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Saddam Killed in the Nick of Time for U.S. Interests
By Kevin Zeese (about the author) Page 4 of 7 page(s)
The assertion was supported by a secret 1988 memo in which Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead wrote, "Even though it was removed from the terrorism list six years ago, (Iraq) had provided sanctuary to known terrorists, including Abul Abbas of Achille Lauro fame."
Almost immediately after Iraq was dropped from the list, Washington provided loan guarantees to enable it to buy such American commodities as rice and wheat through the Agriculture Department's Commodity Credit Corp.
Two years later in 1984, Bush personally pressed the federal Export-Import Bank to guarantee $500 million in loans so that Iraq could build a controversial oil pipeline, according to classified government documents.
And throughout much of the period from 1982 to the end of the Reagan Administration, efforts were made to funnel arms as well as economic aid to Baghdad -- sometimes through the Pentagon and sometimes through U.S. allies in the Middle East. Some of the specific arms plans failed to work but government sources said that significant quantities of arms did reach Baghdad as a result of U.S. efforts.
At one point in 1982, for example, a proposal was put forward to trade four American-made howitzers to Iraq for a Soviet T-72 tank, according to classified documents. The T-72 was of particular importance according to a secret July, 1982, report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, because it was protected by a new type of armor, which might prove invulnerable to American firepower. A second plan in 1983 would have allowed Iraq to buy $45 million worth of 175-millimeter long-range guns and ammunition in exchange for turning over a Soviet tank.
Pentagon officials also reported to then-Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger "that Iraqi officials said it might be possible to exchange a (Soviet Hind) helicopter for permission to buy 100 Hughes helicopters" equipped with TOW missiles, according to a secret Pentagon memo.
For various reasons, each of these deals fell through. The helicopter transaction was scrapped after the late Richard Stillwell, a retired general who was then deputy undersecretary of defense, objected to working with an Iraqi-sponsored arms trafficker with a reputation for questionable dealings.
"While I fully recognize the value to the U.S.A. of obtaining an MI-24 HIND, I recommend against pursuing this particular deal because . . . the potential for causing embarrassment to the U.S. government is too great," Stillwell wrote in a top-secret memo for Weinberger in 1983.
In a recent interview, Weinberger refused to discuss any of the proposed exchanges. Although low-level Pentagon operatives saw the arms swaps or sales to Iraq as a means to obtain Soviet technology, two officials say that Weinbeger saw it as a pretext to begin covert and direct arms shipments to Iraq. But Weinberger did acknowledge being part of a faction in the Reagan Administration that favored Iraq over Iran. "Many of us thought it would be better if Iraq won," said Weinberger, now a lawyer in private practice.
A number of classified State Department cables also describe proposals in 1982 and 1983 by William Eagleton, the senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, to funnel arms to Iraq through allies in the Middle East. "We can selectively lift restrictions on third-party transfers of U.S.-license military equipment to Iraq," he said in an October, 1983, cable.
Although initially rejected, other documents and interviews with former U.S. officials indicate that the policy was pursued on a covert basis with Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait and that arms were transferred to Iraq.
"There was a conscious effort to encourage third countries to ship U.S. arms or acquiesce in shipments after the fact," said Howard Teicher, who monitored Middle East policy at the National Security Council in the Reagan Administration. "It was a policy of nods and winks."
While the American rationale was that Hussein was a buffer against Iran, classified records show U.S. support for his regime continued unabated after the official cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War was signed in August, 1988, and after Iraq's chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish villages on July 19, 1988.
In fact, in August, 1988, Deputy Secretary of State Whitehead recommended in a secret policy memo that "there should be no radical policy changes now regarding Iraq."
The pro-Iraq strategy was embraced by Bush when he became President. His Administration continued to encourage the transfer of U.S.-supplied arms to Iraq from Arab allies, according to interviews and classified documents.
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