Known and Unknown_ A Memoir - Donald Rumsfeld [5]
Our meeting was considerably more formal than my long session with Aziz. This time I wasn’t pulled off alone. Two members of our mission were included—Bill Eagleton and Robert Pelletreau—along with Aziz and an Iraqi interpreter.
The war with Iran was naturally uppermost in Saddam’s mind. Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, was a mere one hundred miles from the Iranian border and suffering frequent shelling and rocket attacks. Even the presidential complex where we were meeting was protected by sandbags and barriers. Though Saddam was in a difficult situation, he made no direct request for American military assistance. Like Aziz, Saddam said he was concerned about other nations providing military and financial assistance to Iran and clearly hoped that the United States might have some influence with them.3 In addition, at the State Department’s request, I discussed a proposal to funnel Iraqi oil through a pipeline that ended in Aqaba, Jordan.4 Saddam said he would consider the idea but indicated it would require American assurance that Israel would not attack it.5 Though officially most Arab nations didn’t even acknowledge Israel as a nation, they tended to view its formidable military with respect.
Saddam indicated a surprising amount of openness to cooperation with the West. “France in particular,” he said, “understood the Iraqi view.”6 Over the years that followed, that particular remark came to my mind on more than one occasion, and I never had cause to doubt it.
At one point, Saddam motioned me over to a window and pointed toward a tall building on the city’s skyline.
“See that building?” he asked, as we looked out at Baghdad’s sprawling vista. I nodded.
“When an elevator in that building breaks, where do we look to have it repaired?” he asked. I waited for his conclusion.
“I look for help in the West,” he continued. His point was clear: Iraq needed the West to make his country part of the modern world. Looking back, I wonder how much of our recent history would have changed if his perspective at the time had outweighed his other goals and appetites.
As Saddam and I began to discuss the prospects for U.S.-Iraqi relations, he said something quite interesting.
“It seems unnatural,” he said, “to have a whole generation of Iraqis growing up knowing little about America and a whole generation of Americans growing up knowing little about Iraq.”
I concealed a smile. Those, of course, were my exact words late the night before. Certainly Saddam’s repeating them was no coincidence. I didn’t know how Saddam had heard my statement—if Aziz had told him personally or if, as was not at all unlikely, the room Aziz and I met in was bugged. In any event, I was pleased and encouraged that he repeated it so pointedly. I began to think that through increased contacts we might be able to persuade the Iraqis to lean toward the United States and eventually modify their behavior.
After Saddam repeated my words back to me, I nodded. “I agree completely,” I replied, as if it were the first time I had heard those thoughts.
Over my decades of public service I received a number of unusual gifts from foreign leaders and heads of state, but none was stranger than the one Saddam presented to me. It was a videotape that may well have been put together specifically for my visit, though the production values weren’t going to win it any Oscars. The tape contained two to three minutes of amateurish footage of Syria’s dictator, Hafez al-Assad, reviewing Syrian troops and applauding. Then it showed people purported to be Syrians strangling puppies. This was followed by a line of young women biting the heads off of snakes. The video appeared edited in a way that indicated Assad was present and applauding these gruesome acts. I suspect Saddam wanted me to see the Syrians, and Assad in particular, as savages. Considering the Assad regime’s history, that wasn’t a difficult sell.
After about ninety minutes, Saddam thanked me for coming, and I expressed my appreciation. As odd as it might sound, he came across as rather reasonable. For his part, Saddam seemed