This makes sense only if you define "liberal" as "aligned with the interests of Washington and/or American corporations". For god's sake, USA supported Saddam Hussein while he was gassing Kurdish civilians during the Iran-Iraq war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...
> Joost R. Hiltermann says that when the Iraqi military turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds during the war, killing approximately 5,000 people in the town of Halabja and injuring thousands more, the Reagan administration actually sought to obscure Iraqi leadership culpability by suggesting, inaccurately, that the Iranians may have carried out the attack.
