Saddam Hussein was an ally of the United States. After all it was the US who helped him come to power in 1979 to counter the strength and influence of the Soviet Union in the middle east.

The man who could have detailed the actual amount of support received from the US was Saddam himself but that's not going to happen now. Saddam took his secrets with him.

Many of the Iraqi dictator's files and the files of his regime have been seized by the US among them are documents which show that Saddam met with U.S. officials right before he invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading some to speculate that American diplomats led him to believe that the George H.W. Bush administration would tolerate his invasion.

According to Robert Fisk Saddam could have told the world a lot about the United States' involvement in Iraq over the last two and a half decades.

For example after Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

While many in the US, UK and Europe are breathing a sigh of relief at the exit of Saddam and his secrets the problem is with this kind of thing that the truth will eventually come out.

There are just too many witnesses on both sides to the involvement of these countries and their leaders in propping up and supporting Saddam Hussein. Saddam bought his weapons from these countries, he even bought his beef from Ireland under Charles J Haughey. No-one asked questions then but there will be a lot of red faces if, or rather when, the truth does come out.

In a 2004 interview embargoed for release after his death, former president Gerald Ford told the Washington Post the war in Iraq was unjustified and that he very strongly disagreed with President Bush's reasons for attacking Iraq.

In videos released only today Ford says he felt that President and his top advisers had made a "big mistake" in starting the war in Iraq. Ford pulled the US out of Vietnam when he inherited the Vietnam War and was in office when the US accepted defeat.

Ford made this remarks in interviews taped for Bob Woodward (the Bob "Watergate" Woodward) was writing.

Donald Rumsfeld served under Ford as Secretary of Defence and Dick Cheney served as Ford's chief of staff. Ford says on the tapes that Cheney has become more pugnacious with time.