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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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To: Rock_nj who wrote (367077)3/6/2003 10:42:57 AM
From: Bill  Read Replies (1) of 769667
 
Unfortunately, the truth is usually a foreign concept to you.

The U.S. had an official policy of "strict neutrality" during the Iran/Iraq war. We didn't publicly ally with Saddam because it was well known in the international community that he was a murderous thug. But Iran was our sworn enemy and it was in our interests to make sure Iraq didn't lose, or if they did, make sure it took a very long long long time. Notwithstanding this incentive, we never established a close relationship to Saddam in spite of his overtures to us.

With that as a backdrop, in 1985, our CIA secretly traded a shipment of ground weapons and munitions to Iraq in exchange for a valuable Iraqi intelligence report on Iran in 1985. From official unclassified documents I've read, this happened just once. We also shipped arms to Iran as part of the Iran/Contra affair so that the Iranians couls assist in the release of US hostages in Syria.

The chemicals that were sent to Iraq in the mid-1980s were sold to Iraq by private U.S. and European companies in their raw form. They were dual use chemicals and agents that Iraq eventually processed and packaged into weapons, using European technology.

None of this absolves the U.S. of the accusation that we "backed" Saddam, but it puts the rationale and strength of that so-called backing in perspective. And of course, none of it is relevant to today's crisis.
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