Rummy & Saddam met one year after executions

Rumsfeld shakes the hand of a man condemned to death: Rummy shakes hands with Hussein on December 20, 1983. (Hussein was just found guilty in the execution of 148 men and boys on July 8, 1982 in the Shiite city of Dujail after a purported assassination attempt against him.)

For those of you who think I'm making up the whole "Saddam used to be OUR dictator" slant, check out picture above. The Huffington Post is running a caption contest for this pic - enter that Here. There are lots of declassified documents about this encounter, and they make for some very interesting reading.

You can read the declassified stuff Here, but I'll give you the cliff notes:

**A U.S. cable recording the December 20, 1983 conversation between Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. Although Rumsfeld said during a September 21, 2002 CNN interview, "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter of fact, and discussed a host of other things," the document indicates there was no mention of chemical weapons. Rumsfeld did raise the issue in his subsequent meeting with Iraqi official Tariq Aziz.
National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114 of November 26, 1983, "U.S. Policy toward the Iran-Iraq War," delineating U.S. priorities: the ability to project military force in the Persian Gulf and to protect oil supplies, without reference to chemical weapons or human rights concerns.

**National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 139 of April 5, 1984, "Measures to Improve U.S. Posture and Readiness to Respond to Developments in the Iran-Iraq War," focusing again on increased access for U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf and enhanced intelligence-gathering capabilities. The directive calls for "unambiguous" condemnation of chemical weapons use, without naming Iraq, but places "equal stress" on protecting Iraq from Iran's "ruthless and inhumane tactics." The directive orders preparation of "a plan of action designed to avert an Iraqi collapse."

**U.S. and Iraqi consultations about Iran's 1984 draft resolution seeking United Nations Security Council condemnation of Iraq's chemical weapons use. Iraq conveyed several requests to the U.S. about the resolution, including its preference for a lower-level response and one that did not name any country in connection with chemical warfare; the final result complied with Iraq's requests.

**The 1984 public U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons use in the Iran-Iraq war, which said, referring to the Ayatollah Khomeini's refusal to agree to end hostilities until Saddam Hussein was ejected from power, "The United States finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighboring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behavior among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims."

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How inconvenient for Rummy and Bush. Hmmm, here's a wild prediction - they'll lie and deny their way out of this inconvenient fact, if it even gets any press.