Message: Article: Since Saddam Hussein gained power 24 years ago, there have been only three years when Iraq was neither at war nor under crippling international sanctions. Now Iraq is under imminent threat of a new war that, according to news accounts, probably will begin with a two-day assault on Baghdad with about 800 cruise missiles -- an assault code-named "Shock and Awe."
But the United States, the superpower behind those plans and currently Saddam's greatest enemy, was his silent partner during most of the first half of his rule.
Saddam, having held power behind the scenes for 11 years, assumed the presidency of Iraq in July 1979 by forcing his cousin, President Ahmad Hassan al Bakr, into retirement. He inherited a potential problem and soon turned it into a war.
The January 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran provided both danger and opportunity to Saddam and Iraq. Saddam feared that the revolt of the Iranian Shiites would give ideas to the Shiites of southern Iraq, the country's long-oppressed majority. Saddam's Baathists were a secular party, concerned about any spread of Islamic theocracy.
In September 1980, Saddam repudiated a 1975 border agreement with Iran, and the two sides started shelling military targets.
It was during this war that Saddam first made a name for himself as a user of banned weapons. From 1983 to 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons an estimated 195 times, killing about 50,000 Iranian troops.
It was also during this war that a dramatic shift in U.S.-Iraq relations occurred, converting Washington into Saddam's ally.
U.S. tilts toward Iraq
When the war started, President Jimmy Carter, with only a few months left in office, declared the United States would stay out of it. Carter barred the sale of U.S.-made commercial jets and turbines to Iraq.
But soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan administration changed to a policy that "tilted" toward Iraq. Reagan lifted Carter's ban on jet sales. The Reagan administration, which viewed Iran as its top enemy in the region, found many ways to help Iraq, despite Saddam's well-known involvement with terrorists and grisly human rights violations.
In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy, met with Saddam in Baghdad and told him that the United States wanted to resume full diplomatic relations. In a CNN interview in September 2002, Rumsfeld said: "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter or fact, and discussed a host of other things." Saddam agreed to diplomatic relations, which were resumed in 1984, but he kept using poison gas.
The Washington Post has reported that the U.S. government's favors to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq period included intelligence sharing, cluster bombs from the CIA through a Chilean front company, efforts to cut off foreign military supplies to Iran (except when Washington decided to provide weapons to the Iranians in the famous arms-for-hostages deal that was at the heart of the 1986 Iran-Contra scandal) and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of materials for chemical and biological weapons.
U.S. companies supplied chemicals, missile components and computers that had military uses. Among the computer suppliers was Minnesota-based Unisys. And Iraq acquired the "fuel air explosive," pioneered by Minnesota-based Honeywell, which sets the air on fire. The sales were licensed by the U.S. government.
In its piece reviewing the U.S. assistance to Iraq during the 1980s, the Post quoted David Newton, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq: "Fundamentally, the policy was justified. 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."
No sanctions
The war with Iran ended Aug. 20, 1988, after eight years and the loss of more than 1 million lives. In the end, not an inch of territory changed hands.
Toward the end of the war and immediately after it, Saddam turned his chemical attacks against Kurdish towns and villages, presumably to punish the Kurds for their wartime collaboration with Iran.
In 1987-88, Iraq conducted a campaign known as the Anfal, killing an estimated 100,000 Iraqi Kurds. Many were executed or killed by shells. But many also died by having poison gas dropped on them, including mustard gas, which burns, mutates DNA and causes cancer; the nerve gases sarin and tabun, which can kill, paralyze or cause nerve damage; and possibly VX gas and the biological agent atafloxin. All are banned by international law.
The most famous attack was the gassing of Halabja, a mostly Kurdish city near the Iranian border, on March 16, 1988. Rebel Kurds, working with Iranian troops, had taken the town a few days earlier. The gassing, which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds, was part of the successful Iraqi counterattack.
U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., horrified at the attacks on the Kurds, got the Senate to unanimously adopt the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would end U.S. subsidies, U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil and ban the export to Iraq of technology that would help advance its weapons programs.
Still seeking to maintain its relationship with Iraq, and mindful that U.S. farmers and U.S. corporations were making a lot of money selling to Iraq, the White House opposed the sanctions.
One internal State Department memo put the tradeoff between ethical, political and economic considerations this way: "Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq."
The Prevention of Genocide Act died in the House.
In 1989, President George Bush opposed a second stripped-down Iraq sanctions bill right up to the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Within hours of the invasion, the bill passed 416-0 and Bush, by executive order, imposed a total embargo on Iraq and a freeze on Iraqi assets in the United States.
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But the United States, the superpower behind those plans and currently Saddam's greatest enemy, was his silent partner during most of the first half of his rule.
Saddam, having held power behind the scenes for 11 years, assumed the presidency of Iraq in July 1979 by forcing his cousin, President Ahmad Hassan al Bakr, into retirement. He inherited a potential problem and soon turned it into a war.
The January 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran provided both danger and opportunity to Saddam and Iraq. Saddam feared that the revolt of the Iranian Shiites would give ideas to the Shiites of southern Iraq, the country's long-oppressed majority. Saddam's Baathists were a secular party, concerned about any spread of Islamic theocracy.
In September 1980, Saddam repudiated a 1975 border agreement with Iran, and the two sides started shelling military targets.
It was during this war that Saddam first made a name for himself as a user of banned weapons. From 1983 to 1988, Iraq used chemical weapons an estimated 195 times, killing about 50,000 Iranian troops.
It was also during this war that a dramatic shift in U.S.-Iraq relations occurred, converting Washington into Saddam's ally.
U.S. tilts toward Iraq
When the war started, President Jimmy Carter, with only a few months left in office, declared the United States would stay out of it. Carter barred the sale of U.S.-made commercial jets and turbines to Iraq.
But soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan administration changed to a policy that "tilted" toward Iraq. Reagan lifted Carter's ban on jet sales. The Reagan administration, which viewed Iran as its top enemy in the region, found many ways to help Iraq, despite Saddam's well-known involvement with terrorists and grisly human rights violations.
In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
In December 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy, met with Saddam in Baghdad and told him that the United States wanted to resume full diplomatic relations. In a CNN interview in September 2002, Rumsfeld said: "In that visit, I cautioned him about the use of chemical weapons, as a matter or fact, and discussed a host of other things." Saddam agreed to diplomatic relations, which were resumed in 1984, but he kept using poison gas.
The Washington Post has reported that the U.S. government's favors to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq period included intelligence sharing, cluster bombs from the CIA through a Chilean front company, efforts to cut off foreign military supplies to Iran (except when Washington decided to provide weapons to the Iranians in the famous arms-for-hostages deal that was at the heart of the 1986 Iran-Contra scandal) and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of materials for chemical and biological weapons.
U.S. companies supplied chemicals, missile components and computers that had military uses. Among the computer suppliers was Minnesota-based Unisys. And Iraq acquired the "fuel air explosive," pioneered by Minnesota-based Honeywell, which sets the air on fire. The sales were licensed by the U.S. government.
In its piece reviewing the U.S. assistance to Iraq during the 1980s, the Post quoted David Newton, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq: "Fundamentally, the policy was justified. 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."
No sanctions
The war with Iran ended Aug. 20, 1988, after eight years and the loss of more than 1 million lives. In the end, not an inch of territory changed hands.
Toward the end of the war and immediately after it, Saddam turned his chemical attacks against Kurdish towns and villages, presumably to punish the Kurds for their wartime collaboration with Iran.
In 1987-88, Iraq conducted a campaign known as the Anfal, killing an estimated 100,000 Iraqi Kurds. Many were executed or killed by shells. But many also died by having poison gas dropped on them, including mustard gas, which burns, mutates DNA and causes cancer; the nerve gases sarin and tabun, which can kill, paralyze or cause nerve damage; and possibly VX gas and the biological agent atafloxin. All are banned by international law.
The most famous attack was the gassing of Halabja, a mostly Kurdish city near the Iranian border, on March 16, 1988. Rebel Kurds, working with Iranian troops, had taken the town a few days earlier. The gassing, which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds, was part of the successful Iraqi counterattack.
U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, D-R.I., horrified at the attacks on the Kurds, got the Senate to unanimously adopt the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would end U.S. subsidies, U.S. purchases of Iraqi oil and ban the export to Iraq of technology that would help advance its weapons programs.
Still seeking to maintain its relationship with Iraq, and mindful that U.S. farmers and U.S. corporations were making a lot of money selling to Iraq, the White House opposed the sanctions.
One internal State Department memo put the tradeoff between ethical, political and economic considerations this way: "Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq."
The Prevention of Genocide Act died in the House.
In 1989, President George Bush opposed a second stripped-down Iraq sanctions bill right up to the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. Within hours of the invasion, the bill passed 416-0 and Bush, by executive order, imposed a total embargo on Iraq and a freeze on Iraqi assets in the United States.
more.....
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