First of all the decision to assist Saddam against Uran obviously came from the White House, Reagan, and his secretaries of state, Alexander Haig and/or George Shultz. Caspar Weinberger was his Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld was a Defense Department operative, and that was all. Certainly in the Bush administration, it is safe to say that Rumsfeld as well as Cheney took on neuconservatism trappings, after 9/11 especially or specifically, but to associate his nonpolicy work during the Reagan administration as neoconservative in retrospect is inaccurate. Rumsfeld was just not a policy maker at that time.

Clearly the attempt to use Saddam against Iran was not an attempt, obviously, to democratize Iraq, but it might have been to weaken or take down the anti-American Iranian theocracy.