The points made in your post of, 29 Jun 04 - 05:34 PM, are well taken.
With regard to US/Iraq relations and the "Cold War" years, while the US did help the Ba'athist coup, that was done - at the time - because it represented the lesser of two evils from the US point of view.
Subsequent to the "Six Day War" (1967), however, diplomatic relations were broken off between the United States of America and Iraq and were only re-instated on 26th November, 1984. During the period 1984 to 1990 diplomatic relations existed between the USA and Iraq, but were broken off after Iraq's attempted annexation of Kuwait. That has remained the case right up until the recent appointment of Negroponte as the new US Ambassador to Iraq.
From 1967 up until 2003, Iraq was firmly regarded as being on "friendly" terms with first, the USSR, and latterly Russia, and "hostile" to the United States, except for a very brief period (1984 - 1990) during the Iran/Iraq War when the United States stepped in to prevent Iraq's defeat. In doing this the US were not alone, in terms of military assistance Iraq got a great deal more assistance from France and Russia than from the USA.
Under such circumstances it is rather difficult reconcile that state of affairs with the statement made that the good old USofA used Saddam as a hitman. Patently they did not, the facts would seem to indicate that the good old USofA along others, saved Saddam from an extremely humiliating defeat. For the pure and simple reason that - at that time - it was in the best interests of all parties who regarded the Persian Gulf region as being vital to do everything in their power to re-establish the status quo prior to the start of hostilities. A good parallel in history would be British and French support of Turkey in the mid-1850's in order to curb Russian expansion.
I freely admit that the above was rather a strange way of "using" Saddam, particularly as the US had no part in prompting Saddam into attacking Iran in 1980, that was entirely his own idea - but in no way does it equate to the US using Saddam as a "hitman", the latter implies a rather closer relationship than I believe has ever existed between the USA and Iraq.
Please don't take the above as nitpicking, or pedantry, it is only my honest attempt to explain my point of view on the matter.