No more embarrassing than the support of Stalin during World War II:
U.S. Tried to Enlist Saddam as an Ally in the 1980s
BY J. SCOTT ORR
c.2003 Newhouse News Service
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WASHINGTON -- Since his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been vilified by no fewer than three U.S. presidents as the scourge of the Middle East and a threat to global stability.
But even as Saddam used illegal chemical weapons to slaughter tens of thousands of Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the United States was anxious to befriend the Iraqi dictator.
During the Reagan administration, the U.S. government allowed the sale of weapons components to Iraq, gave tacit approval to his regime's war with Iran, removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and renewed diplomatic relations with Baghdad.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, then a special envoy from the Reagan White House, met twice with Saddam in Baghdad seeking closer ties. All the while, Washington was well aware of Saddam's brutal tactics, declassified government documents show, including his fondness for the use of chemical munitions and his hunger for more powerful weapons.
"We're dealing with a monster we helped to create," said Thomas Mockaitis, professor of history at DePaul University. "We looked the other way when he used chemical weapons against the Iranians. We sowed the dragon's teeth and now we're reaping the bitter consequences."
The Reagan administration's policy toward Iraq appears to have been based on an old Arabic proverb: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Fearing the spread of the Islamic fundamentalist revolution that gripped Iran in 1979, the Reagan administration saw Saddam as a potential ally despite his already well-established reputation for brutality and ruthlessness. He was, Washington believed at the time, not beyond rehabilitation.
"They forgot that the enemy of my enemy might be my enemy, too," said Bruce Jentleson, director of Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and author of "With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, Saddam 1982-1990."
"They tilted too far toward Baghdad, so instead of just trying to ensure Iran wouldn't conquer Iraq, they gave too much to Saddam. ... The conventional wisdom in Washington was that Iran was a worse enemy and that Saddam really was moderating and could be made to be a positive force in the Arab world," Jentleson said.
During 1983 and 1984, the United States made an intense effort to build up relations with Saddam, including a series of top-level meetings in Baghdad and elsewhere, according to declassified government documents compiled by the National Security Archive, a public affairs research group at George Washington University.
Even as its intelligence sources were expressing concern about Saddam's wartime tactics, the U.S. government allowed U.S. companies to continue to deal with Baghdad.
"We ... started selling them lots of dual-use technology that had the capability of contributing to the development of offensive weapons of mass destruction," Jentleson said. "We never sold them weapons, just technologies that had dual uses."
Rumsfeld, asked at a February news conference about his role as a Reagan envoy to Baghdad, said he "certainly had nothing to do with providing any chemicals or biologicals or any kind of weapons to Iraq at all."
He said he didn't know whether U.S. companies were allowed to sell weapons materials to Saddam after his role as special envoy ended. "I don't have visibility into it because I was, at the time, living in Chicago and doing something entirely different," he said.
Saddam officially took control of Iraq in 1979, the year Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the revolution in neighboring Iran against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, then the most valued U.S. ally in the region. The fall of the shah was followed by the holding of U.S. hostages by revolutionary forces in Tehran, one of the darkest episodes in recent U.S. history.
With the shah in exile, the United States also worried about the potential for increased Soviet influence in the region. Continued access to Iraqi oil was another concern; Washington backed a plan for a new pipeline that would allow oil to flow through Jordan, thus avoiding the need for Persian Gulf ports.
So there was no protest from Washington when Saddam, as one of his first major acts as president, ordered the 1980 invasion of Iran in a dispute over national borders and oil rights.
At the time, the United States and Iraq had no formal diplomatic ties. Iraq had ended relations in protest of U.S. support for Israel during the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
As the Iran-Iraq War raged, the United States warmed up to Saddam, hoping his country would become a stable force in the region. In late 1983, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and gave Baghdad $2 billion worth of credits to buy U.S. grain.
A Nov. 1, 1983, memo to Secretary of State George Shultz from the State Department's Bureau of Political and Military Affairs confirmed that the United States was aware of Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and it suggested quick diplomatic action.
"It is important ... that we approach Iraq very soon in order to maintain the credibility of U.S. policy on chemical weapons as well as to reduce or halt what now appears to be Iraq's almost daily use of chemical weapons," the memo said.
The following month, Rumsfeld went to Baghdad to meet with Saddam and to present him with a friendly greeting from Reagan. Saddam and his aide, Tariq Aziz, were dressed in military uniforms and wore sidearms during the 90-minute session, according to a declassified State Department cable.
"Saddam Hussein showed obvious pleasure with president's letter and Rumsfeld's visit and in his remarks removed whatever obstacles remained in the way of resuming diplomatic relations," the cable said. Rumsfeld never mentioned chemical weapons during the meeting, according to a State Department summary.
In early 1984, the State Department issued a statement condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, prompting anger from Baghdad. Still, the United States continued to pursue closer ties with Saddam's regime. That March, Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad for a second meeting with the Iraqi president.
A month later, James Placke, a deputy assistant secretary of state, met with Iraqi diplomat Nizar Hamdoon to discuss a pending U.N. Security Council resolution on the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War.
According to a State Department cable, Placke said the United States would go along with an Iraqi request for a U.N. statement that did not mention Iraq by name, rather than a Security Council resolution.
Placke also asked Iraq not to go to U.S. companies to try to purchase chemicals that could be used for weapons. By cooperating, Iraq would help avoid "situations that would lead to difficult and possibly embarrassing situations," Placke said. The memo also said the United States did not want the issue of chemical weapons "to dominate our bilateral relationship."
In a September 1984 brief, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency detailed Saddam's tactics of "executing, jailing and deporting" Shiite Muslims suspected of being members of the Dawa Party in southern Iraq.
The same report said an end to the fighting between Iran and Iraq would not end Saddam's quest for additional military might. "This will leave Iraq with a large seasoned military force, one that will likely continue to develop its formidable conventional and chemical capability and probably pursue nuclear weapons," it said.
One month later, the United States and Iraq opened diplomatic relations for the first time since 1967. From then though the truce ending the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 and up to the invasion of Kuwait two years later, U.S. policy hinged on the hope for rehabilitation of Saddam.
"There is some indication that the U.S. thought it could turn Saddam into a nice guy," said Michael Provence, professor of Middle Eastern history at Southern Methodist University. "They didn't care what he was doing to other people, he was killing Iranians. They were very, very easy going on any kind of human-rights criticism. The defeat of Iran was the hoped-for outcome."
Taylor Fain, a foreign policy expert at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, said the United States was mindful of Saddam's ruthlessness.
"The U.S. backed him with the understanding that this was not a lovely guy. We thought that by becoming engaged with him and making him dependent on the U.S., we could moderate Saddam's behavior," Fain said.
"That, of course, never happened."
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