Allan:    Maybe there’s time for one more question.

David:    Sure, yeah.

Allan:    Gentleman here.

Terry:    Thank you very much, David.  Terry Waltz.  [IB].  Terry Waltz of Washington DC.  Uhm, you- this talk is labeled as a personal view of Iraq and I was just wondering if we could get a little insight into…

David:    Uh-huh.

Terry:    your own personal experience when you went to Iraq in 1984 as ambassador, what were the chief interest of the United States at that time and looking back on them- how do you think they fared?  I wonder if you could just give us a little bit of insight into what American interest were in 1984.

David:    Okay.  Sure.  Well, I guess my first impression in for the- for awhile come out was never one- impressed by the organization and hard-working attitude of the Iraqi people.  And number two, this was absolutely the most despicable worse dictatorship, you know, because one book called it the republic of fear, I mean I’ve never been- I’ve been, there are plenty of security forces, terrible security forces in the Arab world but I’ve never seen one like the Iraqis.  They were really bad, but our interests were basically to the short-term overriding interest make sure Iran didn’t win the war and we succeeded in that.  You know, and find the Iran collapsed, and we didn’t have to send troops over to do it, we managed to do through political means, through intelligence and we also had a hope at least in some prospect that since Iraq- when they resume relations, [PH] Turkasis said the phrases, the words he used about his government and he said, “you talked about maturity, responsibility, and realism as hallmarks of the regime” and what I said to people is that’s another R, respectability as I said.

What Saddam wanted was respectability, not to be seen as the bomb thrower anymore but as the great leader of the Arab world of the non-aligned movement.  And [IB] call the personality there, when I came there one of my colleagues said, “Second only to Kim Il Sung” but I think he gave Kim Il Sung a good bribe for his money. [laughing]  So, you know, so we hope that- and Saddam was showing signs of this that he number one- he would behave in a more responsible way in the Middle East.  And he would stop encouraging subversion and terrorism.  And the fundamental nature of the regime wouldn’t change that he would ease up on his own people because there was no opposition or any potential opposition as you remember in the 1980s, we weren’t into regime change, you know, we weren’t- there was no prospect of changing this regime, so the only feasible course of action was to try to get him to behave more responsibly and I used to compare it like Gulliver in Lilliput.  You remember Gulliver is tied down by the Lilliputians with all these strings.