- It was just before Christmas 1983 that Donald Rumsfeld,
then US presidential envoy to Iraq, slipped quietly into Baghdad to come
face to face with the man who would become one of America's greatest enemies
within two decades.
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- The trip by the current US defence secretary, to pledge
US support for Saddam Hussein, marked one of the lowest points of the entire
Reagan presidency, and symbolically represents the real legacy of the "Great
Communicator". For Reagan was a president who allowed the US to secretly
arm the Iraqi dictator with weapons of mass destruction (WMD), supported
Iraq's military expansion, turned a blind eye to Saddam using chemical
weapons against Iran and thereby set in train the events that would lead
to George W Bush's disastrous decision to invade the country in 2002.
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- While America was selling WMD to Iraq, Reagan was also
telling Saddam to increase his brutal campaign against the Iranian fundamentalist
regime, even while Iraqi poison gas was falling on Persian battlefields.
The Reagan presidency made America complicit in Saddam's war crimes.
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- Just weeks before Rumsfeld's meeting with Saddam, Reagan
had underlined the importance of securing US relations with Iraq, which
was engaged in a bloody war with Iran at the time. The Iran-Iraq war began
when an opportunistic Saddam decided to attack his neighbouring country,
following the Islamic revolution which installed the Ayatollah Khomeini
as leader.
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- Reagan's November 26, 1983, National Security Decision
Directive (NSDD 114), entitled US Policy Toward The Iran-Iraq War, stated:
"Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in
the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system,
we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting
that traffic."
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- The secret State Department account of the Rumsfeld-Saddam
meeting, written in a staccato telegram-style, reads: "Saddam Hussein
showed obvious pleasure with ... Rumsfeld's visit ... Rumsfeld told Saddam
US and Iraq had shared interests in preventing Iranian and Syrian expansion.
He said the US was urging other states to curtail arms sales to Iran and
believed it had successfully closed off US-controlled exports by third
countries to Iran."
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- The State Department said: "Our initial assessment
is that meeting marked a positive milestone in development of US-Iraqi
relations and will prove to be of wider benefit to US posture in the region."
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- Rumsfeld then told Saddam: "Our understanding of
the importance of balance in the world and the region was similar to Iraq's."
The briefing goes on: "Regarding war with Iran, Rumsfeld said, US
agreed it was not in interests of region or the West for conflict to create
greater instability or for outcome to be one which weakened Iraq's role
or enhanced interests and ambitions of Iran. We thought conflict should
be settled in a peaceful manner which did not expand Iran's interests and
preserved sovereignty of Iraq."
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- After discussing the possibility of two oil pipelines,
Rumsfeld and Saddam moved on to discussions about nations selling arms
to Iran. Rumsfeld told Saddam: "Countries which acted in such a manner
were short-sighted, looking at a single commercial transaction while their
more fundamental interests were being harmed."
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- The US had publicly declared itself "officially
neutral" in the Iran-Iraq conflict when Saddam attacked the newly
Islamic state, but investigative research undertaken at George Washington
University's National Security Archive shows that this declaration was
a complete lie.
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- In 1982, as the Iran-Iraq war began to hot up, the USA
quietly took Iraq off the State Department's list of states that supported
terrorism. This allowed money to start flowing from America into Saddam's
coffers.
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- Both the White House and the State Department bullied
the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing. This made Saddam's
balance sheet look so healthy that he was able to get loans from other
international banks. Unsurprisingly, Saddam spent most of his new-found
wealth on weapons ñ which he bought from Britain and America. Joyce
Battle, of the National Security Archive, says: "Although official
US policy still barred the export of US military equipment to Iraq, some
was evidently provided on a ëdon't ask, don't tell' basis."
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- When a Congressional aide asked in March 1983, whether
heavy trucks sold to Iraq were intended for military purposes, a State
Department official said: "We presumed that this was Iraq's intention
and had not asked." America officially restored full formal relations
with Saddam's Ba'athist Iraq in November 1984, despite months of Iranian
complaints to the world that its troops were being attacked with chemical
weapons by Iraq's army. Some 600,000 Iranians died in the war, compared
with 300,000 Iraqis.
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- America was fully aware of Saddam's war crimes. A November
1983 US memorandum from the bureau of politico-military affairs to the
then secretary of state George Shultz, headed Iraqi Use Of Chemical Weapons,
confirms that America knew that Saddam was using chemical weapons on an
"almost daily basis". Another State Department memo, also written
in November 1983 ñ this time from the office of the assistant secretary
for near Eastern and South Asian affairs ñ says the US should tell
Saddam that America knows about the use of poison gas, as that would "avoid
unpleasantly surprising Iraq through public positions we may have to take
on this issue". However, State Department documents also reveal that
America decided to limit its "efforts against the Iraqi CW [chemical
weapon] programme to close monitoring because of our strict neutrality".
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- Other State Department cables sent around this time show
that America knew Iraq used chemical weapons in October 1982 and in July
and August 1983, "and more recently against Kurdish insurgents".
Reagan also knew by the end of 1983 that "with the essential assistance
of foreign firms, Iraq has become able to deploy and use CW and probably
has built up large reserves of CW for further use".
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- Iraq's use of chemical weapons was not discussed at all
during Rumsfeld's meeting, an omission entirely consistent with US policy.
On November 1, 1983, the State Department noted in a memo that Saddam had
acquired "CW capability", possibly from the USA. But two sentences
later, the same memo says: "Presently Iraq is at a disadvantage in
its war of attrition against Iran. After a recent meeting on the war, a
discussion paper was sent to the White House for a National Security Council
meeting, a section of which outlines a number of measures we might take
to assist Iraq."
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- Rumsfeld was accompanied on his Baghdad trip by Howard
Teicher, the then US National Security Advisor. In 1995, Teicher lodged
a sworn declaration in the US district court in the Southern district of
Florida, saying: "While a staff member to the National Security Council,
I was responsible for the Middle East and for political-military affairs.
During my five years' tenure on the National Security Council, I had regular
contact with both CIA director William Casey and deputy director Robert
Gates Ö Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure that Iraq
had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing
the Iran-Iraq war ... In 1986, President Reagan sent a secret message to
Saddam Hussein telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing
of Iran. Similar strategic advice was passed to Saddam Hussein through
meetings with European and Middle Eastern heads of state."
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- After Rumsfeld's visit, a buoyant Saddam issued a public
threat in February 1984, to use CW against the Iranians, saying: "The
invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide
capable of annihilating it, whatever the number, and Iraq possesses the
annihilation insecticide."
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- After this, America was compelled to issue a condemnation
of Iraq's CW programme. A month later the USA put out this rather weak
reprimand: "While condemning Iraq's chemical weapons use Ö the
United States finds the present Iranian government regime's intransigent
refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate
government of neighbouring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms
of behaviour among nations and the moral and religious basis which it claims."
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- Joyce Battle said that after this gentle scolding, the
State Department was asked if Iraq's CW programme would have "any
effect on US recent initiatives to expand commercial relationships with
Iraq across a broad range". A State Department official said: "No.
I'm not aware of any change in our position. We're interested in being
involved in a closer relationship with Iraq."
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- That was quite evident from a US State Department memo
dated May 9, 1984, which said that the US was reviewing its policy "on
the sale of certain dual-use items to Iraq nuclear entities" and that
"preliminary results favour expanding such trade to include Iraqi
nuclear entities". A dual-use item can be a part for a heart machine,
which is also used in the construction of nuclear bomb s.
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- By September 1984, the USA's Defence Intelligence Agency
found Iraq was continuing to develop its "formidable" CW arsenal
and would "probably pursue nuclear weapons".
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- Iran lodged a draft resolution with the UN asking the
world to condemn Saddam for his use of poison gas, banned internationally
by the Geneva Protocols. US diplomats began asking friendly nations to
go for a "no decision" ruling. The US also said it was ready
to abstain.
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- Iraqi diplomat Nizar Hamdoon, who later became Iraq's
ambassador to the UN, met the US deputy assistant secretary of state, James
Placke, telling him that Saddam could live with a Security Council presidential
statement which did not name any individual country for using chemical
weapons.
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- That was exactly what happened.
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- Battle trawled the National Security archives for secret
documents like these, which detail the hidden history of American support
for Saddam. She says that during the years when Iraq really was using WMD
"actual rather than rhetorical opposition to such use was evidently
not perceived to serve US interests; instead, the Reagan administration
did not deviate from its determination that Iraq was to serve as the instrument
to prevent Iranian victory".
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- She adds: "Chemical warfare was viewed as a potentially
embarrassing public relations problem that complicated efforts to provide
assistance. The US was concerned with its ability to project military force
in the Middle East, and to keep the oil flowing."
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