On the Dole: Saddam Hussein had at least one friend in 1990.

• Author: Strauss, Mark
• Position: Bob Dole's support of Saddam Hussein

On May 17, 1990, Senator Al D'Amato was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore. His arch-nemesis, Saddam Hussein, had brutally gassed 6,000 Kurds, executed a British journalist, and threatened to burn half of Israel with chemical weapons. D'Amato branded Hussein "the new mad dog of the Mideast" and introduced an amendment to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control Act that sought to impose economic sanctions. Clearly on a roll, the senator from New York unleashed a string of epithets, calling Saddam "the Butcher of Baghdad," "a terrorist," "a man who threatens civilization," and "a man with whom we should not have business."

Anyone familiar with D'Amato would not find his diatribe out of the ordinary. But the senator's rhetoric stood out in sharp contrast to that of his good friend Bob Dole, who just one month earlier had described the Iraqi leader as "an intelligent man." Continuing to follow that line of reasoning, Dole argued during the debate over sanctions that there was real "potential for improving our relationships" with the Iraqi dictator. He urged D'Amato to table the amendment, saying it was "inappropriate at this time." Ultimately, the Senate voted unanimously in favor of D'Amato's legislation, but only after Dole had tacked on a provision that would allow the President to waive sanctions for up to one year. Less than three months later, Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait City.

Bob Dole, what were you thinking? The Kansas senator had carved out a reputation as a champion of human rights in Middle East. During the Palestinian intifada, Dole had criticized Israel as a government that routinely murdered children. For years, he had sponsored legislation that sought to commemorate Armenian victims of Turkish genocide. So why was Dole willing to treat the gassing of 6,000 Kurds as a minor infraction?

The story of the Kansas senator and the Iraqi dictator began not in the halls of in Congress, but in the Oval Office. In October 1989, George Bush signed National Security Directive 26, which outlined U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War. Although the directive expressed concern over Hussein's human rights record and his program to develop weapons of mass destruction, it also recognized that Iraq was a significant regional power that could not be ignored if the U.S. wanted to promote stability in the Gulf and peace throughout the Middle East. Hussein was a loose cannon, but he was considered a...