Reagan, Saddam, and Chemical Crime
What do you remember about the eight year war between Iraq the invader and Iran the defender. Not a whole hell of a lot I would think. Most people are appalled by the reports that Saddam gassed his own people. Well, yes Saddam did gas the Kurds in the oil rich north of Iraq. As a matter of fact, though, it is a contentious issue on whether or not the Kurds were, in fact, a part of Iraq. The Kurds, having been left out by, mostly British and French creation of political borders throughout the Middle East have become terrorists in the political arena of Iraq, Iran and Turkey. The Kurds were, are fighting for their 'rightful existence' as a sovereign entity in their own right in the Middle East.
Do you remember, also, that Saddam gassed 3 thousand defending Iranians on Iranian soil? Well, yes he did. But where did the gas come from? Iraq had neither the facilities nor the knowledge to create and disperse poison gas weapons. Remember the Scud haliaboo when Saddam decided to send gas filled Scuds to bomb Israel? Well, Saddam created great fear in the streets of Tel Avive and the rest of Israel but even North Korea can out perform Iraq's stupid venture.
The question becomes where did Iraq get poison gas and the accurate delivery systems to gas the Kurds and the Iranians?
Let's go back a bit. Iraq had no intention or reason to try invade Iran until the Americans with Reagan as president decided that Iraq should do so with the quiet backing of the omnipotent USA. Reagan provided leadership military training as well as regular military training. He provided a good bit of the financing; he provided weapons; he provided CIA aide, he provided many on-the-ground advisers; he provided spy satellite information and he provided gas weaponry.
Yes the Reagan administration provided help for Iraq to develop its chemical and biological weapons programs. But, Iraq, as it has been proved could not even store the gas properly. When Bush's onslaught regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction , with the obvious foreknowledge of poison gas in Iraq, found the condemning WMD they were found useless as Iraq had not even the knowledge on how to store such weapons. The exciting bit here is that Bush/Cheney knew where the gas was though a pretence was thrown about as to the finding of this useless gas.
Throughout the eight year war began by Reagan pushing his 'good friend' Saddam to invade Iran the USA was complicit in the poison gas that Saddam used against the Kurds and multiple times against Iranian defenders of Iran. Why?
Well, because the 1979 Iranian revolution had kicked out the, USA imposed, Shah of Iran and that left the USA without any control over the Iranian people and their oil. Yeah, that dirty black stuff that keeps America rich and runs much of the British and American navies. Because of America's wont for control over a million lives were lost in the American made war between Iraq and Iran. And, yet, we ignore the body count here and whine prolifically over the 9/11 horror. Yes, over a million lives lost in an American initiated war that we really hear nothing about but, damn near everyday we hear about 9/11.
Behind the scenes America was bothered by Iraq's interest in in economic ties with the Soviet Union. In 1981 the US Secretary of State Alexander Hiag voiced the opinion that Iraq was concerned about Soviet imperialism in the Middle East. It appears that the Soviet government had refused to deliver weapons to Iraq unless Iraq quit its attack upon Iran.
By May of 1982 Iran had succeeded in pushing the Iraq forces out of Iran and began to push into Iraqi territory. Now Washington became worried and pulled in some favours from conservative allies in the Middle East and began to deliver huge amounts of weaponry into the failing Iraq. Classified State Department cables have shown that there were covert movements of howitzers, helicopters, bombs etc to Iraq in 1982-83 from places such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia (of course), Jordan and Kuwait. It was also shown that "There was a conscious effort to encourage third countries to ship US arms...." as reported in the LA Times Feb. 23, 1992.
Now the US was being forced to show its hand in Reagan's war upon Iran. Having lost the Shah of Iran in the 1979 revolution to remove the cruel puppet of America from Iran it became even more important to create an even cozier embrace with Saddam. On Dec. 19, 1983 Reagan insured the continuation of this war and its joining at the hip policies with Iraq by sending his Middle East man, Donald Rumsfeld, to Iraq with a hand-written offer of resuming diplomatic relations which had been cut off during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
That very same day the UN reported that "mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers...".
It is unquestionable that the US government at the top was well aware that Iraq was using chemical weapons. It was ell reported that Iraq was using chemical weapons and "that Iraq has used nerve gas in its war with Iran and has almost finished extensive sites for mass producing the lethal chemical warfare agent".
It's been exhibited that Iraq had no knowledge on how to create and mass produce chemical weapons and it is a surety that Saddam didn't suddenly come up with the knowledge of mass producing and delivering chemical weapons out of the blue. The knowledge to suddenly built such factories as was needed had to have come from outside Iraq's expertise. Remember, they could not even stotr the gas properly and no mention has been made about delivery systems for lethal gas.
It was reported that (Washington Post, Bob Woodward) the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to calibrate mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops, Beginning in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with "data from sensitive reconnaissance photography..to assist Iraqi bombing raids".
It is sad to say that America has told its people about the cruel Saddam gassing of the Kurds in northern Iraq; his own people! but regretfully "forgot" to mention the complicit between American politicians, war advisers and the 'intelligence' to, not once, but multiple times gas the Iranians.
Even with senior military officers publicly condemning Iraq's use of various lethal gas agents (please note- how does Iraq suddenly produce such agents as mustard gas, sarin, VX as ell as other chemical warfare agents?) Reagan's vice-president GHW Bush and senior national security aides continued to support the highly classified (very secret) program which included over 60 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officers receiving very detailed information about Iranian military deployments, tactical planning battle plans and air strikes as well as bomb damage probabilities for Iraq.
References:
Retired DIA officer Rick Francona
Retired DIA officer Walter Lang
Iraq's eligibility for US economic and military aid
Iraq's ability to buy advanced US military technology
Reagan approved sale of easily 'weaponized' Hughes helicopters (60)
US Secretary of State George Schultz & commerce secretary George Baldridge lobbied for sales of Bell crop spraying helicopters. (crops?)
It has been claimed that the US supplied helicopters were used in the 1988 chemical spraying of the Kurdish village of Halabja killing 5000 innocents.
In the event that Iraq could not repay its loans through the purchases of American wheat and rice (ah, the economics of war) within three years the American taxpayers would foot the bill.
By 1990 loan guarantees were built up tp $5 billion. About $2 billion were failed payments covered by the US taxpayer.
Between 1985 and 1990 "the US government approved 771 licenses (only 39 rejected) for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment" of military usage.
And the story continues..............
RC
