PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

The red-hot New York Post has a must read on the importance of the documents linking Western journalists and politicians to the sadistic killers of Iraq. Highlights:

Iraqi leaders who should have been treated as criminals got red-carpet reception in major capitals, including Washington, London, Paris and Moscow. Saddam was an honored guest in Jacques Chirac's private home in Correze at exactly the time that the Ba'ath was massacring thousands of political opponents in 1976. Tariq Aziz was always welcome whenever he dropped by for tea with the Pope in the Vatican. Nizar Hamdoun, one of Saddam's diplomatic minions, spent many weekends in Arkansas with then-Gov. Bill Clinton.

"Putting journalists and politicians on the payroll was a well-established policy," says Khalid Kishtaini, who worked for the Iraqi Cultural Office in London in the 1980s .. Saad al-Bazzaz, another writer who worked with Saddam before joining the opposition, confirms this: "The principle was that everyone could be bought, if the price was right," he says. " You would be surprised to know who was in Saddam's pay."

The documents' real value lies elsewhere: Properly studied, they would reveal how a large number of multinational companies (no doubt encouraged by major industrial nations) helped Saddam build his war machine. Who gave [Saddam] the heavy bombers that in 1983 destroyed Iran's main oil-export terminal at Kharg Island? Which European company sold him the chemicals he used to massacre 5,000 Kurdish men, women and children in Halabchah in 1988? .. Which French company built Saddam's palaces and bunker, and which German firm provided the surveillance and communication systems? What about the British companies that helped Saddam built his "supergun," "The Fist of Allah"?

Posted by Greg Ransom