The U.S. Winked at Hussein's Evil
December 30, 2003
latimes.com
Robert Scheer:
Sometimes democracy works. Though the wheels of
accountability often grind slowly, they also can grind
fine, if lubricated by the hard work of free-thinking
citizens. The latest example: the release of official
documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act, that detail how the U.S. government under
presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush
nurtured and supported Saddam Hussein despite his
repeated use of chemical weapons.
The work of the National Security Archive, a dogged
organization fighting for government transparency, has
cast light on the trove of documents that depict in
damning detail how the United States, working with
U.S. corporations including Bechtel, cynically and
secretly allied itself with Hussein's dictatorship. The
evidence undermines the unctuous moral superiority
with which the current American president, media and
public now judge Hussein, a monster the U.S. actively
helped create.
The documents make it clear that were the trial of
Hussein to be held by an impartial world court, it would prove an embarrassing
two-edged sword for the White House, calling into question the motives of U.S.
foreign policy. If there were a complete investigation into those who aided and
abetted Hussein's crimes against humanity, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State George Shultz would probably end up as
material witnesses.
It was Rumsfeld and Shultz who told Hussein and his emissaries that U.S.
statements generally condemning the use of chemical weapons would not interfere
with relations between secular Iraq and the Reagan administration, which took
Iraq off the terrorist-nations list and embraced Hussein as a bulwark against
fundamentalist Iran. Ironically, the U.S supported Iraq when it possessed and
used weapons of mass destruction and invaded it when it didn't.
It was 20 years ago when Shultz dropped in on a State Department meeting
between his top aide and a high-ranking Hussein emissary. Back then the Iraqis,
who were fighting a war with Iran, were our new best friends in the Mideast.
Shultz wanted to make it crystal clear that U.S. criticism of the use of chemical
weapons was just pablum for public consumption, meant as a restatement of a
"long-standing policy, and not as a pro-Iranian/anti-Iraqi gesture," as State's
Lawrence S. Eagleburger told Hussein's emissary. "Our desire and our actions to
prevent an Iranian victory and to continue the progress of our bilateral relations
remain undiminished," Eagleburger continued, according to the then highly
classified transcript of the meeting.
The Shultz/Eagleburger meeting took place between two crucial visits by
Rumsfeld, acting as a Reagan emissary, to Hussein to offer unconditional support
for the Iraqi leader in his war with Iran. In the first meeting, in December 1983,
Rumsfeld told Hussein that the United States would assist in building an oil
pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba, Jordan. He made no mention of chemical weapons,
even though U.S. intelligence only months earlier had confirmed that Iraq was
using such illegal weapons almost daily against Iranians and Kurds.
That administration's eye was not on the carnage from chemical weapons but
rather the profit to be obtained from the flow of oil. In a later meeting with an
Iraqi representative, as recorded in the minutes, "Eagleburger explained that
because of the participation of Bechtel in the Aqaba pipeline, the Secretary of
State [Shultz] is keeping completely isolated from the issue.
Iraq should
understand that this does not imply a lack of high-level [U.S. government]
interest." (Shultz had been chief executive of Bechtel before joining the Reagan
administration and is currently a director of the company, which is signing
contracts for work in Iraq as fast as U.S. taxes can be allocated.)
Minutes of that meeting and others in which the United States ignored Hussein's
use of banned weapons while extending support to the dictator mock the moral
high ground assumed by George W. Bush in defense of his invasion. If, as Bush II
says, Hussein acted as a "Hitler" while "gassing his own people," during the
1980s, we were fully aware and implicitly approving, via economic and military
aid, of his most nefarious deeds.
Hussein's crimes were committed on our watch, when he was a U.S. ally, and we
knowingly looked the other way. But don't take my word for it; check out
nsarchive.org . |
