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."
Washington Post
Monday, December 30, 2002