The card sent to Gaddafi and Saddam back in 1981 shows they were on Thatcher’s list of seasonal greetings.
At the time they were not considered dictators violating human rights and committing crimes against humanity as British companies enjoyed lucrative oil deals in Libya and Saddam was busy with a war with Iran that London directly supported.
Britain provided full financial and strategic support to Saddam, and sold his government arms and weaponry throughout the eight-year (1979-1987) war as it was against London’s interests not to support a war-mongering dictator who claimed to be able to choke Iranians’ newly-fledged revolution.
Nevertheless, revolution was not a bad thing at all for that matter as far as it served British interests.
The former British PM addressed Gaddafi as the “Leader of the Great First of September Revolution” (referring to the 1969 Libyan revolution) in the greeting card while the toppled Libyan tyrant was later reduced to the ruthless dictator whose death was hailed by current British PM David Cameron as a glorious moment for Libyans’ move toward democracy.
The same happened to Saddam as he was shown by the British government and its allies in Washington to be a mindless despot with weapons of mass destruction – which were never found – ready to be deployed against British interests in the region before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Gaddafi was killed in October, 2011 in the aftermath of airstrikes directly ordered by Cameron while Saddam was sent to the gallows for crimes against humanity in 2006 after Iraq fell to US-led forces three years earlier.
The greeting card could be running even now with former despots-turned-friends, or future allies-turned-dictators, on the recipients’ list, yet what matters after all seems to be British interests.
AMR/HE
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