- You have to give Defense Secretary Rumsfeld this credit:
he's a risk taker, and he's damned brassy about it.
-
- Both were in evidence last week when he testified before
the Senate Armed Services Committee. Under criticism for his prior characterizations
of France and Germany as "old Europe," Rumsfeld fumed: "We
would not be facing the problems in Iraq today if the technologically advanced
countries of the world had seen the danger and strictly enforced the economic
sanctions against Iraq."
-
- The Defense Secretary knew well, naturally, his audience
in the Senate Armed Services Committee. As Senator Robert Byrd recently
said from the Senate floor, ...."this Chamber is, for the most part,
silent--ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion,
no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular
war. There is nothing."
-
- Still, Rumsfeld's statement was some chutspa! He was
well aware that it was the U.S. Senate itself (Committee on Banking, Housing
and Urban Affairs) which had conducted extensive hearings in 1992 and 1994
on "United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the
Health of Persian Gulf War Veterans." And he'd probably read the front
page Washington Post story ("U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup",
12/30/02) based upon recently declassified documents, which revealed that
it was Rumsfeld himself who, as President Reagan's Middle East Envoy, had
traveled to the Region to meet with Saddam Hussein in December 1983 to
normalize, particularly, security relations.
-
- At the time of the visit , Iraq had already been removed
from the State Department's list of terrorist countries in 1982; and in
the previous month, November, President Reagan had approved National Security
Decision Directive 114, on expansion of U.S.-Iraq relations generally.
But it was Donald Rumsfeld's trip to Baghdad which opened of the floodgates
during 1985-90 for lucrative U.S. weapons exports--some $1.5 billion worth--
including chemical/biological and nuclear weapons equipment and technology,
along with critical components for missile delivery systems for all of
the above. According to a 1994 GAO Letter Report (GAO/NSIAD-94-98) some
771 weapons export licenses for Iraq were approved during this six year
period....not by our European allies, but by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
-
- To be sure, many of these weapons were expended in the
latter phases of the Iran-Iraq war. Others were destroyed by Coalition
forces in the Persian Gulf War, or by UN weapons inspectors in the control
regime established by the UN Security Council following that conflict.
But a great many undoubtedly remain, and pose grave risks to the 150,000
U.S. troops deployed in Kuwait, and 100,000 on the way. Imagine the embarrassment
to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld before the Armed Services Committee last
week if one or more Senators had had the awareness AND the courage to raise
the matter of Iraq's secret supplier.
-
- And in this case, the devil is quite literally in the
details.
-
- There were few if any reservations evident in the range
of weapons which President Ronald Reagan, and his successor George W. H.
Bush were willing to sell Saddam Hussein. Under the Arms Export Control
Act of 1976, the foreign sale of munitions and other defense equipment
and technology are controlled by the Department of State. During the 1980s,
such items could not be sold or diverted to Communist states, nor to those
on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting countries. When Iraq came off
that list in 1982, however, some $48 million of items such as data privacy
devices, voice scramblers, communication and navigation equipment, electronic
components, image intensifiers and pistols (to protect Saddam) were approved
for sale during 1985-90.
-
- But it was through the purchase of $1.5 billion of American
"dual-use items," having, sometimes arguably, both military and
civilian functions, that Iraq obtained the bulk of it weapons of mass destruction
in the late 80s. "Duel-use items" are controlled and licensed
by the Department of Commerce under the Export Administration Act of 1979.
This is where the real damage was done.
-
- In 1992 and again in1994, hearings were conducted by
the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which has Senate
oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. The purpose
of the hearings was the Committee's concern that "tens of thousands"
of Gulf War veterans were suffering from symptoms associated with the "Gulf
War Syndrome", possibly due to their exposure to chemical and biological
agents that had been exported from the U.S. during that brief period of
"normalisation" of relations with Iraq in 1985-90.
-
- At the opening of the second round of hearings on May
25,1994, Chairman Donald Riegle and Ranking Member Alphonse D'Amato released
a detailed staff report which constituted a searing indictment of U.S.
arms export policies during the Reagan/Bush Administrations, linking those
exports to the health problems of Gulf War veterans, and excoriating the
then current (Clinton) Administration for denying that such a link existed.
-
- According to the hearing reports (which are available
on a current website: www.chronicillnet.org/PGWS/tuite/default.htm) among
the chemical weapons which had been sold to Iraq were some of the very
most lethal available: Sarin, Soman, Tabun, VX, Lewisite, Cyanogen Chloride,
Hydrogen Cyanide, blister agents and Mustard Gas. Some of the powerful
biological agents sold included anthrax, Clostridium Botulinum, Histoplasma
Capsulatum (causes a tuberculosis-like disease) , Brucella Melitensis,
Clostridium Perfringens and Escherichia Coli.
-
- Witnesses on the first day of the hearings included Under
Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Edwin Dorn, and the officials
in both the Defense Department and the CIA responsible for non-proliferation
policy. Interestingly, in what was often an adversarial exchange between
the Committee and these officials, the latter admitted in sworn testimony
that while no chemical/biological weapons had been found to have been "stored
or used" by the Iraqi Army during the conflict, American troops had
nevertheless been exposed to airborne traces of C/B agents from having
been downwind of storage facilities that were bombed by U.S. planes.
-
- Simply put, while Saddam Hussein had shown restraint
in the Gulf War by not deploying his most lethal weapons, the U.S. Government
had, a) sold chemical/biological agents and shipped them directly to Iraqi
military installations, including some just months before Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait, b) distributed faulty chemical/biological agent detection sensors
and protrction gear such as gasmasks to U.S. troops and, c) caused the
exposure of these troops by the bombing of military storage areas upwind
of them.
-
- It got worse. Dr. Gordon Oehler, Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency's Non-Proliferation Center testified that, between
1984 and 1990, the CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research had
issued five alert memos...." covering Iraqi's dealings with United
States firms on purchases, discussions, or visits that appeared to be related
to weapons of mass destruction programs." Such memos, Oehler explained,
were sent to Commerce, Justice, Treasury and the FBI when collected intelligence
indicated that U.S. firms had been targeted by foreign governments of concern,
or were involved in possible violations of U.S. law.
-
- At another point in the hearings, Dr. Oehler indicated
that CIA's concerns about Iraqi weapons programs, in particular...."a
Samarra chemical plant, including six separate chemical weapons lines between
1983 and 1986," had been reported...."directly to our customers."
Under questioning from Chairman Riegle, he identified these as the President
and the Secretaries of Defense and State.
-
- Perhaps the most surprising testimony taken by the Senate
Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs was that given in the earlier
1992 hearings on the matter of U.S. assistance to the Iraqi ballistic missile
and nuclear weapons programs. Gary Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin
Project on Nuclear Arms Control, testified that U.S. companies were being
licensed by the Commerce Department to ship such items directly to the
Al-Qaqaa and Badr facilities, which the Pentagon had formally identified
as part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons production program, and to Salah al
Din, known to be the center of its ballistic missile development efforts.
-
- In all, Milhollin identified 40 U.S. companies involved
in such sales. And it was critical equipment--vacuum pumps, electron beam
welders, mass spectrometers, accelerometers, missile guidance systems,
navigational radar, high speed computers and filling systems to load CB
agents in missiles, among many other items. Such "stuff" was
being sent to Iraq until late 1989 less than a year before Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait!
-
- Through the mid and late 1980s, said Milhollin, the Pentagon,
the CIA and the Office Naval Intelligence, among others, continued to warn
the White House that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were
maturing at a rapid pace, as was work on the ballistic missiles to deliver
them. The warnings were falling on deaf ears: in October, 1989, 10 months
before the Kuwait invasion, President George Bush signed NSD 26, updating
NSDD 114, and again committing the U.S. to normal relations with Saddam
Hussein's government.
-
- As had been the case with chemical and biological weapons,
the list of American and European companies which sold the nuclear equipment
and technology to Iraq were a virtual pantheon of industry names: Hewlett
Packard, International Computer Systems, Siemens, TI Coating, Carl Zeiss,
Rockwell Collins International, Spectra Physics, Unisys, Tektronix, Scientific
Atlanta and Semetex, among many, many others. With such assistance, Iraq
became a regional power during 1984-90, and developed regional ambitions.
-
- But these companies were not, per se, Saddam Hussein's
main weapons suppliers: that designation should properly go to Ronald Reagan
and George W.H. Bush, the signers, respectively, of NSDD 114 and NSD 26,
both of which remain classified. As the primary recipients and ultimate
"customers" of the alert memos from the CIA and the U.S. intelligence
community, they were currently and fully aware of the use to which the
equipment and technology were being put, and of the security policy implications
of the process.
-
- And the instrument, the person, the envoy, who negotiated
the process in the first instance, is the current U.S. Secretary of Defense,
Donald Rumsfeld.
-
- Steven Green lives in Berlin, Vermont. He can be reached
at: sjgreen@sover.net
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/green02242003.html
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