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Current Events » in reply to re: That's not a bad question.

re: That's not a bad question.

Here's some references:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm

"Donald Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East as a special envoy for President Reagan in December 1983 and March 1984. At the time, he was a private citizen, but had been a high-ranking official with several Republican administrations. He had a number of items on his agenda, including conflict in Lebanon. However, one of his main objectives was to establish direct contact between President Reagan and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein -- he carried a letter from Reagan to Saddam to further this process."
...
His trip, and other overtures by the U.S., were necessary because the Reagan administration had decided to assist Iraq in its war against Iran in order to prevent an Iranian victory, which the administration saw as contrary to U.S. interests. But until the early 1980s, U.S.-Iraqi relations had been frosty -- Iraq broke off formal diplomatic relations in 1967. So in order to enable the U.S. to set up the mechanisms needed to provide Iraq with various forms of assistance, contacts had to be established, Iraq had to be removed from the State Department's list of countries supporting terrorism, and diplomatic relations needed to be re-established (which occurred in November 1984.)
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Wheaton, Md.: I hear pro-Saddam activists often claim that Reagan supplied Hussein with chemical weapons. I've seen no evidence to support these claims. Is there any truth to this?

Joyce Battle: I have not personally seen documents that indicate that the Reagan administration supplied Iraq with chemical weapons. However, the documents we recently posted on the Internet demonstrate that the administration had U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Iraq was using chemical weapons, both against Iran and against Iraqi Kurdish insurgents, in the early 1980s, at the same time that it decided to support Iraq in the war. So U.S. awareness of Iraq's chemical warfare did not deter it from initiating the policy of providing intelligence and military assistance to Iraq. There were shipments of chemical weapons precursors from several U.S. companies to Iraq during the 1980s, but the U.S. government would deny that it was aware that these exports were intended to be used in the production of chemical weapons.
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Cumberland, Md.: Do you believe that the US should have stayed neutral in the Iran-Iraq war thereby allowing Iran and the Ayatollahs to win thereby enlarging their influence in the region?

Joyce Battle: It is obviously very difficult to second-guess history, and I won't attempt to do so. I believe that when the U.S. became aware of Iraq's chemical weapons use it should have used what influence it had to stop it. Doing so was actually incumbent upon the U.S. under international law. I believe the U.S. should have used its international influence, which is enormous, to do everything it could to end this war. It was an atrocity, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties. Too many countries had ulterior motives and did not do enough to cut off arms shipments to the two combattants. I think that U.S. support for Iraq, despite its public condemnation of chemical warfare, encouraged Saddam Hussein to believe that the U.S. did not really believe, or act on, its public posture.

http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/03/sp_world_battle022703.htm

"In February 1984, Iraq's military, expecting a major Iranian attack, issued a warning that "the invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide" [Document 41]. On March 3, the State Department intervened to prevent a U.S. company from shipping 22,000 pounds of phosphorous fluoride, a chemical weapons precursor, to Iraq. Washington instructed the U.S. interests section to protest to the Iraqi government, and to inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that "we anticipate making a public condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons in the near future," and that "we are adamantly opposed to Iraq's attempting to acquire the raw materials, equipment, or expertise to manufacture chemical weapons from the United States. When we become aware of attempts to do so, we will act to prevent their export to Iraq" [Document 42]."
....
"Shortly after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, the U.S. embassy in Ankara reports that Turkish ports have a backlog of goods awaiting transshipment to Iraq, and that a substantial amount of Israeli goods transit Turkey for "Islamic belligerents," including Israeli chemical products for Iran. It remarks on "Israeli acumen" in selling to both Iran and Iraq.

"The Iran-Iraq war was a tragedy for Iraqis and Iranians, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties and immense material damage. It was sustained by an arms bazaar made up of a broad spectrum of foreign governments and corporations: British, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Brazilian, Argentinean, Chilean, North Korean, Chinese, South African, Eastern European, Israeli, American, etc., who found both combatants eager consumers of weapons, ammunition, and military technology. Iran needed U.S.-origin weapons compatible with the military infrastructure created by the U.S. during the shah's reign, could not buy them directly, and had to rely on third-party suppliers like Israel."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm

Now, this research was done by someone who appears to have a Left bias, and was looking for evidence which would be unfavorable to present administration [Researcher Joyce Battle had to go to the Supreme Court to obtain some of the documents]. But somehow, she missed all the juicy details and all she got was relatively boring stuff.

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