From last link:
A reader of the NYT article (or the tens of thousands of other articles written after the war drive against Iraq began in earnest soon after September 11, 2001) would have looked in vain for the fact that many of the US politicians and ruling class pundits who demanded war against Husseinâin particular, the one of the most bellicose of the Bush administrationâs âhawksâ, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeldâwere up to their ears in Washingtonâs efforts to cultivate, promote and excuse Hussein in the past.
The NYT article read as though Washingtonâs casual disregard about the use of chemical weapons by Husseinâs dictatorship throughout the 1980s had never been reported before. However, it was not the first time that âIraqgateââas the scandal of US military and political support for Hussein in the â80s has been dubbedâhas raised its embarrassing head in the corporate media, only to be quickly buried again.
One of the more comprehensive and damning accounts of Iraqgate was written by Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas and published in the February 23, 1992, Los Angeles Times. Headlined, âBush secret effort helped Iraq build its war machineâ, the article reported that âclassified documents obtained by the LA Times show ⌠a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by [George Bush senior]âboth as president and vice presidentâto support and placate the Iraqi dictator.â
Even William Safire, the right-wing, war-mongering NYT columnist, on December 7, 1992, felt compelled to write that, âIraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [the US, Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictatorâ.
The background to Iraqgate was the January 1979 popular uprising that overthrew the cravenly pro-US Shah of Iran. The Iranian revolution threatened US imperialismâs domination of the strategic oil-rich region. Other than Israel, Iran had long been Washingtonâs key ally in the Middle East.
Washington immediately began to âcast about for ways to undermine or overthrow the Iranian revolution, or make up for the loss of the Shah. Husseinâs regime put up its hand. On September 22, 1980, Iraq launched an invasion of Iran. Throughout the bloody eight-year-long warâwhich cost at least 1 million livesâWashington backed Iraq.
As a 1990 report prepared for the Pentagon by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US War College admitted: âThroughout the [Iran-Iraq] war the United States practised a fairly benign policy toward Iraq⌠[Washington and Baghdad] wanted to restore the status quo ante ⌠that prevailed before [the 1979 Iranian revolution] began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomeiniâs revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him. United by a common interest ⌠the [US] began to actively assist Iraq.â
At first, as Iraqi forces seemed headed for victory over Iran, official US policy was neutrality in the conflict. Not only was Hussein doing Washingtonâs dirty work in the war with Iran, but the US rulers believed that Iraq could be lured away from its close economic and military relationship with the Soviet Unionâjust as Egyptâs President Anwar Sadat had done in the 1970s.
In March 1981, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig excitedly told the Senate foreign relations committee that Iraq was concerned by âthe behaviour of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern regionâ. The Soviet government had refused to deliver arms to Iraq as long as Baghdad continued its military offensive against Iran. Moscow was also unhappy with the Husseinâs vicious repression of the Iraqi Communist Party.
Washingtonâs support (innocuously referred to as a âtiltâ at the time) for Iraq became more open after Iran succeeded in driving Iraqi forces from its territory in May 1982; in June, Iran went on the offensive against Iraq. The US scrambled to stem Iraqâs military setbacks. Washington and its conservative Arab allies suddenly feared Iran might even defeat Iraq, or at least cause the collapse of Husseinâs regime.
Using its allies in the Middle East, Washington funnelled huge supplies of arms to Iraq. Classified State Department cables uncovered by Frantz and Waas described covert transfers of howitzers, helicopters, bombs and other weapons to Baghdad in 1982-83 from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.
Howard Teicher, who monitored Middle East policy at the US National Security Council during the Reagan administration, told the February 23, 1992, LA Times: âThere was a conscious effort to encourage third countries to ship US arms or acquiesce in shipments after the fact. It was a policy of nods and winks.â
According to Mark Phythianâs 1997 book Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddamâs War Machine (Northeastern University Press), in 1983 Reagan asked Italyâs Prime Minister Guilo Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.
The January 1, 1984 Washington Post reported that the US had âinformed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the three-year-old war with Iran would be âcontrary to US interestsâ and has made several moves to prevent that resultâ.
Central to these âmovesâ was the cementing of a military and political alliance with Saddam Husseinâs repressive regime, so as to build up Iraq as a military counterweight to Iran. In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Departmentâs list of countries that allegedly supported terrorism. On December 19-20, 1983, Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoyânone other than Donald Rumsfeldâto Baghdad with a hand-written offer of a resumption of diplomatic relations, which had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israel war. On March 24, 1984, Rumsfeld was again in Baghdad.
On that same day, the UPI wire service reported from the UN: âMustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers ⌠a team of UN experts has concluded ⌠Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, US presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.â
The day before, Iran had accused Iraq of poisoning 600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve gas.
There is no doubt that the US government knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. On March 5, 1984, the State Department had stated that âavailable evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weaponsâ. The March 30, 1984, NYT reported that US intelligence officials has âwhat they believe to be incontrovertible evidence that Iraq has used nerve gas in its war with Iran and has almost finished extensive sites for mass producing the lethal chemical warfare agentâ.
However, consistent with the pattern throughout the Iran-Iraq war and after, the use of these internationally outlawed weapons was not considered important enough by Rumsfeld and his political superiors to halt Washingtonâs blossoming love affair with Hussein.
The March 29, 1984, NYT, reporting on the aftermath of Rumsfeldâs talks in Baghdad, stated that US officials had pronounced âthemselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the US and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but nameâ. In November 1984, the US and Iraq officially restored diplomatic relations.
According to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to âcalibrateâ mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. Beginning in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with âdata from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photography ⌠to assist Iraqi bombing raidsâ.
Iraqi chemical attacks on Iranian troopsâand US assistance to Iraqâcontinued throughout the Iran-Iraq war. In a parallel program, the US defence department also provided intelligence and battle-planning assistance to Iraq.
The August 17, 2002 NYT reported that, according to âsenior military officers with direct knowledge of the programâ, even though âsenior officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned Iraqâs employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents ⌠President Reagan, vice president George Bush [senior] and senior national security aides never withdrew their support for the highly classified program in which more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.â
Retired DIA officer Rick Francona told the NYT that Iraqâs chemical weapons were used in the warâs final battle in early 1988, in which Iraqi forces retook the Fao Peninsula from the Iranian army.
Another retired DIA officer, Walter Lang, told the NYT that âthe use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concernâ. What concerned the DIA, CIA and the Reagan administration was that Iran not break through the Fao Peninsula and spread the Islamic revolution to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Iraqâs 1982 removal from Washingtonâs official list of states that support terrorism meant that the Hussein regime was now eligible for US economic and military aid, and was able to purchase advanced US technology that could also be used for military purposes.
Conventional military sales resumed in December 1982. In 1983, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters to Iraq in 1983 âfor civilian useâ. However, as Phythian pointed out, these aircraft could be âweaponisedâ within hours of delivery. Then US Secretary of State George Schultz and commerce secretary George Baldridge also lobbied for the delivery of Bell helicopters equipped for âcrop sprayingâ. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5000 people.
With the Reagan administrationâs connivance, Baghdad immediately embarked on a massive militarisation drive. This US-endorsed military spending spree began even before Iraq was delisted as a terrorist state, when the US commerce department approved the sale of Italian gas turbine engines for Iraqâs naval frigates.
Soon after, the US agriculture departmentâs Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) guaranteed to repay loansâin the event of defaults by Baghdadâbanks had made to Iraq to buy US-grown commodities such as wheat and rice. Under this scheme, Iraq had three years to repay the loans, and if it could not the US taxpayers would have to cough up.
Washington offered this aid initially to prevent Husseinâs overthrow as the Iraqi people began to complain about the food shortages caused by the massive diversion of hard currency for the purchase of weapons and ammunition. The loan guarantees amounted to a massive US subsidy that allowed Hussein to launch his overt and covert arms buildup, one result being that the Iran-Iraq war entered a bloody five-year stalemate.