Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran

[Doc1]

It's "Approved for release". It's got to be real!

so? where does it say that the USA supplied Saddam with nitrogen mustard
gas or GAVE him the materials to make Nitrogen Mustard gas? ----along with
the recipe----(which he got from fellow Baathist pig Gamal Abdel Nasser)

Where does it say he "bought" the ingredients from us? Until you use sources to prove anything you say honey you're just more whack job liar.

did you read cited document? anyway----I happen to know. re-read the CIA document cited in the OP

"Where does it say he "bought" the ingredients from us?"

It doesn't and well....just because you say you "know" something in no way makes it so

 

[Doc1]

It's "Approved for release". It's got to be real!

so? where does it say that the USA supplied Saddam with nitrogen mustard
gas or GAVE him the materials to make Nitrogen Mustard gas? ----along with
the recipe----(which he got from fellow Baathist pig Gamal Abdel Nasser)

Where does it say he "bought" the ingredients from us? Until you use sources to prove anything you say honey you're just more whack job liar.

PS DOC-----most people believe a person nicknamed "DOC" is a doctor (the medical kind) you are not a "doc" -------real docs in the usa know quite a bit
about military biologicals and gases

You can't help but make yourself look stupid can you? LOL.

 

[irosie91]

It's "Approved for release". It's got to be real!

so? where does it say that the USA supplied Saddam with nitrogen mustard
gas or GAVE him the materials to make Nitrogen Mustard gas? ----along with
the recipe----(which he got from fellow Baathist pig Gamal Abdel Nasser)

Where does it say he "bought" the ingredients from us? Until you use sources to prove anything you say honey you're just more whack job liar.

PS DOC-----most people believe a person nicknamed "DOC" is a doctor (the medical kind) you are not a "doc" -------real docs in the usa know quite a bit
about military biologicals and gases

You can't help but make yourself look stupid can you? LOL.

if you are a "doctor"----go to the homeland security website-----there are
things that all doctors (ie medical doctors) need to know in case of
domestic terrorism use of nitrogen mustard gases or chlorine gas----or biologicals

 

[francoHFW]

They had 27 factories- 24 were shut down by Obama, 3 were toxic, superdupe.

Obama claimed he got 100% of Syria's WMD's, superdupe.

Assad and Putin cheated. DUHHHH. He got a helluva lot of them and stopped the attacks for a couple years. Then Trump gave Putin and Assad the impression he was backing off, much like Reagan and HW Bush did with Saddam. How'd that work out? The GOP is full of greedy covert a-hole incompetents and dupes like you. Go Trump! learn and grow, dump the BS Propaganda.

You do know, Obama's boy, James Clapper, said Iraq "unquestionably" moved WMD's to Syria, before the invasion. You heard about that, didn't you?

More of the total bs propaganda, repeated forever that makes up your dupe world. No evidence and never will be...

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. […]He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

A guy who quotes a blog named "tiny revolution" should not be talking about propaganda in the same post.

Your whole world is crap propaganda. Nobody in the real world believes WMDs were moved to Syria. Clapper was FOS and the only official who ever said it, yet all the propaganda saying so is based on his no evidence BS, dupe.

 

[francoHFW]

It's "Approved for release". It's got to be real!

so? where does it say that the USA supplied Saddam with nitrogen mustard
gas or GAVE him the materials to make Nitrogen Mustard gas? ----along with
the recipe----(which he got from fellow Baathist pig Gamal Abdel Nasser)

Where does it say he "bought" the ingredients from us? Until you use sources to prove anything you say honey you're just more whack job liar.

Change the channel and get some real news.
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed ...
foreignpolicy.com/.../exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-i...
Aug 26, 2013 - Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran ... Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly .... The level of insight into Iraq's chemical weapons program stands in ...
CIA 'helped Saddam Hussein make chemical weapons attack on Iran ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../CIA-helped-Saddam-Hussein-make-chemical-weapons-attack...
Aug 26, 2013 - Ronald Regan's administration fed information to Baghdad that helped them launchchemical weapons strikes, it has been revealed.
Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons' | Daily Mail Online
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article.../Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and ... US oil supplies - Mr Reagansent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and keep the ...
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons - Counterpunch
www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/.../how-reagan-armed-saddam-with-chemical-weapo...
Jun 17, 2004 - The Ties That Blind How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical ... the US helped Iraqdevelop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ...

 

[Weatherman2020]

Obama claimed he got 100% of Syria's WMD's, superdupe.

Assad and Putin cheated. DUHHHH. He got a helluva lot of them and stopped the attacks for a couple years. Then Trump gave Putin and Assad the impression he was backing off, much like Reagan and HW Bush did with Saddam. How'd that work out? The GOP is full of greedy covert a-hole incompetents and dupes like you. Go Trump! learn and grow, dump the BS Propaganda.

You do know, Obama's boy, James Clapper, said Iraq "unquestionably" moved WMD's to Syria, before the invasion. You heard about that, didn't you?

More of the total bs propaganda, repeated forever that makes up your dupe world. No evidence and never will be...

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. […]He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

A guy who quotes a blog named "tiny revolution" should not be talking about propaganda in the same post.

Your whole world is crap propaganda. Nobody in the real world believes WMDs were moved to Syria. Clapper was FOS and the only official who ever said it, yet all the propaganda saying so is based on his no evidence BS, dupe.

Yeah, nobody knows the truth but you and those running Venezuela.

 

[francoHFW]

Assad and Putin cheated. DUHHHH. He got a helluva lot of them and stopped the attacks for a couple years. Then Trump gave Putin and Assad the impression he was backing off, much like Reagan and HW Bush did with Saddam. How'd that work out? The GOP is full of greedy covert a-hole incompetents and dupes like you. Go Trump! learn and grow, dump the BS Propaganda.

You do know, Obama's boy, James Clapper, said Iraq "unquestionably" moved WMD's to Syria, before the invasion. You heard about that, didn't you?

More of the total bs propaganda, repeated forever that makes up your dupe world. No evidence and never will be...

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. […]He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

A guy who quotes a blog named "tiny revolution" should not be talking about propaganda in the same post.

Your whole world is crap propaganda. Nobody in the real world believes WMDs were moved to Syria. Clapper was FOS and the only official who ever said it, yet all the propaganda saying so is based on his no evidence BS, dupe.

Yeah, nobody knows the truth but you and those running Venezuela.

Certainly not fake news/bs propaganda junkies like you dupes...here's proof Raygun helped Saddam to the point just short of giving chem weapons outright. Stupid covert a-holes...our "librul" media suqs too.
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed ...
foreignpolicy.com/.../exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-i...
Aug 26, 2013 - Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran ... Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly .... The level of insight into Iraq's chemical weapons program stands in ...
CIA 'helped Saddam Hussein make chemical weapons attack on Iran ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../CIA-helped-Saddam-Hussein-make-chemical-weapons-attack...
Aug 26, 2013 - Ronald Regan's administration fed information to Baghdad that helped them launchchemical weapons strikes, it has been revealed.
Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons' | Daily Mail Online
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article.../Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and ... US oil supplies - Mr Reagansent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and keep the ...
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons - Counterpunch
www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/.../how-reagan-armed-saddam-with-chemical-weapo...
Jun 17, 2004 - The Ties That Blind How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical ... the US helped Iraqdevelop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ...

 

[Weatherman2020]

You do know, Obama's boy, James Clapper, said Iraq "unquestionably" moved WMD's to Syria, before the invasion. You heard about that, didn't you?

More of the total bs propaganda, repeated forever that makes up your dupe world. No evidence and never will be...

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. […]He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

A guy who quotes a blog named "tiny revolution" should not be talking about propaganda in the same post.

Your whole world is crap propaganda. Nobody in the real world believes WMDs were moved to Syria. Clapper was FOS and the only official who ever said it, yet all the propaganda saying so is based on his no evidence BS, dupe.

Yeah, nobody knows the truth but you and those running Venezuela.

Certainly not fake news/bs propaganda junkies like you dupes...here's proof Raygun helped Saddam to the point just short of giving chem weapons outright. Stupid covert a-holes...our "librul" media suqs too.
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed ...
foreignpolicy.com/.../exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-i...
Aug 26, 2013 - Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran ... Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly .... The level of insight into Iraq's chemical weapons program stands in ...
CIA 'helped Saddam Hussein make chemical weapons attack on Iran ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../CIA-helped-Saddam-Hussein-make-chemical-weapons-attack...
Aug 26, 2013 - Ronald Regan's administration fed information to Baghdad that helped them launchchemical weapons strikes, it has been revealed.
Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons' | Daily Mail Online
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article.../Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and ... US oil supplies - Mr Reagansent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and keep the ...
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons - Counterpunch
www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/.../how-reagan-armed-saddam-with-chemical-weapo...
Jun 17, 2004 - The Ties That Blind How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical ... the US helped Iraqdevelop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ...

All of your links are old. No one talks about them because it was discredeted

 

[francoHFW]

More of the total bs propaganda, repeated forever that makes up your dupe world. No evidence and never will be...

Liberal critics are pointing out that Clapper, while serving as the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, helped assist the Bush administration lie that Iraq possessed illegal weapons of mass destruction. Speaking to reporters in October 2003, Clapper suggested that the illicit weapons had “unquestionably” been moved to Syria:

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material “unquestionably” had been moved out of Iraq. […]He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said “the obvious conclusion one draws” was that there “may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material.” A spokesman for General Clapper’s agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general’s statement.

A guy who quotes a blog named "tiny revolution" should not be talking about propaganda in the same post.

Your whole world is crap propaganda. Nobody in the real world believes WMDs were moved to Syria. Clapper was FOS and the only official who ever said it, yet all the propaganda saying so is based on his no evidence BS, dupe.

Yeah, nobody knows the truth but you and those running Venezuela.

Certainly not fake news/bs propaganda junkies like you dupes...here's proof Raygun helped Saddam to the point just short of giving chem weapons outright. Stupid covert a-holes...our "librul" media suqs too.
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed ...
foreignpolicy.com/.../exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-i...
Aug 26, 2013 - Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran ... Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly .... The level of insight into Iraq's chemical weapons program stands in ...
CIA 'helped Saddam Hussein make chemical weapons attack on Iran ...
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../CIA-helped-Saddam-Hussein-make-chemical-weapons-attack...
Aug 26, 2013 - Ronald Regan's administration fed information to Baghdad that helped them launchchemical weapons strikes, it has been revealed.
Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons' | Daily Mail Online
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article.../Rumsfeld-helped-Iraq-chemical-weapons.html
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Iraq build up chemical and ... US oil supplies - Mr Reagansent Mr Rumsfeld to prop up Saddam and keep the ...
How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons - Counterpunch
www.counterpunch.org/2004/06/.../how-reagan-armed-saddam-with-chemical-weapo...
Jun 17, 2004 - The Ties That Blind How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical ... the US helped Iraqdevelop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ...

All of your links are old. No one talks about them because it was discredeted

You're out of your tiny mind. Facts don't change. Link to your bs?

 

[francoHFW]

From last link:
A reader of the NYT article (or the tens of thousands of other articles written after the war drive against Iraq began in earnest soon after September 11, 2001) would have looked in vain for the fact that many of the US politicians and ruling class pundits who demanded war against Hussein–in particular, the one of the most bellicose of the Bush administration’s “hawks”, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld–were up to their ears in Washington’s efforts to cultivate, promote and excuse Hussein in the past.

The NYT article read as though Washington’s casual disregard about the use of chemical weapons by Hussein’s dictatorship throughout the 1980s had never been reported before. However, it was not the first time that “Iraqgate”–as the scandal of US military and political support for Hussein in the ’80s has been dubbed–has raised its embarrassing head in the corporate media, only to be quickly buried again.

One of the more comprehensive and damning accounts of Iraqgate was written by Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas and published in the February 23, 1992, Los Angeles Times. Headlined, “Bush secret effort helped Iraq build its war machine”, the article reported that “classified documents obtained by the LA Times show … a long-secret pattern of personal efforts by [George Bush senior]–both as president and vice president–to support and placate the Iraqi dictator.”

Even William Safire, the right-wing, war-mongering NYT columnist, on December 7, 1992, felt compelled to write that, “Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [the US, Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator”.

The background to Iraqgate was the January 1979 popular uprising that overthrew the cravenly pro-US Shah of Iran. The Iranian revolution threatened US imperialism’s domination of the strategic oil-rich region. Other than Israel, Iran had long been Washington’s key ally in the Middle East.

Washington immediately began to “cast about for ways to undermine or overthrow the Iranian revolution, or make up for the loss of the Shah. Hussein’s regime put up its hand. On September 22, 1980, Iraq launched an invasion of Iran. Throughout the bloody eight-year-long war–which cost at least 1 million lives–Washington backed Iraq.

As a 1990 report prepared for the Pentagon by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US War College admitted: “Throughout the [Iran-Iraq] war the United States practised a fairly benign policy toward Iraq… [Washington and Baghdad] wanted to restore the status quo ante … that prevailed before [the 1979 Iranian revolution] began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomeini’s revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him. United by a common interest … the [US] began to actively assist Iraq.”

At first, as Iraqi forces seemed headed for victory over Iran, official US policy was neutrality in the conflict. Not only was Hussein doing Washington’s dirty work in the war with Iran, but the US rulers believed that Iraq could be lured away from its close economic and military relationship with the Soviet Union–just as Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat had done in the 1970s.

In March 1981, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig excitedly told the Senate foreign relations committee that Iraq was concerned by “the behaviour of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern region”. The Soviet government had refused to deliver arms to Iraq as long as Baghdad continued its military offensive against Iran. Moscow was also unhappy with the Hussein’s vicious repression of the Iraqi Communist Party.

Washington’s support (innocuously referred to as a “tilt” at the time) for Iraq became more open after Iran succeeded in driving Iraqi forces from its territory in May 1982; in June, Iran went on the offensive against Iraq. The US scrambled to stem Iraq’s military setbacks. Washington and its conservative Arab allies suddenly feared Iran might even defeat Iraq, or at least cause the collapse of Hussein’s regime.

Using its allies in the Middle East, Washington funnelled huge supplies of arms to Iraq. Classified State Department cables uncovered by Frantz and Waas described covert transfers of howitzers, helicopters, bombs and other weapons to Baghdad in 1982-83 from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.

Howard Teicher, who monitored Middle East policy at the US National Security Council during the Reagan administration, told the February 23, 1992, LA Times: “There was a conscious effort to encourage third countries to ship US arms or acquiesce in shipments after the fact. It was a policy of nods and winks.”

According to Mark Phythian’s 1997 book Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine (Northeastern University Press), in 1983 Reagan asked Italy’s Prime Minister Guilo Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.

The January 1, 1984 Washington Post reported that the US had “informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the defeat of Iraq in the three-year-old war with Iran would be ‘contrary to US interests’ and has made several moves to prevent that result”.

Central to these “moves” was the cementing of a military and political alliance with Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime, so as to build up Iraq as a military counterweight to Iran. In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department’s list of countries that allegedly supported terrorism. On December 19-20, 1983, Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy–none other than Donald Rumsfeld–to Baghdad with a hand-written offer of a resumption of diplomatic relations, which had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israel war. On March 24, 1984, Rumsfeld was again in Baghdad.

On that same day, the UPI wire service reported from the UN: “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers … a team of UN experts has concluded … Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, US presidential envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.”

The day before, Iran had accused Iraq of poisoning 600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve gas.

There is no doubt that the US government knew Iraq was using chemical weapons. On March 5, 1984, the State Department had stated that “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons”. The March 30, 1984, NYT reported that US intelligence officials has “what they believe to be incontrovertible evidence 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”.

However, consistent with the pattern throughout the Iran-Iraq war and after, the use of these internationally outlawed weapons was not considered important enough by Rumsfeld and his political superiors to halt Washington’s blossoming love affair with Hussein.

The March 29, 1984, NYT, reporting on the aftermath of Rumsfeld’s talks in Baghdad, stated that US officials had pronounced “themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the US and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name”. In November 1984, the US and Iraq officially restored diplomatic relations.

According to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, 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 US satellite reconnaissance photography … to assist Iraqi bombing raids”.

Iraqi chemical attacks on Iranian troops–and US assistance to Iraq–continued throughout the Iran-Iraq war. In a parallel program, the US defence department also provided intelligence and battle-planning assistance to Iraq.

The August 17, 2002 NYT reported that, according to “senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program”, even though “senior officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned Iraq’s employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents … President Reagan, vice president George Bush [senior] and senior national security aides never withdrew their support for the highly classified program in which more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.”

Retired DIA officer Rick Francona told the NYT that Iraq’s chemical weapons were used in the war’s final battle in early 1988, in which Iraqi forces retook the Fao Peninsula from the Iranian army.

Another retired DIA officer, Walter Lang, told the NYT that “the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern”. What concerned the DIA, CIA and the Reagan administration was that Iran not break through the Fao Peninsula and spread the Islamic revolution to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq’s 1982 removal from Washington’s official list of states that support terrorism meant that the Hussein regime was now eligible for US economic and military aid, and was able to purchase advanced US technology that could also be used for military purposes.

Conventional military sales resumed in December 1982. In 1983, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters to Iraq in 1983 “for civilian use”. However, as Phythian pointed out, these aircraft could be “weaponised” within hours of delivery. Then US Secretary of State George Schultz and commerce secretary George Baldridge also lobbied for the delivery of Bell helicopters equipped for “crop spraying”. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5000 people.

With the Reagan administration’s connivance, Baghdad immediately embarked on a massive militarisation drive. This US-endorsed military spending spree began even before Iraq was delisted as a terrorist state, when the US commerce department approved the sale of Italian gas turbine engines for Iraq’s naval frigates.

Soon after, the US agriculture department’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) guaranteed to repay loans–in the event of defaults by Baghdad–banks had made to Iraq to buy US-grown commodities such as wheat and rice. Under this scheme, Iraq had three years to repay the loans, and if it could not the US taxpayers would have to cough up.

Washington offered this aid initially to prevent Hussein’s overthrow as the Iraqi people began to complain about the food shortages caused by the massive diversion of hard currency for the purchase of weapons and ammunition. The loan guarantees amounted to a massive US subsidy that allowed Hussein to launch his overt and covert arms buildup, one result being that the Iran-Iraq war entered a bloody five-year stalemate.