Here's another overview, oh yeah.

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Yes, U.S. Helped Iraq Get Chemical, Biological Weapons
Roger Schlueter
The Belleville News-Democrat

Sunday 20 April 2003

Q. I have a friend trying to convince me that the United States was at least partially responsible for giving Saddam Hussein the weapons of mass destruction that we now have been fighting to destroy. Can he be right?

-- E.N. of Belleville

A. This likely will raise howls of protest from supporters of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., but your friend is essentially correct.

You don't have to dig deep to find that from 1982 to 1990 the United States supplied Iraq with not only conventional arms and cash but also chemical and biological materials, including the precursors for anthrax and botulism. It's another example of nations playing with fire when they form dangerous alliances.

In 1980, Iran and Iraq launched a horrendous eight-year war that would kill at least 1 million people. With the Ayatollah Khomeini controlling Iran, the U.S. feared a radical Islamic takeover of the region, so it began cozying up to Saddam -- you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

With Iran holding the upper hand in 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department's list of terrorist nations over congressional objections. A year later, the Reagan administration issued National Security Decision Directive 114, which stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent the fall of Iraq.

Then, just before Christmas 1983, Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld -- yes, the current secretary of defense -- to Baghdad to discuss resuming official diplomatic relations with Saddam, relations that had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

On March 24, 1984, Rumsfeld was back in Baghdad -- the same day United Press International reported that Iraqi soldiers had used mustard gas laced with a nerve agent on Iranian forces. That didn't seem to matter. Even though the State Department recognized on March 5, 1984, that "Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons" in violation of the Geneva accords, full diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iraq were restored in November.

That opened the floodgates to aid from the United States. Once Iraq was off the terrorist list, conventional military sales resumed in December 1982. It is thought that U.S.-supplied helicopters were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5,000 Iraqis -- the same attack frequently cited the past few months as a reason to overthrow Saddam.

Once diplomatic relations were restored, the Department of Agriculture began offering guaranteed loans for food because shortages were causing discontent among the Iraqi people. This allowed Saddam to divert money to buy arms and "dual-use" items from not only the United States, but also West Germany, Italy, France, England and a host of others. Best guess is that U.S. taxpayers wound up paying $2 billion in bad Iraqi loans.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Bank Committee found that U.S. companies had been licensed by the Commerce Department to export a "witch's brew" of biological and chemical materials, including precursors of anthrax and botulism. The report also noted the exports included plans for chemical and biolgical warfare facilities and chemical warhead filling equipment.

Yet even after Saddam began gassing his own people in Northern Iraq, the flow of goods continued. In November 1989, Bush approved $1 billion in loan guarantees for Iraq in 1990, and from July 18, 1989, to Aug. 1, 1990, the U.S. approved $4.8 million in advanced technology sales.

"Only on Aug. 2, 1990, did the Agriculture Department officially suspend the (loan) guarantees to Iraq -- the same day that Hussein's tanks and troops swept into Kuwait," a Los Angeles Times expose on Feb. 23, 1992, noted.

Postscript: According to a Washington Post story, 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 companies that were being used for military purposes.

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