Newspaper of Record?

How is it possible for Neil MacFarquhar to write an obituary of over 5,000 words in the New York Times (the self-proclaimed "newspaper of record") about Saddam Hussein without once -- not once! -- mentioning how his worst crimes were sponsored and paid for by the C.I.A, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and U.S. Defense Department?

• Nothing about who paid him in 1959 to try to assassinate Iraq's Prime Minister, Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
• Not one word about who nurtured him during his long exile in Egypt.
  
• Not a word about who engineered the 1963 Ba'athist coup that brought him to power. ("We came to power on a CIA train," said the Ba'ath party secretary.")
  
• Nothing about who gave him the list of alleged socialists to be purged by assassination.
  
• Not a word about who supplied him with poison gas or who made sure he continued to receive it even after we knew it was being used against Kurd rebels. ("The Reagan White House killed the bill")
• Nothing about who bankrolled the Iraqi war against Iran.

Yes, Saddam was trash. But he was our trash. Why is the Times unable to admit it?

Amplification Dept.

As the group blog Never in Our Name points out, the U.S. propaganda machine corporate media almost uniformly whitewashes from the record American complicity in Saddam's criminal rise to power. The exception comes, as often is the case, from Robert Fisk of the UK Independent news.

More Amplification

We might have saved ourselves the trouble of writing the above piece if only we'd seen Chris Floyd's appropriately snarky take on Neil MacFarquhar's retched obituary. Here's an excerpt (but please read the whole thing):

People often write to Empire Burlesque in search of an answer to one of the great conundrums of these modern times, namely: "Why are the American people such suckers? * * * How could the American people be so ignorant and misinformed about what goes on in the world? How can they be so ignorant and misinformed of their own history, of the dirty deals done in their names for years on end? How can this be?"

* * * If you want to know precisely how the American people are kept deliberately ignorant, simply click on the link to this story in the nation's "newspaper of record," the journal which sets the standard for and largely determines the news agenda of the American press ... . There, in the stately pages of The New York Times, you will find some 5,200 words written by Neil MacFarquhar detailing the rise, reign and fall of the Iraqi dictator.
* * *
But what you will not find is any detail or examination whatsoever of the prominent, direct and continuing role the United States government played in bringing Saddam to power, maintaining him in office, underwriting his tyranny, and rewarding his aggression.