Iraq’s justice minister has accused the United States of trying to delay Iraqi efforts to interrogate Saddam Hussein in order to hide secrets about former ties between Washington and Baghdad. Abdel Hussein Shandal said, “it seems there are lots of secrets they want to hide.” He went on to say, “There should be transparency and there should be frankness, but there are secrets that if revealed, won’t be in the interest of many countries. Who was helping Saddam all those years?” In the 1980s the Reagan administration helped arm Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. Current defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally met twice with Hussein. In 1984 Reagan formally restored ties to Iraq even though HUssein was being accused at the time of using chemical weapons. Meanwhile a group of U.S. soldiers who are guarding Saddam Hussein in prison have told GQ Magazine that he has spoken favorably of Reagan from his jail cell. One soldier recalled Hussein saying “I wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president.”