War is absolutely different to the current times. Failure to grasp this should mean one is not qualified to write on these matters unless it's in a junior high newspaper.

But the main think is this; Fisk is one of many European commentators who blame current US administrations for something done by previous occupants of the White House. Even when they correct something that these critics were against! They shout 'hypocrisy' until they're blue in the face, as if one president now couldn't act differently to his predecessors.

I hate to break it to Fisk, but this is what happens: while it was the same Saddam in power back then and until a little over three years ago, in the US there's one thing called elections. Every 4 or 8 years there's a new administration. And actually the president who gave Saddam the green light to launch the war against Iran was none other than the European left's US president hero, Jimmy Carter (still more of a hero than Clinton, since 1/ Bubba was the Balkans warmonger after all and killed people!, and 2/ Bubba doesn't criticize Israel as much as Carter does. But I digress). Carter wanted to do something to counter the spectacular, cosmic failure of his Iran policy, and supported Iran's arch-enemy. Later, it was Bush Sr. who went to war against Saddam and expelled him from Kuwait. From that moment, and since the world had changed, there's been no more support for him. What's the big deal?

I mean, it isn't like it's the first time a country changes its alliances as circumstances change. If it wasn't so, in Spain we'd still be supporting the Romans...