From The Cradle...

In 1985, at the height of the Iran/Iraq war, all round American patriot Colonel Oliver North, met with Iranian businessmen in a hotel room in Frankfurt:

[Oliver North’s personal recording of the meeting]

'One of the things that we would like to do, okay, is we would like to become actively engaged in ending this war in such a way that it becomes very evident to everybody […] that the real problem in preventing peace in the region is Saddam Hussein. And we will have to take carе of that.’

In the prelude to thе Gulf War it was easy to think that Iraq had only just been…invented. That there was nothing much to say about it as a country; that there was nothing much there to bomb.

In fact, the history being arranged for us, was played out in the land where all written history began, for whilst Europe was populated with Stone Age tribes, the people of Mesopotamia were living in towns, and those towns had libraries.

The city of Babylon flourished for two thousand years, changing hands as rival empires fought over trade routes, riches, land. It was here a legal code was written ‘ …that the strong might not oppress the weak….’ Twenty centuries before the birth of Christ, these laws had distinguished justice from revenge.

Centuries later, another great city was built, capital of the Arab Empire and its new religion - Islam.

Rhymed poetry, geometry, our number system: all come from Baghdad. Here, in Europe’s Dark Age, Arab scholars calculated the circumference of the earth. Six centuries later the Church conceded it was not flat.

The Crusades launched against Islam did not reach Baghdad. By the time the Europeans came, the Christian nations had colonised the globe. ‘Who’ - the Africans asked - ‘has not seen the simpering grey men with their flags?’

In World War I, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and the ‘allies’ moved in. With a League of Nations mandate, the region was divided between French and British rule. Palestine was declared a ‘Jewish homeland’; a line in the sand made Kuwait a state – but Kurdish dreams of nationhood were less convenient.

Having promised self-rule, Britain occupied Iraq - and stayed there. Resistance was discouraged with bombs and mustard gas.

When ‘independence’ finally came in 1932, power was handed to a puppet king.

Western companies had just begun to export Iraq’s oil.

[FX Newsreel]

"….across the map to Iraq: another danger spot that Britain dealt with before it was too late! "’

‘Iraq, 1941. Saddam Hussein is four, born into the cauldron of post-colonial rule. […] Iraq is still the prisoner of the West’s will.’

After World War II, Europe needed American loans to rebuild. A World Bank was founded and the League of Nations replaced:

[UN voice archives]

‘We the people of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind……’

But the Security Council, controlled by the allies, was deadlocked in Superpower rivalries.

Policy advisers set out Washington’s goals:

"We have about 60% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its’ population. Our real task in this position is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this […] disparity. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation."