Saddam is dead. And the secrets go down the chute with him. No one sheds any tears for Saddam Hussein, one of the world's worst. His crimes were many. But he was our man in Iraq for many years, and some of our most beloved politicians loved him the way a little boy loves his puppy.

Robert Fisk, one of the top journalists in the Middle East, has some interesting commentary on this. He reminds us that the United States strongly supported and helped Saddam during the 1980's, when Saddam was Saddam, a real killer who loosed chemical weapons on his enemies, not the weak tinpot dictator with a decimated military, the guy we attacked in 2003. Fisk writes:

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.

If you understand how criminal law works in the United States, then you know that accomplices to murder are as guilty as the guy who pulled the trigger. If Fred robs a bank and shoots the bank teller, then Phil the getaway driver is also guilty of murder. If Saddam gasses innocent people and throws them into a mass grave, what about the guy who gave him the material necessary to make the weapons? Here's Fisk:

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, and Escherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Another recent piece by Robert Fisk details the U.S. relationship with Saddam, including Donald Rumsfeld's meeting with the butcher of Baghdad and his assurances that the Reagan administration deemed him an ally. "In 1982, the administration ignored objections in Congress and removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism. By November 1983, the National Security Council had issued a directive that the US should do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent an Iranian victory. Washington did nothing to deter Saddam's use of chemical weapons. As the 1980s progressed, a clandestine network of companies developed in the US and other countries to help the Iraqi war effort. The conflict between Iraq and Iran ended in 1988, but Saddam continued his Western-supported military build-up until the very moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990."

The notion that Saddam's death spares his American accomplices from embarassing revelations reminds me of what happened in 1990, when the first Bush administration invaded Panama and seized Manuel Noriega, a military dictator sufficiently demonized by George H. W. Bush to rally public support for this invasion. Noriega was a close ally of the Reagan administration and we loved him at his most violent. But he grew unpredictable and it was easy to send American troops to overthrow his government. Noriega was the man with the secrets, once pronouncing that he had George Bush "by the balls." This was a threat to expose the Reagan-Bush complicity with Noriega's crimes. Today Noriega sits in a Florida jail in connection with this drug crimes, prosecuted by the U.S. government after the invasion. Who would believe Noriega today?