To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.
The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.
Saddam was largely a creation of US realpolitik. When he "Gassed His Own People", he was most likely using US sattelite targetting data aimed at Iran when his US-provided chemical weapons missed their mark, or the wind changed and several thousand Kurds (who incidentally neither considered themselves, nor were they considered by Saddam as "his people"), died. He did target Kurds who were believed to be collaborating with Iran in the war and possibly after the war in reprisal for their disloyalty. At the time, the US was happy with their boy, though.
According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.
At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world.
Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein.
As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would have been "impossible to take even the modest steps we were contemplating" to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq -- along with Syria, Libya and South Yemen -- was one of four original countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.
Emphasis added.
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=7673&fcategory_desc=In%20Case%20You%20Forgot%20 [/size]]
Source of the quotes and good synthesis of the available information.
What bugs me is that Saddam will have been tortured, brainwashed, threatened or otherwise incapacitated so that his testimony will not reveal US complicity in his crimes.
To be clear, it's only the part after "so that" that bugs me. There is no punishment sufficient for his crimes.
Point is, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney are lying when they try to make their war seem noble in any way. The DU ravaged babies, the napalm or chemical weapon victims of Fallujah and who knows how many other places, the torture victims from Abu Grahib and others places in the US Gulags, the civilians massacred in "shock and awe", the sanction-related dead, those massacred because Bush I didn't have what it took to kill or capture the monster when there was no better time. Who asked them whether this latest atrocity was "justified"?
It makes me sick that there are still people dumb and/or inhumane enough to justify this obscenity.
This trial will barely scratch the surface...
