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He also said that the United States has a lot to answer for in the current crisis over Iraq, since the Reagan administration backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

That was almost a generation ago, hard as it is to believe. Bill Clinton seems to forget that he had eight years to correct whatever was wrong with past American policy toward Iraq. Didn't he call for regime change, and up the quantity of bombing back in 1998? Like everything else in his life, he never followed-through to finish the job. He got distracted with this quest for a Nobel Peace Prize for peace in the Middle East. George W. Bush is simply cleaning up the mess that Clinton left, or the security threats that resulted from Clinton's negligence.

"He also said that the United States has a lot to answer for in the current crisis over Iraq, since the Reagan administration backed Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s."

I'm getting sick of hearing this liberal attack on Reagan. While the administration did give some aid to Saddam in the 1980's, the entire policy was a result of Carter's failures in Iran to support the Shah. It was even the Carter administration that created the policy to use Saddam as an antagonist to the Ayatollah when Zbigniew Brzezinski (Carter's NSA) developed his Mid-East policy and his "Arc of Crisis." On one hand, he began the policy to use the Muslim fundamentalist against the Soviets in Afghanistan...and on the other, he used the more secular Saddam against the fundamentalist in Iran. I believe it was the 5/5/80 edition of the NY Times (An Open Eye on Baghdad) that has Brzezinski talking about a strategic partnership with Saddam. The Carter administration was filled with contradictions.

Even the onset of the Iran/Iraq war was supported by the Carter administraton. As many people blame April Glaspie for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait...simply because she said, "we have no opinion on Arab conflcts," these same liberals ignore the words of Gary Sick (former NSA aide under Carter) who said US strategy was "letting Saddam assume there was a US green light because there was no explicit red light," refering to Saddam's invasion of Iran. The 8 year war between Iran and Iraq was as much a creation of the Carter administrations as the Gulf War was for GH Bush. The fact is Reagan found himself cleaning up Carter's messes the same way Bush has now found himself cleaning up Clinton's...and still Carter's as well.