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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Investor Clouseau who wrote (21016)	12/31/2002 6:29:43 PM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27666

Jan 01, 2003 How 'good guy' Iraq became 'bad' Old documents, now de-classified, show how the US worked with Saddam as an ally in the 80s and why ties have changed WASHINGTON - High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programmes, and his contacts with international terrorists. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in the 80s when it was using chemical weapons daily. He was instrumental in changing US policy to favour Iraq. -- AFP What US officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Mr Saddam was seen in Washington as a valued ally. Among the people instrumental in tilting US policy towards Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Mr Donald Rumsfeld, now Defence Secretary. His December 1983 meeting with Mr Saddam as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalisation of US-Iraqi relations. De-classified documents show that Mr Rumsfeld travelled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an 'almost daily' basis in defiance of international conventions. The story of US involvement with Mr Saddam in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait - which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors - is a topical example of the underside of US foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human-rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators - all on the principle that the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend'. Throughout the 1980s, Mr Saddam's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. US officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shi'ite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan - a Middle East version of the 'domino theory' in South-east Asia. That was enough to turn Mr Saddam into a strategic partner and for US diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as 'the good guys', in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as 'the bad guys'. A review of thousands of de-classified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that US intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defences against the 'human wave' attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Mr Ronald Reagan and Mr George Bush Senior authorised the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction. 'Fundamentally, the policy was justified,' argues Mr David Newton, a former US ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Saddam radio station in Prague. 'We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Saddam's government would become less repressive and more responsible.' What makes present-day Mr Saddam different from the Saddam of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, US policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The US policy of cultivating Mr Saddam as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-US ambassador to Baghdad, Ms April Glaspie, met Mr Saddam on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Mr Bush 'wanted better and deeper relations', according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. 'Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Mr Saddam,' said Mr Joe Wilson, Ms Glaspie's former deputy at the US embassy in Baghdad, and the last US official to meet Mr Saddam. 'Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behaviour. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation.' --Washington Post