Ronnie and Saddam

The US has donned rose-tinted spectacles to mourn the passing of Ronald Reagan. But Investigations Editor Neil Mackay reveals a darker story of how, under Reagan, secret deals brokered by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein secured the dictator an arsenal of WMD

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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 – 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 ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ basis.”

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.

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”.

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.”

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 … 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.”

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.”

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 … 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.”

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.”

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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”.

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.”

ROTFLMAO!

Oh yeah, lets "go there", beginning this week. Lets examine the Reagan Presidency in the way his detractors, then and now, seem to prefer.

That causes those Americans paying attention to inevitably compare the two current candidates for the Whitehouse with the Reagan "model".

Kerry loses that so clearly, so completely....yeah, lets "go there" shall we?

As predicted last week, the liberals would begin this stuff this morning. If nothing else, its reassuring they are oh so predictable......

“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.”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The US (rightly) makes alliances to further its own interests. At the time, Iran was (still is) hostile to the US.

The tradeoff was worth it, IMO.

Please keep in mind that this was after Iran held American diplomatic personnel hostage for over a year, and that gutless wonder Jimmy Carter accomplished nothing but the useless death of some American servicemen.

We should have declared war on Iran instantly and laid the country waste.

After that, anything that caused Iran and the Iranians pain, death, and despair was a good thing, including Saddam Hussein. This only changed relatively late in Reagans term.

The irnoy in all this is that it was the Carter administration that helped precipitate the Iran/Iraq war. the Carter administration hung a US ally out to dry. While Liberals charged the Shah with all kinds of brutallity, they failed to realize that this was an ally trying to hold his country together, not only from the fundmantalist threat, but from a Soviet insurgence that was now on one of their borders.

Yes, the Shah sometimes resorted to repressive means...but that repression was aimed at those trying to destablilize his country. Again, however, it was Carter who withdrew all economic and military aid to the Shah, resulting in the destabilization of Iran as the revolution took form.

While Reagan initially supported Iraq in its war with Iran, this policy started under CARTER...just as the support for the Mujahedin did in Afghanistan. This entire policy was the brain child of Carter's NSA, Zbigniew Bryzenzki, who described this policy as an "Arch of Crisis." In fact, his aide, Gary Sick insists that Saddam assumed he had green light to go to war in Iran, because the US never gave Saddam a red light.

The Carter administration was waging two covert wars in the Mid-East, both with their tacit approval of Saddam's attack on Iran...and with the US's new support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan as they fought the Soviets. So, for those who blame Reagan for the rise of Islamism, Iran/Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Saddam...think again.

In fact, if you read Brzezinski's own interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, he actually takes credit for drawing the Soviets into a fight in Afghanistan when Carter signed a secret directive on July 3, 1979...6 months BEFORE the Soviet invasion (Dec. 24, 1979), to fund the Mujahedin.

But Investigations Editor Neil Mackay reveals a darker story of how, under Reagan, secret deals brokered by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein secured the dictator an arsenal of WMD

Writer is confident that Rumseld gave Saddam CW... BUT...

On November 1, 1983, the State Department noted in a memo that Saddam had acquired “CW capability”, possibly from the USA.

Can you say "hit piece"???

secret deals brokered by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein secured the dictator an arsenal of WMD

Reagan was a president who allowed the US to secretly arm the Iraqi dictator with weapons of mass destruction (WMD),

These two statements are not supported by the rest of the article. What is obvious is that we provided financial assistance to Saddam, and sold a variety of wares to help keep him afloat during his war with Iran. We know (not mentioned in the article) that we provided intelligence on Iranian troop movements.

The case is not made that we provided weapons. We sold "dual-use" equipment (helicopters, for instance) which could be refitted for combat. But although the article asserts that we sold weapons, the writer does not back it up; Saddam's weapons were primarily Soviet.

If we are going to get upset over US support for Saddam against Iran, we will need to get similarly exercised over US support of the Soviets against Hitler. You won't find anyone demanding to know how much Roosevelt knew about Stalin's slave labor camps when he provided actual weapons, not "dual-use" products but actual weapons to a country that was guilty of genocide many times over against its own people. Because it was a Machiavellian decision that it is right to support the enemy of my enemy.

Of course our Iraq policy was more Machiavellian still; while we did not sell weapons to Iraq, we most certainly did sell them to Iran. You see our real policy was to make sure that neither country won. We knew very well the nature of Saddam's regime so while we sold him trucks, we sold Iran missiles. Our policy was to bleed them both, and make sure that neither would come out of this war the victor.

When reading about Reagan's supposed "alliance" with Saddam its good to keep in mind that our actual policy was much more cynical than that.

Our "alliance" with Iraq was brief and for the strategic purpose of opposing Iran; during WWII we had a temporary alliance with Stalin; that does not mean we supported Stalin's policies within the Soviet Union. As for Iraq weapons systems, the article fails to mention that 95% of Iraq's CURRENT weapons systems were provided by Russia, China, France, and Germany - the same countries that opposed the war in Iraq.

I am profoundly stupider for having waded through this pile of garbage.

The author makes several accusations at the start, that the Reagan administration brokered armed Iraq with WMDs, that the US supported Iraq's military expansion and that the US turned a blind eye to Iraqi use of WMD's. He then goes on for 5000 words, including citations and supporting documentation, and never proves a single one of these points.

The brain-dead Reagan/Bush haters will of course nod their heads, because they have always known that Reagan/Bush is the nexis of all evil. But unless a person's mind is made up on this matter, there is nothing in this article that supports the accusations of the author.

The fact of the matter is that the US did make approaches to Iraq in the early 80's. Iraq was engaged in a bitter war against a mutual foe, so it only made sense to explore areas of common interest. But in spite of our efforts to treat Iraq as a civilized partner, Hussein's regime pursued and used WMD and was after nukes. The US then severed relations and was vocal in condemning Hussein's abuses.

The alleged transfers of nuclear and chemical technology and weaponry simply never happened. Iraq was a client state of the Soviet Union. It had been armed by the Soviet Union. Iraq was never a client state of the United States. Look at who supplied weapons to Iraq prior to the first Gulf War. Note that the US is down there in the "1%" group with Denmark and below Brazil...

This is reality. This is reality that we can all remember from the time, and can readily verify any of a thousand ways. And yet you see this same lie about Rumsfeld's trip dredged up time and time again, because objective reality just does not matter to these people.

Here is who sold what to Iraq. Arms transfers to Iraq, 1973-2002 :

Below are two files containing data on major conventional weapons transfered to Iraq for the period 1973-2002.
The first file provides SIPRI Trend Indicator Values for major conventional weapons transfered to Iraq expressed in US $m. at constant (1990) prices for the period 1973-2002. The data are presented according to major suppliers and are also expressed as percentages.
Transfers of major conventional weapons to Iraq 1973-2002, (Acrobat file 4k)
The following file contains a register that describes the weapons on order or under delivery, or for which the licence was bought and production was under way or completed during the period 1982 to 2001. This register also provides comments and some additional information on each deal.
Register of the transfers and licensed production of major conventional weapons to Iraq 1973-2002, (Acrobat file 17k)

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