Having managed to "collar" Dr. Khan, I would imagine he was fully interrogated with regard to his activities. As those activities were associated with a black-market in nuclear technology and materials required for uranium enrichment, etc. The last thing you would want to do is blast it all over the world's press, until you had tied up as many of the leads as possible.

As for your examples from history, they appear to be more fiction than fact.

1. US dealings with Saddam:
- The US supplied Saddam with very little in way of arms. Saddam's forces could not have used them, practically all of Iraq's military hardware was Russian/Warsaw Pact equipment, what wasn't was French.

Interestingly enough, and odd though it may seem, the US did supply Iran with military hardware, no problem with compatibility there, most of the stuff Iran had at the time was left over from the days of the Shah, i.e. American.

- Saddam was not what could be considered as being "in anyone's pocket". The main aim at the time was two-fold, a) to ensure that the outcome of the Iran/Iraq war was a stalemate, and b) to ensure that Iraq did not fragment as a result of cessation of hostilities.

2. If James Baker did make it abundantly clear in 1990 that the US didnt care about Iraqs border dispute with Kuwait. He must have back-tracked on that in rapid order.

3. After the signing of the ceasefire agreements at Safwan, the Kurds could be protected as US and UK contingents could use Turkey as a base. The Shia, as you say, were encouraged to rise up against Saddam and were shamefully left out to dry. Norman Schwarzkopf admitted that allowing the Iraqi's to fly helicopters inside the southern "no-fly" zone was his gravest error at Safwan. At the time the Iraqi's stated that such flights would be humanitarian aid as roads and bridges had been knocked out. The other mistake that Stormin' Norman owned up to was not insisting that Saddam himself come to Safwan and sign the ceasefire agreement.

4. Saddam Hussein got no bio-weapons from the US, what the Iraqi's asked for and what they got was sample cultures to improve their chemical/biological defence capability. Of course how they used them is a completely different story, but they did not get weapons or weaponised C/B agents from the US.

5. Margaret Thatcher said, Bush and Major are gone, but Saddam is still around, I wonder who really won. Saddam always portrayed it to the Arab world that he had won using exactly that reasoning. I mentioned that once before in this forum and got rubbished for making that claim. Saddam's behaviour post-Desert Storm to March 2003, was a protracted game of deception and concealment played with UNSCOM and UNMOVIC and driving holes through the sanctions and the embargoes put in place by the UN. Throughout this the United Nations did what it does best - nothing.