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Add an EventFord, Reagan, Rumsfeld and Saddam
The distinguished British journalist, Robert Fisk, put it so well when he wrote in an article in The Independent/UK posted on the Common Dreams Web Site:
We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember...
Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein
Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, December 20, 1983.
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) was one of a series of crises during an era of upheaval in the Middle East: revolution and occupation of the U.S. embassy in Iran; the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and almost continuous warfare between Israel, Syria, and Palestinians in Lebanon.
At first, Saddam’s army was winning, but by mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive.
The U.S. began supporting Iraq, providing intelligence and military support in accordance with policy directives from U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan’s National Security Study Memorandum, March 1982 Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 99, July 12, 1983 Reagan’s National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114, November 26, 1983Donald Rumsfeld had served in the Nixon and Ford administrations, (including as defense secretary for that “nice guy,” President Gerald Ford). Rummy was dispatched to the Middle East as President Reagan's personal envoy. Rumsfeld met with Saddam and, according to detailed notes, made no reference to chemical weapons or mass murder. Rumsfeld also met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, and the two agreed, "the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests." Rumsfeld affirmed the Reagan administration's "willingness to do more" regarding the Iran-Iraq war. Later, the U.S. interests section in Iraq assured Rumsfeld that Iraq's leadership had been "extremely pleased" with the visit, and Aziz "had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld.”
Our Short National Nightmare: The Ugly Truth About Gerald Ford
by Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens, one of the biggest hawks for the current war, but also a longtime advocate for Iraq's oppressed Kurdish minority, has an article posted on Slate about the contribution of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Saddam's bloody resume.
During his [Ford's] tenure, and while Henry Kissinger was secretary of state, The United States secretly armed and financed a Kurdish rebellion against Saddam Hussein. This was done in collusion with the Shah of Iran, who was then considered in Washington a man who could do no wrong. So that when the shah signed a separate peace with Saddam in 1975, and abandoned his opportunist support for the Kurds, the United States shamefacedly followed his lead and knifed the Kurds in the back.
You cannot tell the players without a scorecard!
He Takes His Secrets to the Grave. Our Complicity Dies with Him
by Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is one of the precious few brave journalists speaking truth to power about the disgraceful complicity of our government in the crimes of Saddam Hussein. Here is a very brief bulleted list of Fisk's points:
Iraq’s 1980 Invasion of Iran - Meetings between Iraqi and senior American officials; Pentagon providing intelligence on Iranians. Biological Agents - US companies sending government-approved shipments of biological agents including Bacillus anthracis and Escherichia coli (E. coli). Chemical Weapons, 1988 - With Saddam's permission, Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer, visited territory recaptured from the Iranians and reported the use of chemical weapons back to Washington. U.S. Credits, 1982 to 1987 - Used to purchase American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait: $300 million; Promised credits of $1 billion. USS Stark Incident, 1987 - Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's lame excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel. Trade Before Kuwait Invasion, 1990 - annual trade between Iraq and the US: $3.5 billion a year; Then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker pushed for $1 billion in new credits..The Insufferable Mainstream Media
The "Liberal" New York Times:
Saddam Hussein, Defiant Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence and Fear, Dies
by Neil MacFarquhar
December 30, 2006
Mr. Hussein saw his first opportunity for Iraq to dominate the region in the turmoil that swept neighboring Iran immediately after its 1979 Islamic revolution. In September 1980, Mr. Hussein believed that by invading Iran he could both seize a disputed waterway along the border and inspire Iranians of Arab origin to revolt against their Persian rulers. Instead, they resisted fanatically. Mr. Hussein never acknowledged making a gross miscalculation; rather, he vilified the Iranian Arabs as traitors to the Arab cause...
Mr. Hussein adored the macho trappings of the armed forces, appointing himself field marshal and dressing his ministers in olive-green fatigues. If he was a poor military strategist, he was fortunate in his first choice of enemy. The fear that an Islamic revolution would spread to an oil producer with estimated reserves second only to Saudi Arabia tipped the United States and its allies toward Baghdad and they provided weapons, technology and, most important, secret satellite images of Iran’s military positions and intercepted communications.
The war lasted for eight years until Iran accepted a cease-fire in July 1988, with both sides terrorizing each other’s civilian populations by rocketing major cities. But the March 1988 mustard gas attack on the Iraqi village of Halabja by its own government was perhaps the most gruesome incident.
That is all the so-called Newspaper-of-Record has to say about events before, during, and after Rumsfeld's handshake with Saddam.
The "Conservative" New York Post:
Saddam Hussein TimeLine
December 30, 2006
1979
Becomes supreme leader after al-Bakr resigns
1979
Launches sneak attack on Iran designed to capture strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway.
1988
Ruthlessly puts down an uprising of Kurds in northern Iraq. About 5,000 Kurds die an agonizing death from chemical weapons in one city.
Aug. 2, 1990
Annexes Kuwait as "the 19th province of Iraq."
Jan. 16, 1991
Operation Desert Storm launched to drive Saddam's armies out of Kuwait.
Are we not supposed to notice that huge gap in the so-called timeline between 1979 and 1988? Years which, by an amazing coincidence, correspond to the years of Our Dear Great Republican President Ronald Reagan?
Do not fear they've gone "soft." It's still Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and so on the same day they omitted a whole decade of shenanigans by the Reagan-Bush "conservatives" they love, the Post editors published this editorial in that patented adolescent "Angry White Man" style for which they are famous.
New York Post Editorial: Justice Served
December 30, 2006
Ding dong, the Butcher's dead.
At long last.
After having been brought to justice by the freely elected - albeit gravely endangered - democratic government of Iraq.
Now may he rot in hell.
If anyone ever deserved to die at the end of a rope, it was Saddam Hussein.
. . .
He was never even brought to trial on the most heinous charges against him - including his genocidal assault, using deadly nerve gas, against Iraq's Kurdish population, which took a reported 100,000 innocent lives.
But that was in large part because Saddam and his lawyers - including America's most embarrassing former Cabinet official, Johnson administration Attorney General Ramsey Clark - alternately boycotted and disrupted the proceedings...
No doubt, Donald Rumsfeld would agree.
Earlier this year, Fisk reported on what I allegedly reported to Washington after touring the battlefields on the Al-Faw peninsula shortly after Iraqi forces had retaken them from Iranian troops. In that piece, he got it wrong - read my response to that earlier article at http://francona.blogspot.com/2006/10/robert-fisk-age-of-terror.html.
This current article is slightly more accurate when he talks about me. Perhaps my letters to his editor had some effect. Here's what he says this time:
Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".
This paragraph is fairly accurate except for the number of people involved. If you counted everyone in Washington that had any part in it (analysts, imagery interpreters, line drawing artists, etc), you may get as high as 30, but there were only two full time - Pat Lang and I, and only two ever present in Iraq at any given time.
Other than that, the story is a mish-mash of fact and fiction. I'll address a few (not all) of the more glaring fictional parts. I will do so from an American perspective as I was not privy to British support for Saddam.
Our first relationship with Saddam Husayn began in 1984 with the normalization of diplomatic relations between Iraq and the United States (broken since 1967). Almost immediately, the CIA tried a relationship with the Iraqi Intelligence Service (al-mukhabarat). We were willing to provide low-level tactical information on the Iranian troop deployments in return for information on American hostages being held in Lebanon by Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members or their surrogates. It didn't go anywhere.
I discount Fisk's claims that we provided information on ICP members. I also don't believe the report of meetings between Saddam and US officers prior to the 1980 invasion of Iran. We certainly would not have used a German arms dealer to pass satellite imagery to Baghdad - we would never have released that to such a person. Besides, that was my job!
We pretty much had nothing to do with the Iraqis (Ollie North was too busy with the Iranians) until 1987 when the USS Stark was inadvertently struck by a Iraqi Exocet missiles. Meetings held with the Iraqis in the aftermath of this incident grew into a relationship between the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the Iraqi Directorate of Military Intelligence. In late 1987, DIA prepared an assessment which concluded that Iran would defeat Iraq in spring of 1988.
In February 1988, Reagan ordered Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci to begin providing intelligence to the DMI. That continued through September 1988. As far as I know (and I was in a position to know), we only provided information.
No weapons were ever transferred. As for the chemicals and biological stuff, they bought those on the open market - there was no restriction on them. We did not provide any assistance for his chemical or biological weapons production facilities.
As for the agricultural credits, we did that, but I had nothing to do with that, so I will defer to someone who knows. We did sell thousands of white Oldsmobile Cutlasses as death gratuities for the families of officers killed in action. Enlisted families were given red Brazilian-made VW Passats.
We did support Saddam Husayn - no question. It was in keeping with the Middle East saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." It was about Iran and the ayatollahs, not about Iraq and Saddam Husayn. Unlike the mujahidin in Afghanistan who thought our support was about them rather than about the Soviets, the Iraqis understood. As soon as they won the war, they kicked me out.
(Note: I have described these events in extensive details in my book "Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace, Naval Institute Press, 1999).
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