Then there's the REAL history of RUMMIE and his gang of thugs
Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in Despite Chemical Raids
December 23, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 - As a special envoy for the Reagan
administration in 1984, Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the defense
secretary, traveled to Iraq to persuade officials there
that the United States was eager to improve ties with
President Saddam Hussein despite his use of chemical
weapons, newly declassified documents show.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who ran a pharmaceutical company at the time,
was tapped by Secretary of State George P. Shultz to
reinforce a message that a recent move to condemn Iraq's
use of chemical weapons was strictly in principle and that
America's priority was to prevent an Iranian victory in the
Iran-Iraq war and to improve bilateral ties.
During that war, the United States secretly provided Iraq
with combat planning assistance, even after Mr. Hussein's
use of chemical weapons was widely known. The highly
classified program involved more than 60 officers of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, who shared intelligence on
Iranian deployments, bomb-damage assessments and other
crucial information with Iraq.
The disclosures round out a picture of American outreach to
the Iraqi government, even as the United States professed
to be neutral in the eight-year war, and suggests a private
nonchalance toward Mr. Hussein's use of chemicals in
warfare. Mr. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration
officials have cited Iraq's use of poisonous gas as a main
reason for ousting Mr. Hussein.
The documents, which were released as part of a
declassification project by the National Security Archive,
and are available on the Web at www.nsarchive.org, provide
details of the instructions given to Mr. Rumsfeld on his
second trip to Iraq in four months. The notes of Mr.
Rumsfeld's encounter with Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister,
remain classified, but officials acknowledged that it would
be unusual if Mr. Rumsfeld did not carry out the
instructions.
Since the release of the documents, he has told members of
his inner circle at the Pentagon that he does not recall
whether he had read, or even had received, the State
Department memo, Defense Department officials said.
One official noted that the documents reflected the State
Department's thinking on Iraq, but did not indicate Mr.
Rumsfeld's planning for his meeting with Mr. Hussein nor
his comments on the meeting after its conclusion.
Mr. Rumsfeld's trip was his second visit to Iraq. On his
first visit, in late December 1983, he had a cordial
meeting with Mr. Hussein, and photographs and a report of
that encounter have been widely published.
In a follow-up memo, the chief of the American interests
section reported that Mr. Aziz had conveyed Mr. Hussein's
satisfaction with the meeting. "The Iraqi leadership was
extremely pleased with Amb. Rumsfeld's visit," the memo
said. "Tariq Aziz had gone out of his way to praise
Rumsfeld as a person."
When news emerged last year of the December trip, Mr.
Rumsfeld told CNN that he had "cautioned" Mr. Hussein to
forgo chemical weapons. But when presented with
declassified notes of their meeting that made no mention of
that, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld said he had raised the
issue in a meeting with Mr. Aziz.
Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said on
Friday that there was no inconsistency between Mr.
Rumsfeld's previous comments on his missions to Iraq and
the State Department documents.
By early 1984, events threatened to upset the
American-Iraqi relationship. After pleading for a year for
international action against the chemical warfare, Iran had
finally persuaded the United Nations to criticize the use
of chemical weapons, albeit in vague terms.
Pressure mounted on the Reagan administration, which had
already verified Iraq's "almost daily" use of the weapons
against Iran and against Kurdish rebels, documents show. In
February, Iraq warned Iranian "invaders" that "for every
harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of
annihilating it." Within weeks, the American authorities
intercepted precursor chemicals that were bound for Iraq.
Finally, on March 5, the United States issued a public
condemnation of Iraq.
But days later, Mr. Shultz and his deputy met with an Iraqi
diplomat, Ismet Kittani, to soften the blow. The American
relationship with Iraq was too important - involving
business interests, Middle East diplomacy and a shared
determination to thwart Iran - to sacrifice. Mr. Kittani
left the meeting "unpersuaded," documents show.
Mr. Shultz then turned to Mr. Rumsfeld. In a March 24
briefing document, Mr. Rumsfeld was asked to present
America's bottom line. At first, the memo recapitulated Mr.
Shultz's message to Mr. Kittani, saying it "clarified that
our CW [chemical weapons] condemnation was made strictly
out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and
incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs." The American
officials had "emphasized that our interests in 1)
preventing an Iranian victory and 2) continuing to improve
bilateral relations with Iraq, at a pace of Iraq's
choosing, remain undiminished," it said.
Then came the instructions for Mr. Rumsfeld: "This message
bears reinforcing during your discussions."
The American relationship with Iraq during its crippling
war with Iran was rife with such ambiguities. Though the
United States was outwardly neutral, it tilted toward Iraq
and even monitored talks toward the sale of military
equipment by private American contractors.
Tom Blanton, executive director of the National Security
Archive, said: "Saddam had chemical weapons in the 1980's,
and it didn't make any difference to U.S. policy."
Mr. Blanton suggested that the United States was now paying
the price for earlier indulgence. "The embrace of Saddam in
the 1980's and what it emboldened him to do should caution
us as Americans that we have to look closely at all our
murky alliances," he said. "Shaking hands with dictators
today can turn them into Saddams tomorrow."
Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.
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