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host · 12-30-2006, 05:36 PM

There is a large body of evidence that the American leadership, most intensely between 1980 and 1990, knew full well that Saddam Hussein was a psychopathic personality and a brutal murderer, but these American leaders continued to support him in his aggressive war against the Iranian people, anyway. Support even included satellite reconnaissance and analysis from the most advanced US space assets and the CIA:

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200208310...=1&cpe=1&cpm=1

The cables and court records obtained by NBC News reveal the scope and nature of Rumsfeld’s role in shaping U.S. policy.
Although U.S. officials deny that the United States looked the other way while Iraq used American intelligence data to plan chemical weapons assaults against Iran in the 1980s, there is evidence in declassified State Department cables and court records to indicate that even though the United States was aware that Iraq had used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, it was ready to help Iraq in thwarting Iranian “human-wave” attacks.
The Iraqis used chemical weapons mainly to halt the Iranian “human wave” attacks beginning in 1983, although they also used cluster bombs and fuel air explosives.

IRANIAN VICTORY TOP CONCERN
President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush personally sent advice to Saddam Hussein, both directly and through intermediaries, a NSC staff member said.

Indeed, the record shows that in 1983, Rumsfeld — then President Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, now secretary of defense — told senior Iraqi officials that the use of poison gas “inhibited” normal relations between the two countries.
Nevertheless, at those same meetings in Baghdad with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and then-Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Rumsfeld stated the Reagan administration was so concerned about an Iranian victory that it offered Saddam unspecified assistance.
Specifically, Rumsfeld’s trip was the subject of several State Department cables from 1983. Some of the language from the cables is redacted, and much of what remains is couched in diplomatic-speak.
But in a January 1995 affidavit in a civil case involving Iraqi arms sales, NSC staff member Howard Teicher provides the most detailed discussion of the rationale behind the Iraq tilt. Moreover, Teicher, who accompanied Rumsfeld to Baghdad in 1983, lays out in the affidavit how both President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush personally delivered military advice to Saddam Hussein, both directly and through intermediaries.....

NSC STAFFER: POLICY SHIFT BEGAN IN ’82
According to Teicher, the tilt towards Iraq began in the spring of 1982, about 18 months after Iraq invaded Iran in hopes of a quick victory over the Iranian mullahs. Iran, however, used the advantage of its huge population to gain the upper hand, raising fears in the Reagan administration of an Iranian surge through southern Iran and into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
“In the Spring of 1982, Iraq teetered on the brink of losing its war with Iran,” wrote Teicher in the affidavit. “In May and June, 1982, the Iranians discovered a gap in the Iraqi defenses along the Iran-Iraq border between Baghdad to the north and Basra to the south. Iran positioned a massive invasion force directly across from the gap in the Iraqi defenses. An Iranian breakthrough at the spot would have cut off Baghdad from Basra and would have resulted in Iraq’s defeat.
“United States Intelligence, including satellite imagery, had detected both the gap in the Iraqi defenses and the Iranian massing of troops across from the gap. At the time, the United States was officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq conflict. President Reagan was forced to choose between (a) maintaining strict neutrality and allowing Iran to defeat Iraq, or (b) intervening and providing assistance to Iraq.”
Reagan, writes Teicher, decided to intervene secretly against Iran.
This, also from the Teicher affidavit:
“In June, 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran. President Reagan decided that the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. President Reagan formalized this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive (“NSDD”) to this effect in June, 1982. I have personal knowledge of this NSDD because I co-authored the NSDD with another NSC Staff Member, Geoff Kemp. The NSDD, including even its identifying number, is classified.”.....

..... “Similar strategic operational military advice was passed to Saddam Hussein through various meetings with European and Middle Eastern heads of state. I authored Bush’s talking points for the 1986 meeting with Mubarak and personally attended numerous meetings with European and Middle East heads of state where the strategic operational advice was communicated.”
Critical to Iraqi success was finding a way to overcome Iran’s human wave attacks which persisted throughout the war, although Teicher’s affidavit gives no indication that the United States condoned the use of chemical weapons, which were used against those human-wave attacks. Nevertheless, the U.S. government certainly was aware of how important it was to Iraq to stop those human wave attacks. U.S. intelligence officers never opposed such action because they considered Iraq to be struggling for its survival and feared that Iran would overrun the crucial oil-producing Persian Gulf states, the Times reported.

CIA IMPLICATED
In his affidavit, Teicher said he “personally attended meetings in which CIA Director Casey or CIA Deputy Director [Robert] Gates noted the need for Iraq to have certain weapons such as cluster bombs and anti-armor penetrators in order to stave off the Iranian attacks....

.....Teicher’s comments about an Iraqi tilt are borne out in the declassified State Department documents related to Rumsfeld’s 1983 Baghdad trip, although not in such detail. .......

The US response was apparently to aid Saddam secretly in the war that he had started against Iran, and then later, to sell US made antitank missiles from Israeli stockpiles, and use the money to illegally aid the contra rebels in Nicaragua, also in secrecy, and in violation of a policy not to aid nations identified as supporting terrorism.

The US president and his cabinet authorized the sale to Iraq of the helicopter used to gas the Kurds, and samples with potential from BIO WMD from the stocks at the CDC in Atlanta:

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200208310...=1&cpe=1&cpm=1

Rumsfeld key player
in Iraq policy shift

Cables, Natl. Security Council affidavit
reveal depth of U.S. assistance
to Saddam despite chemical arsenal

By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS

Aug. 18 [2002]— State Department cables and court records reveal a wealth of information on how U.S. foreign policy shifted in the 1980s to help Iraq. Virtually all of the information is in the words of key participants, including Donald Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense.....

.....The talking points memo also noted that it was “possible” that Iraq would suggest to Rumsfeld that “the U.S. could lift restrictions on some military items Iraq wishes to purchase from third parties.”
Other issues in the Middle East, ostensibly the main reason for Rumsfeld’s trip, were also laid out in the memo, but were viewed as secondary. In one discussion, however, Rumsfeld was asked to seek Saddam’s personal advice on dealing with Syria.

ISRAELI OFFER OF AID TO IRAQ
In his affidavit, Teicher noted that Rumsfeld was carrying a letter offering help from then-Israeli Foreign Minister Itzhak Shamir. “Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked Rumsfeld if the United States would deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq. The United States agreed. ...

.....Rumsfeld did note that United States “efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf and human rights.”
In fact, the United States knew that Iraq has used poison gas against Iranian troops a few months before and that Iraq was building its own chemical weapons infrastructure. Iraq would use chemical weapons against Iran and later against the Kurds, for the remainder of the Iran-Iraq war, the most notorious being the bombing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.

HUMAN WAVE ATTACKS
Repeatedly, Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. interests coincided with Iraq’s in the war.

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld said the United States opposed an Iranian victory and noted that “we [are] improving our contingency planning with Gulf states as to our goal of keeping the Straits [of Hormuz] open.” If Aziz responded regarding American concerns regarding Iraqi chemical weapons development, it was not noted.
Aziz and Rumsfeld did discuss the fearsome nature of Iran’s human wave attacks. Rumsfeld wrote that Aziz told him the Iranian forces “essentially mount human-wave assaults with the so-called Khomeini Guards (young people with a piece of paper in their pockets that is their ticket to Paradise). Heaving themselves forward until they break and run as a result of the return fire. Tariq [Aziz] said he felt the war was over in the strategic sense in that Iraq will not lose.”
Repeatedly, Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. interests coincided with Iraq’s in the war. He wrote in his own note to Shultz, “I said I thought we had areas of common interest, particularly the security and stability in the Gulf, which had been jeopardized as a result of the Iranian revolution. I added that the U.S. had no interest in an Iranian victory; to the contrary. We would not want Iran’s influence expanded at the expense of Iraq. As with all sovereign nations, we respect Iraq’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

GREETINGS FROM SADDAM
from the Teicher affidavit When Rumsfeld met with Saddam the following morning, accompanied by State Department Arab experts Robert Pelletreau and William Eagleton, Iraqi television videotaped the opening greetings and delivery of President Reagan’s letter to the Iraqi leader. Saddam was dressed in military uniform, a pistol on his hip. Rumsfeld conveyed his pleasure at being in Baghdad.
While there was no discussion of U.S. military help to Iraq, Rumsfeld reiterated to Saddam the United States’ intention of eliminating arms deliveries to Iran, stating “The U.S. and Iraq shared interests in preventing Iranian and Syrian expansion.” He said the U.S. was urging other states to curtail arms sales to Iran and believed it had successfully closed off U.S.-controlled exports by third countries to Iran.
For Saddam, the tenor and tone of Rumsfeld’s visit was a major positive.
“Saddam Hussein showed obvious pleasure with the President’s letter and Rumsfeld’s visit and in remarks,” Teicher’s affidavit says. ”[It] removed whatever obstacles remained in the way of resuming diplomatic relations but did not take the decision to do so.”

Quote:

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/a...&storyID=14918

US supplied germs to Iraq in ’80s
Matt Kelley The Associated Press (10-01-02)

WASHINGTON – Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research.

The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus.

The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate.

The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department.

“I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs,” said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector.

“But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time.”

The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month.

Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.

“Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?” Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers.

“I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it,” Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers.

Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out of all three.

The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which U.N. inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples for Iraq's biological weapons program.

The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid — used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin — directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.

Quote:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...ly17HU:b35302:
HOW SADDAM HAPPENED -- (Senate - September 20, 2002)

......It also comes as the administration, which has angered allies by rejecting a series of multilateral agreements, is appealing to the international community to work with it in forging a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which has been ratified by the United States and 143 other countries, bans the development, stockpiling and production of germ warfare agents, but has no enforcement mechanism. Negotiations on legally binding measures to enforce compliance have been underway in Geneva for seven years.

The administration stunned its allies last December by proposing to end the negotiators' mandate, saying that while the treaty needed strengthening, the enforcement protocol under discussion would not deter enemy nations from acquiring or developing biological weapons if they were determined to do so. Negotiators suspended the discussions, saying they would meet again in November when U.S. officials said they would return with creative solutions to address the impasse.

Instead, U.S. envoys are now telling allies that the administration's position is so different from the views of the leading supporters of the enforcement protocol that a meeting would dissolve into public squabbling and should be avoided, administration officials said. Better, they said, to halt discussions altogether.

``It's based on an incorrect approach. Our concern is that it would be fundamentally ineffective,'' a State Department official said. Another administration official said the ``best and least contentious'' approach would be to hold a very brief meeting in November--or even no meeting at all--and talk again when the next review is scheduled four years from now.

......`It sounds to me as though they've thrown the baby out with the bath water,'' said Smithson, an analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Center. ``The contradiction between the rhetoric and what the administration is actually doing--the gulf is huge. Not a day goes by when they don't mention the Iraq threat.''

The Stimson Center is releasing a report today that criticizes the U.S. approach to the convention. Drawn from a review by 10 pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology experts, the document argues that bioweapons inspections can be effective with the right amount of time and the right science and urges the administration to develop stronger measures.

``To argue that this wouldn't be a useful remedy would just be a mistake. I think it's because they're looking through the wrong end of the telescope,'' said Matthew Meselson, a Harvard biologist who helped draft a treaty to criminalize biological weapons violations. ``We're denying ourselves useful tools.''....

....Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said the existence of Iraq's bioweapons project is ``beyond dispute.'' The U.S. government also believes Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Libya and Syria are developing such weapons, he said.

Meselson concurred with the administration's position that a limited enforcement provision for the bioweapons treaty could not provide confidence that countries are staying clean. But he said that a pact establishing standards and verification measures would deter some countries while also helping to build norms of international behavior.

Bolton, on the other hand, told delegates to last year's review conference that ``the time for `better-than-nothing' protocols is over. We will continue to reject flawed texts like the BWC draft protocol, recommended to us simply because they are the product of lengthy negotiations or arbitrary deadlines, if such texts are not in the best interests of the United States.''

With only hours to go at the meeting, Bolton stopped U.S. participation in the final negotiations. ....

....In Bolton's view, each country should develop criminal laws against germ warfare activities, develop export controls for dangerous pathogens, establish codes of conduct for scientists and install strict biosafety procedures. The administration has proposed that governments resolve disputes over biowarfare violations among themselves, perhaps through voluntary inspections or by referral to the United Nations secretary general.
--

Partial Transcript From Senate Armed Services Committee, September 19, 2002

LEVIN. Senator Byrd?

BYRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings.

Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

RUMSFELD. Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no knowledge of United States companies or government being involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

BYRD. Mr. Secretary, let me read to you from the September 23, 2002, Newsweek story. I read this, I read excerpts, because my time is limited.

Quote:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...ly17HU:e55302:

[From Newsweek, Sept. 23, 2002]

How Saddam Happened
(By Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas)

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed ``vigorous and confident,'' according to a new declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld ``conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad,'' wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions......

.......A TASTE FOR NASTY WEAPONS

American officials have known that Saddam was a psychopath ever since he became the country's de facto ruler in the early 1970s. One of Saddam's early acts after he took the title of president in 1979 was to videotape a session of his party's congress, during which he personally ordered several members executed on the spot. The message, carefully conveyed to the Arab press, was not that these men were executed for plotting against Saddam, but rather for thinking about plotting against him. From the beginning, U.S. officials worried about Saddam's taste for nasty weaponry; indeed, at their meeting in 1983, Rumsfeld warned that Saddam's use of chemical weapons might ``inhibit'' American assistance. But top officials in the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a useful surrogate. By going to war with Iran, he could bleed the radical mullahs who had seized control of Iran from the pro-American shah. Some Reagan officials even saw Saddam as another Anwar Sadat, capable of making Iran into a modern secular state, just as Sadat had tried to lift up Egypt before his assassination in 1981.

But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's ``human wave attacks'' threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand. After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of ``dual use'' equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for ``video surveillance applications''; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ``bacteria/fungi/protozoa'' to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

``WHO IS GOING TO SAY ANYTHING?''

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. ``Who is going to say anything?'' he asks. ``The international community? F--k them!''

......The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy

[Page: S8993] GPO's PDF

electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening ``to burn Israel to the ground.'' At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

AMBIVALENT ABOUT SADDAM'S FATE

Some American diplomats suggest that Saddam might have gotten away with invading Kuwait if he had not been quite so greedy. ``If he had pulled back to the Mutla Ridge [overlooking Kuwait City], he'd still be there today,'' one ex-ambassador told Newsweek......

.......The Bush administration played down Saddam's darkness after the gulf war. Pentagon bureaucrats compiled dossiers to support a war-crimes prosecution of Saddam, especially for his sordid treatment of POWs. They documented police stations and ``sports facilities'' where Saddam's henchmen used acid baths and electric drills on their victims. One document suggested that torture should be ``artistic.'' But top Defense Department officials stamped the report secret. One Bush administration official subsequently told The Washington Post, ``Some people were concerned that if we released it during the [1992 presidential] campaign, people would say, `Why don't you bring this guy to justice?' '' (Defense Department aides say politics played no part in the report.) .....

..... Now can this possibly be true? We already knew that Saddam was dangerous man at the time. I realize that you were not in public office at the time, but you were dispatched to Iraq by President Reagan to talk about the need to improve relations between Iraq and the U.S.

Let me ask you again: To your knowledge did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

The Washington Post reported this morning that the United is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. I'll have a question on that later.

Let me ask you again: Did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?

RUMSFELD. I have not read the article. As you suggest, I was, for a period in late `83 and early `84, asked by President Reagan to serve as Middle East envoy after the Marines--241 Marines were killed in Beirut.

As part of my responsibilities I did visit Baghdad. I did meet with Mr. Tariq Aziz. And I did meet with Saddam Hussein and spent some time visiting with them about the war they were engaged in with Iran.

At the time our concern, of course, was Syria and Syria's role in Lebanon and Lebanon's role in the Middle East and the terrorist acts that were taking place.

As a private citizen I was assisting only for a period of months. I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it.

BYRD. You doubt what?

RUMSFELD. The questions you posed as to whether the United States of America assisted Iraq with the elements that you listed in your reading of Newsweek and that we could conceivably now be reaping what we've sown.

I think--I doubt both.

BYRD. Are you surprised that this is what I've said? Are you surprised at this story in Newsweek?

RUMSFELD. I guess I'm at an age and circumstance in life where I'm no longer surprised about what I hear in the newspapers.

BYRD. That's not the question. I'm of that age, too. Somewhat older than you, but how about that story I've read?

RUMSFELD. I see stories all the time that are flat wrong. I just don't know. All I can say .....

BYRD. How about this story? This story? How about this story, specifically?

RUMSFELD. As I say, I have not read it, I listened carefully to what you said and I doubt it.

BYRD. All right.

Now the Washington Post reported this morning that the United States is stepping away from efforts to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention. Are we not sending exactly the wrong signal to the world, at exactly the wrong time?

BYRD. Doesn't this damage our credibility in the international community at the very time that we are seeking their support to neutralize the threat of Iraq's biological weapons program? If we supplied, as the Newsweek article said, if we supplied the building blocks for germ and chemical warfare to this madman in the first place, this psychopath, how do we look to the world to be backing away from this effort to control it at this point?

RUMSFELD. Senator, I think it would be a shame to leave this committee and the people listening with the impression that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe that's the case.

BYRD. Well, are you saying that the Newsweek article is inaccurate?

RUMSFELD. I'm saying precisely what I said, that I didn't read the Newsweek article, but that I doubt its accurate.

BYRD. I'll be glad to send you up a copy.

RUMSFELD. But that I was not in government at that time, except as a special envoy for a period of months. So one ought not to rely on me as the best source as to what happened in that mid-'80s period that you were describing.

I will say one other thing. On two occasions I believe when you read that article, you mentioned the IAEC, which as I recall is the International Atomic Energy Commission, and mentioned that if some of the things that you were talking about were provided to them, which I found quite confusing to be honest.

With respect to the Biological Weapons Convention, I was not aware that the United States government had taken a position with respect to it. It's not surprising because it's a matter for the Department of State, not the Department of Defense.

If in fact they have indicated, as The Washington Post reports, that they are not going to move forward with a--I believe it's an enforcement regime, it's not my place to discuss the administration's position when I don't know what it is.

But I can tell you, from a personal standpoint, my recollection is that the biological convention never, never was anticipated that there would even be thought of to have an enforcement regime. And that an enforcement regime on something like that, where there are a lot of countries involved who are on the terrorist list who were participants in that convention, that the United States has, over a period of administrations, believed that it would not be a good idea, because the United States would be a net loser from an enforcement regime.

But that is not the administration's position. I just don't know what the administration's position is......

.......BYRD. I've never--I've been in this Congress 50 years. I've never objected to another senator having a few additional minutes.

Now Mr. Chairman, I think that the secretary should have a copy of this report, this story that--from Newsweek that I've been querying him about. I think he has a right to look at that.

LEVIN. Could somebody take that out to the secretary?

Byrd. Now, while that's being given to the secretary, Mr. Secretary, I think we're put into an extremely bad position before the world today if we're going to walk away from an international effort to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention against germ warfare, advising its allies that the U.S. wants to delay further discussions until 2006., Especially in the light of the Newsweek story; I think we bear some responsibility.

INHOFE. Mr. Chairman I ask for a point of order.

LEVIN. Can we just have this be the last question, if you would just go along with us please, Senator Inhofe?

INHOFE. I'll only say though, in all respect to the senator from West Virginia, we have a number of senators here. We have a limited time of six minutes each, and we're entitled to have our six minutes. That should be a short question if it's the last question.

LEVIN. If we could just make that the last question and answer, I would appreciate it. The chair would appreciate the cooperation of all senators.

RUMSFELD. I'll do my best.

Senator, I just in glancing at this, and I hesitate to do this because I have not read it carefully.

But it says here that, ``According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained by Newsweek, the shopping list included.'' It did not say that there were deliveries of these things. It said that Iran--Iraq asked for these things. It talks about a shopping list.

Second, in listing these things, it says that they wanted television cameras for video surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, the IAEC--and that may very well be the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, which would be--mean that my earlier comment would not be correct, because I thought it was the International Atomic Energy Commission. But this seems to indicate it's the Iraq Commerce Commission.

BYRD. Mr. Chairman, may I say to my friend from Oklahoma, I'm amazed that he himself wouldn't yield me time for this important question. I would do the same for him.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask .....

(CLELAND). I yield my five minutes, Senator.

BYRD. I thank the distinguished senator.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask the secretary--and I don't just like to ask him--I ask him to review Pentagon records to see if the Newsweek article is true or not. Will the secretary do that?

RUMSFELD. It appears that they're Department of Commerce records, as opposed to Pentagon. But I can certainly ask that the....

Quote:

http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html

U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990

Prepared by Nathaniel Hurd.
15 July 2000 (updated 12 December 2001 by Nathaniel Hurd and Glen Rangwala).
Before 1980

* Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War Iraq severed diplomatic relations with the U.S. In late 1979 the State Department (SD) put Iraq on its list of States sponsoring groups categorized by the SD as "terrorist."[1]

1980

* The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) asserted in a report that Iraq has been ‘actively acquiring’ Chemical Weapons [CW] capacities since the mid-1970s.[2]

1982

* Despite intelligence reports that Iraq still sponsored groups on the SD's terrorist list, and "apparently without consulting Congress", the Reagan Administration removed Iraq from the State terrorism sponsorship list in 1982.[3] The removal made Iraq eligible for U.S. dual-use and military technology.[4]

1983

* A SD report concluded that Iraq continued to support groups on the SD’s terrorist list.[5]
* Iraq reportedly began using chemical weapons (CW) against Iranian troops in 1982, and significantly increased CW use in 1983. Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, said that reports of Iraq using CWs on Iranian military personnel "drifted in" at the year’s end.[6] A declassified CIA report, probably written in late 1987, notes Iraq's use of mustard gas in August 1983, giving further credence to the suggestion that the SD and/or National Security Council (NSC) was well aware of Iraq's use of CW at this time.[7]
* Analysts recognized that "civilian" helicopters can be weaponized in a matter of hours and selling a civilian kit can be a way of giving military aid under the guise of civilian assistance.[8] Shortly after removing Iraq from the terrorism sponsorship list, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters.[9] Later, and despite some objections from the National Security Council (NSC), the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters,[10] officially for crop spraying. See "1988" for note on Iraq using U.S. Helicopters to spray Kurds with chemical weapons.
* Later in the year the Reagan Administration secretly began to allow Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt to transfer to Iraq U.S. howitzers, helicopters, bombs and other weapons.[11] Reagan personally asked Italy’s Prime Minister Guilio Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.[12]

1984
......* According to the Washington Post, the CIA began in 1984 secretly to give Iraq intelligence that Iraq uses to "calibrate" its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. In August, the CIA establishes a direct Washington-Baghdad intelligence link, and for 18 months, starting in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with "data from sensitive U.S. satellite reconnaissance photography...to assist Iraqi bombing raids." The Post’s source said that this data was essential to Iraq’s war effort.[17]
* The United States re-established full diplomatic ties with Iraq on 26 November,[18] just over a year after Iraq’s first well-publicized CW use and only 8 months after the UN and U.S. reported that Iraq used CWs on Iranian troops.

1985

* In 1985 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to put Iraq back on the State terrorism sponsorship list.[19] After the bill’s passage, Shultz wrote to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Howard Berman, cited the U.S.’ "diplomatic dialogue on this and other sensitive issues, " claimed that "Iraq has effectively distanced itself from international terrorism," and stated that if the U.S. found that Iraq supports groups practicing terrorism "we would promptly return Iraq to the list."[20] Rep. Berman dropped the bill and explicitly cited Shultz’s assurances.[21]
* Iraq’s Saad 16 General Establishment’s director wrote a letter to the Commerce Department (CD) detailing the activities in Saad’s 70 laboratories. These activities had the trademarks of ballistic missile development.[22]...

...1988

* The CD approved exports in January and February to Iraq’s SCUD missile program’s procurement agency. These exports allowed Iraq to extend SCUD range far enough to hit allied soldiers in Saudi Arabia and Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv and Haifa.[26]
* On 23 March, London’s Financial Times and several other news organizations reported from Halabja, located in Iraqi Kurdistan, that several days prior Iraq used CWs on Halabja’s Kurds.[27]
* In May, two months after the Halabja assault, Peter Burleigh, Assistant Secretary of State in charge of northern Gulf affairs, encouraged U.S.-Iraqi corporate cooperation at a symposium hosted by the U.S.-Iraq Business Forum. The U.S.-Iraq Business Forum had strong (albeit unofficial) ties to the Iraqi government.[28]
* The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a team to Turkey to speak to Iraqi Kurdish refugees and assess reports that Iraq "was using chemical weapons on its Kurdish population."[29] This report reaffirmed that between 1984 and 1988 "Iraq repeatedly and effectively used poison gas on Iran," the UN missions’ findings, and the chemical attack on Halabja that left an estimated 4,000 people dead.[30]
* Following the Halabja attack and Iraq’s August CW offensive against Iraqi Kurds, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed on 8 September the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988" the day after it is introduced.[31] The act cuts off from Iraq U.S. loans, military and non-military assistance, credits, credit guarantees, items subject to export controls, and U.S. imports of Iraqi oil.[32]
* Immediately after the bill’s passage the Reagan Administration announced its opposition to the bill,[33] and SD spokesman Charles Redman called the bill "premature".[34] The Administration works with House opponents to a House companion bill, and after numerous legislation compromises and end-of-session haggling, the Senate bill died "on the last day of the legislative session".[35]
* According to a 15 September news report, Reagan Administration officials stated that the U.S. intercepted Iraqi military communications marking Iraq’s CW attacks on Kurds.[36]
* U.S. intelligence reported in 1991 that the U.S. helicopters sold to Iraq in 1983 were used in 1988 to spray Kurds with chemicals.[37]
* "Reagan administration records show that between September and December 1988, 65 licenses were granted for dual-use technology exports. This averages out as an annual rate of 260 licenses, more than double the rate for January through August 1988."[38]
* A general note about the Security Council's reaction to Iraq's CW use. Between 1984 and the implementation of the ceasefire on 20 August 1988 the UN Security Council passed six resolutions directly or indirectly related to the "situation between Iran and Iraq." In 1984, Security Council Resolution (SCR) 552 "condemns [Iran's] recent attack on commercial ship en route to and from ports of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia"[39] but it did not pass a resolution on the Iran-Iraq War generally or the UN expert mission's chemical weapons March findings specifically. During all of 1985 the Security Council did not pass a resolution on the "situation between Iran and Iraq" or Iraq's chemical weapons use therein. Although the UN's expert mission concluded in March 1986 that Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian troops,[40] SCR 582 (1986) symmetrically noted "that both the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq are parties to the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous and Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare signed at Geneva on 7 June 1925"[41] and "deplores...in particular the use of chemical weapons contrary to obligations under the 1925 Protocol".[42] Resolution 588 (1986) did not mention chemical weapons.[43] In 20 July 1987, SCR 598 again deplored "in particular the use chemical weapons contrary to obligations of the 1925 Protocol",[44] but does not elaborate. After considering the expert mission's 25 April 1988 report, the Security Council in Resolution 612 is "dismayed" by chemical weapons' continued use and "more intensive scale".[45] Furthermore, the Council "affirms the necessity that" both parties observe the 1925 Geneva Protocol, "condemns vigorously the continued use of chemical weapons" and "expects both sides to refrain from the future use of chemical weapons".[46] SCR 619 (1988) focused on implementing the United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group and did not mention chemical weapons.[47] After the ceasefire, the Security Council considered the reports of the expert missions from 20-25 July and 2-19 August 1988 and stated in SCR 620 that it is "deeply dismayed" by the "continued use of chemical weapons" and that "such use against Iranians has become more intense and frequent".[48] Despite identifying Iranians as more frequent chemical weapons targets, the Security Council did not condemn Iraq. Rather, the Security Council "condemns resolutely the use of chemical weapons in the conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq"[49]. All of the subsequent four resolutions, passed between 1989-1990 and relevant to "the situation between Iran and Iraq," pertained to the United Nations Iran-Iraq Military Observer Group and as such omitted any reference to chemical weapons use.[50]

The Security Council could only condemn Iraq by name for using chemical weapons through non-binding Presidential statements, over which permanent members of the Security Council do not have an individual veto. On 21 March 1986, the Security Council President, making a "declaration" and "speaking on behalf of the Security Council," stated that the Council members are "profoundly concerned by the unanimous conclusion of the specialists that chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian troops...[and] the members of the Council strongly condemn this continued use of chemical weapons in clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 which prohibits the use in war of chemical weapons".[51] The US voted against the issuance of this statement, and the UK, Australia, France and Denmark abstained. However, the concurring votes of the other ten members of the Security Council ensured that this statement constituted the first criticism of Iraq by the Security Council. A similar Presidential statement was made on 14 May 1987, which noted that the Council was "deeply dismayed" about the CW use against Iranian forces and civilians.

1989

* In March, CIA director William Webster testified before Congress that Iraq was the largest CW producer in the world.[52]
* James Baker received an SD memo stating that Iraq was diligently developing chemical, biological, and new missiles, and that Baker was to "express our interest in broadening U.S.-Iraqi ties" to Iraqi Under-Secretary Hamdoon.[53]
* Although the CIA and the Bush Administration knew that Iraq’s Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI) "controlled entities were involved in Iraq's clandestine nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and missile programs ... the Bush administration [approved] dozens of export licenses that [allowed] United States and foreign firms to ship sophisticated U.S. dual-use equipment to MIMI-controlled weapons factories".[54]....

1990

* From July 18 to 1 August (Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August) the Bush Administration approved $4.8 million in advanced technology product sales to Iraq. End-buyers included MIMI and Saad 16. Mimi was identified in 1988 as a facility for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. In 1989 Saad was linked to CW and NW development.[57]
* The Bush Administration approved $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission devices the day before Iraq invades Kuwait.[58]

The US, even as it was supplying Saddam with satellite intelligence and analysis that it knew would enable his troops to repel Iranian human wave attacks via the use of banned chemical weapons, reestablished full diplomatic relations with Iraq. The present Bush administration, even as it was planning a case for war against Iraq in Dec., 2001, was abruptly pulling out of negotiations to extend the 1972 international treaty to prohibit the use of these weapons.

So, what should happen to Saddam's co-conspirators in his crimes against humanity? At the least, shouldn't the assets of the estate of president Reagan and the holdings of president Bush '41 be seized, trials held in the US or in Iraq, Iran, or at the Hague, and if these allegations are found to be accurate, shouldn't these assets be distributed among the survivors of those Iranians killed as a result of US intervention, in the Iran/Iraq war, and in the Kurdish villages gassed by the US made helicopters ?

How about you.....are you responsible, at all....if you voted for Reagan or for the Bushes, of for representatives in congress who supported their policies?