-Caveat Lector- Go To Original http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/013003E.us.role.irq.htm U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds
by Michael Dobbs High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally. Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran- Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions. The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend." Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys." A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction. "It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department." "Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long- term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible." What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. Shifts in Iran-Iraq War When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene. By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies. "You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse." To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory. Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld. Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the Rumsfeld visit, which had "elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to a new level." In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he "cautioned" Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it largely in passing as one of several matters that "inhibited" U.S. efforts to assist Iraq. Rumsfeld has also said he had "nothing to do" with helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq -- he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy -- the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts. Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step until the following year. As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would have been "impossible to take even the modest steps we were contemplating" to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq -- along with Syria, Libya and South Yemen -- was one of four original countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979. Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983. On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American tourist. Iraq Lobbies for Arms While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi chargé d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most skillful lobbyists in town. "He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight out of the mafia," recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist in the Reagan White House. "Within six months, he was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was particularly effective with the American Jewish community." One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem. Hamdoon used to "parade the scarf" to conferences and congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over Iraq would result in "Israel becoming a victim along with the Arabs." According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit. At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world. Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein. When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes. A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare. The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling warning to Iran. "The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide." Chemicals Kill Kurds In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a "scorched earth" strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and White House were also outraged -- but not to the point of doing anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad. "The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives," Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical weapons question. "We believe that economic sanctions will be useless or counterproductive to influence the Iraqis." Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons "against his own people" -- and particularly the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah -- to bolster their argument that his regime presents a "grave and gathering danger" to the United States. The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the Iranians until the end of the Iran- Iraq war. A U.S. air force intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks. Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to a 1999 book by Francona, "Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace." Informed sources said much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad. Although U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in the late 1980s, there were still many loopholes. In December 1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq, despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official reported in a memorandum that he could find "no reason" to stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were "highly toxic" to humans and would cause death "from asphyxiation." The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq." "Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation." Go To Original Iraq got Bay Area Boost in '80s German Writer Finds Technology Sales in Iraqi Weapons Report Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday 26 January 2003 Two major Bay Area corporations allegedly sold technology that helped Iraq beef up its military in the 1980s, according to a German journalist with access to the 12,000-page document on Iraqi weapons that was turned over to the United Nations. The transactions with Iraq took place more than a decade ago when the political situation in the Middle East was markedly different than it is today. Hewlett-Packard Corp. sold about $1.7 million worth of computers and testing equipment that the Middle Eastern country used to build missiles and a military infrastructure when it was a U.S. ally against Iran, according to Andreas Zumach, a journalist for Die Tageszeitung, a Berlin newspaper. In addition, Zumach said, Bechtel, the San Francisco engineering- construction giant, helped Iraq develop conventional weapons. HP's and Bechtel's Iraqi ties had ended by the time the Gulf War began, and neither firm appears to have broken any laws, said Zumach, who noted European and Chinese firms are also mentioned in the document. Zumach authored a controversial report that was published last month in his newspaper. The report points out the extent to which corporations in the West, particularly in the United States and Germany, had a hand in helping Saddam Hussein turn Iraq into a regional military power. In response to a query from The Chronicle, Zumach noted that Bechtel, HP and two major federal research laboratories -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Livermore -- were mentioned in the declaration. Tensions were high between the United States and Iran after the 1979 Iranian revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. When war broke out between Iran and Iraq, the Reagan and first Bush administrations supported the brutal regime of dictator Hussein, providing military assistance and allowing U.S. corporations to do business with the Middle Eastern country. Zumach would not say how he obtained a copy of the document that Iraq was compelled to submit recently to the U.N. Security Council as part of the continuing investigation into whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The U.N. weapons inspection team is expected to give the Security Council a major update Monday on what it has found in Iraq. Bechtel said it had worked with Iraq before the Gulf War, but denied that it helped Hussein's military buildup. HP declined comment for this story. Roy Verley, a former HP director of communications, said the tech firm's business dealings with other countries in the 1980s strictly followed prevailing U.S. laws and foreign policy. "The company never wanted to be in any way doing anything in conflict with the national interest," he said. "Its policy was generally to follow whatever guidelines were promulgated by the U.S. State Department," he said. "If the State Department said certain licenses were required, those licenses were obtained." Verley said he could not recall any specific HP business deals involving Iraq. According to Zumach, the Iraqi document said that during the 1980s, HP sold the Iraqis: -- $25,000 worth of computers and electronic testing calibration and graphics equipment for the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission. -- $599,257 worth of frequency synthesizers, electronic testing equipment, radio spectrum analyzers and computers to Saad 16, Iraq's main missile research project. -- $1,045,500 worth of computers used for making molds, frequency synthesizers and other equipment for security military communications systems. Zumach said Bechtel's transactions with Iraq involved conventional weapons, but he could not immediately ascertain further details of those transactions. BECHTEL'S ROLE Bechtel spokesman Jonathan Marshall said the engineering firm had entered into legitimate commercial and industrial contracts with Iraq, but he denied that it had anything to do with beefing up Iraq's military. The company signed a contract with Iraq in 1988 to manage the engineering and construction of a petrochemical plant near Baghdad, he said. Some critics said Iraq may be planning to use the plant to develop chemical weapons. Marshall said the company abandoned the project after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. He said Hussein's forces interned some Bechtel employees who were later released. The project, he said, was "legal and sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce." The Commerce Department usually requires U.S. companies that plan to sell such products as high-performance computers or materials that could be used for developing weapons to secure a license, a spokesman said. NAMES REMAIN PRIVATE The names of such firms are kept confidential, he said. According to the Iraqi document, federal labs also helped train Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists and provided nonfissile material to construct a nuclear bomb, Zumach said. Bob Alvarez, an investigator at the U.S. Senate in the 1980s and later a senior policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Energy, said it was not unusual for federal agencies to invite international guests to symposiums on such topics as weapons and defense. In the 1980s, some of these guests included scientists from Iraq, then an important U.S. ally against Iran. "The United States was looking to weaken Iran in any way they could, and this is why they entered into this relationship with Iraq and Saddam Hussein," said Alvarez, now a scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. Chris Hellman, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information think- tank in Washington, agreed, saying the United States and other Western countries "were more than happy to sell even dual-use technologies to Iraq right up until the 1990 invasion of Kuwait." "Even if U.S. government officials had a suspicion that dual-use technologies were being used by Iraq for devious purposes to develop weapons for use against Iran, I doubt they would have opposed the sale," Hellman said. LABS RESPOND Lynda Seaver, a spokeswoman for the Lawrence Livermore lab, confirmed that there were conferences held that possibly included visitors from Iraq. But these were not classified settings, she said. "They would discuss information that would be freely available," she said. "There was no partnership or collaboration with Iraqi scientists for whatever." Mike Janes, a spokesman for Sandia in Livermore, said two major international conferences were held at the laboratory in the 1980s, but none of the participants were from Iraq. "No visits by Iraqis on issues of national security or weapons technology are known to have occurred," he said. Zumach declined to say how he got the material, which became controversial after the United Nations decided to make only 3,000 pages available to some members of the Security Council. Critics accused the council of bowing to pressure from the Bush administration, which they said was trying to protect the interests of U.S. corporations and government agencies. Ewen Buchanan, public information officer of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said making public the names of companies that dealt with Iraq may discourage the firms from cooperating with the inspection. For example, companies that sold equipment or technology to Iraq could tell inspectors if Iraq had asked for any modifications to their orders for military purposes. "It has been useful for us to go to companies to get details of their transactions with Iraq," he said. "If we were to release the names (of these companies), it's like journalists burning sources." WRITER'S ROLE IN CONTROVERSY Because he broke the story on U.S. and European corporate involvement in Iraq's weapon programs in the 1980s, Zumach, who has covered the U.N. from Geneva since 1988, and his newspaper have become part of the controversy. The Financial Times of London called Die Tageszeitung an alternative newspaper known for bashing any government, but said it is a must-read for many politicians and journalists partly because of Zumach's exclusive reports. Eric Croddy, a senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, downplayed the significance of Zumach's report. "There's nothing that Hewlett-Packard makes that's going to be helpful to a weapons of mass destruction program," he said. "Nothing I'm aware of." Other critics have suggested that Iraq intentionally mentioned the companies that reportedly did business with Hussein in order to muddy the controversy about its weapons program. Referring to criticism in Europe of the Bush administration's push to invade Iraq, Croddy questioned the motives of Zumach and his publication. He said the report is "a sensational way of putting a spotlight on the United States because there are those who disapprove of the United States." On the other hand, Phyllis Bennis, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, said Zumach's report offers important lessons on how the United States has coddled repressive regimes that later become international threats. "The problem is if we had not armed that regime to the teeth, it would not become more than a tin-pot dictator," she said. "What made Iraq more powerful was support from the United States and its allies." BAY AREA LINKS TO IRAQ Bay Area companies are mentioned in Iraq's weapons declaration. -- Hewlett-Packard sold $1.7 million worth of computers and electronic testing equipment to the Iraq government in the 1980s. -- Bechtel sold products related to Iraq's conventional weapons program in the 1980s. -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore and Albuquerque) helped train Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists in the 1980s. Source: Andreas Zumach, German newspaper reporter (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. 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