Rumsfeld 'offered help to Saddam'
Declassified papers leave the White House hawk
exposed over his role during the Iran-Iraq war
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday December 31, 2002
The Guardian
The Reagan administration and its special Middle East envoy,
Donald Rumsfeld, did little to stop Iraq developing weapons of
mass destruction in the 1980s, even though they knew Saddam
Hussein was using chemical weapons "almost daily" against
Iran, it was reported yesterday.
US support for Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war as a bulwark
against Shi'ite militancy has been well known for some time, but
using declassified government documents, the Washington Post
provided new details yesterday about Mr Rumsfeld's role, and
about the extent of the Reagan administration's knowledge of
the use of chemical weapons.
The details will embarrass Mr Rumsfeld, who as defence
secretary in the Bush administration is one of the leading hawks
on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such
weapons.
The US provided less conventional military equipment than
British or German companies but it did allow the export of
biological agents, including anthrax; vital ingredients for
chemical weapons; and cluster bombs sold by a CIA front
organisation in Chile, the report says.
Intelligence on Iranian troop movements was provided, despite
detailed knowledge of Iraq's use of nerve gas.
Rick Francona, an ex-army intelligence lieutenant-colonel who
served in the US embassy in Baghdad in 1987 and 1988, told
the Guardian: "We believed the Iraqis were using mustard gas
all through the war, but that was not as sinister as nerve gas.
"They started using tabun [a nerve gas] as early as '83 or '84,
but in a very limited way. They were probably figuring out how to
use it. And in '88, they developed sarin."
On November 1 1983, the secretary of state, George Shultz,
was passed intelligence reports of "almost daily use of CW
[chemical weapons]" by Iraq.
However, 25 days later, Ronald Reagan signed a secret order
instructing the administration to do "whatever was necessary
and legal" to prevent Iraq losing the war.
In December Mr Rumsfeld, hired by President Reagan to serve
as a Middle East troubleshooter, met Saddam Hussein in
Baghdad and passed on the US willingness to help his regime
and restore full diplomatic relations.
Mr Rumsfeld has said that he "cautioned" the Iraqi leader
against using banned weapons. But there was no mention of
such a warning in state department notes of the meeting.
Howard Teicher, an Iraq specialist in the Reagan White House,
testified in a 1995 affidavit that the then CIA director, William
Casey, used a Chilean firm, Cardoen, to send cluster bombs to
use against Iran's "human wave" attacks.
A 1994 congressional inquiry also found that dozens of
biological agents, including various strains of anthrax, had been
shipped to Iraq by US companies, under licence from the
commerce department.
Furthermore, in 1988, the Dow Chemical company sold
$1.5m-worth (£930,000) of pesticides to Iraq despite suspicions
they would be used for chemical warfare.
The only occasion that Iraq's use of banned weapons seems to
have worried the Reagan administration came in 1988, after Lt
Col Francona toured the battlefield on the al-Faw peninsula in
southern Iraq and reported signs of sarin gas.
"When I was walking around I saw atropine injectors lying
around. We saw decontamination fluid on vehicles, there were
no insects," said Mr Francona, who has written a book on
shifting US policy to Iraq titled Ally to Adversary. "There was a
very quick response from Washington saying, 'Let's stop our
cooperation' but it didn't last long - just weeks."
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