The End of Iraq (2)

By Peter Galbraith
Read the first part of this article here.

On US support of Saddam

Saddam Hussein meets with Donald Rumsfeld in Baghdad in 1983

In March 1984, the U.N. secretary-general submitted an experts' re­port to the Security Council on Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The Dutch and British representatives to the U.N. circulated a resolution condemning the use of chemical weapons (without specifically blam­ing Iraq) but the United States took no significant actions to support its allies. The State Department did meet with Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, to discuss how the Security Council might handle the issue in a way that would cause the fewest objections in Baghdad. The Iraqis did not want the Security Council to adopt a resolution on the matter (which could have been legally consequen­tial) and asked instead for U.S. support in limiting any Security Coun­cil action to a statement by the council's president. The Reagan Administration obliged and the Iraqis got the outcome they desired. At the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the Reagan Administration went a step further and actively opposed a resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
In 1982, Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the State Department's list of countries supporting terrorism, although there had been no sig­nificant change in Iraq's support for radical Palestinian groups that were the principal terrorist concern at the time. The Administration began providing guarantees from the government-controlled Com­modity Credit Corporation for Iraqi purchases of U.S. agricultural products in 1983 and extended Export-Import Bank credits to Iraq in 1984. While these credits were intended to finance the purchases of U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods, they aided Iraq's war effort by freeing up other funds that could be used for military purposes. By 1988, U.S. subsidies to Iraq approached $1 billion a year.
In 1983, the Reagan Administration ordered the CIA to share bat­tlefield intelligence with Iraq. Liaison officers provided Iraq with the locations of Iranian units, which enabled Iraq to anticipate and pre­pare for Iranian attacks. Assisted by American intelligence, Iraq was able to target Iranian troop concentrations with chemical weapons. The Administration certainly knew how its intelligence was being used. Thus, while the State Department publicly criticized Iraq for the use of chemical weapons, the Reagan Administration was working se­cretly to make them more effective.
The End of Iraq, page 18-19.

To be continued...
Pictures, maps and titles in this article are not from the book "The End of Iraq".