Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
Source: Foreign Policy
The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.
The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.
U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.
Read more: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran
= new reply since forum marked as read
William Safire was almost alone tying George Herbert Walker Bush to the illegal arming of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
In fact, very few liberal and almost zero conservative voices have dared oppose the Bush bandwagon, let alone the War Party. The story, read by the late Representative Tom Lantos (D-California), into the Congressional Record (public domain, emphasis by Octafish):
THE ADMINISTRATION'S IRAQ GATE SCANDAL
BY WILLIAM SAFIRE
Congressional Record
Extension of Remarks - May 19, 1992
Washington
Americans now know that the war in the Persian Gulf was brought about by a colossal foreign-policy blunder: George Bush's decision, after the Iran-Iraq war ended, to entrust regional security to Saddam Hussein.
What is not yet widely understood is how that benighted policy led to the Bush Administration's fraudulent use of public funds, its sustained deception of Congress and its obstruction of justice.
As the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar, was urging Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker to buy the friendship of the Iraqi dictator in August 1989, the F.B.I. uncovered a huge scam at the Atlanta branch of the Lavoro Bank to finance the buildup of Iraq's war machine by diverting U.S.-guaranteed grain loans.
Instead of pressing the investigation or curbing the appeasement, the President turned a blind eye to lawbreaking and directed another billion dollars to Iraq. Our State and Agriculture Department's complicity in Iraq's duplicity transformed what could have been dealt with as `Saddam's Lavoro scandal' into George Bush's Iraqgate.
The first element of corruption is the wrongful application of U.S. credit guarantees. Neither the Commodity Credit Corporation nor the Export-Import Bank runs a foreign-aid program; their purpose is to stimulate U.S. exports. High-risk loan guarantees to achieve foreign-policy goals unlawful endanger that purpose.
Yet we now know that George Bush personally leaned on Ex-Im to subvert its charter--not to promote our exports but to promote relations with the dictator. And we have evidence that James Baker overrode worries in Agriculture and O.M.B. that the law was being perverted: Mr. Baker's closest aid, Robert Kimmett, wrote triumphantly, `your call to . . . Yeutter . . . paid off.' Former Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter is now under White House protection.
Second element of corruption is the misleading of Congress. When the charge was made two years ago in this space that State was improperly intervening in this case, Mr. Baker's top Middle East aide denied it to Senate Foreign Relations; meanwhile, Yeutter aides deceived Senator Leahy's Agriculture Committee about the real foreign-policy purpose of the C.C.C. guarantees. To carry out Mr. Bush's infamous National Security Directive 26, lawful oversight was systematically blinded.
Third area of Iraqgate corruption is the obstruction of justice. Atlanta's assistant U.S. Attorney Gail McKenzie, long blamed here for foot-dragging, would not withhold from a grand jury what she has already told friends: that indictment of Lavoro officials was held up for nearly a year by the Bush Criminal Division. The long delay in prosecution enabled James Baker to shake credits for Saddam out of malfeasant Agriculture appointees.
When House Banking Chairman Henry Gonzalez gathered documents marked `secret' showing this pattern of corruption, he put them in the Congressional Record. Two months later, as the media awakened, Mr. Bush gave the familiar `gate' order; stonewall.
`Public disclosure of classified information harms the national security,' Attorney General William Barr instructed the House Banking Committee last week. `. . . in light of your recent disclosures, the executive branch will not provide any more classified information'--unless the wrongdoing is kept secret.
`Your threat to withhold documents,' responded Chairman Gonzalez, `has all the earmarks of a classic effort to obstruct a proper and legitimate investigation . . . none of the documents compromise, in any fashion whatsoever, the national security or intelligence sources and methods.'
Mr. Barr, in personal jeopardy, has flung down the gauntlet. Chairman Gonzalez tells me he plans to present his obstruction case this week to House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks, probably flanked by Representatives Charles Schumer and Barney Frank, members of both committees.
`I will recommend that Judiciary consider requiring the appointment of an independent counsel,' says Mr. Gonzalez, who has been given reason to believe that Judiciary--capable of triggering the Ethics in Government Act--will be persuaded to act.
Policy blunders are not crimes. But perverting the purpose of appropriated funds is a crime; lying to Congress compounds that crime; and obstructing justice to cover up the original crime is a criminal conspiracy.
SOURCE: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920519l.htm
Amazing stuff. Still...not much else worth remembering, besides how few Democrats stood with Gonzalez.
Reagan & H.W. Bush came into power cutting deals with the Ayatollah to rig the 1980
Presidential Election, then we had the Iran Contra scam(s), then Reagan and company
helping to get the materials for chemical weapons to Saddam, then H.W.'s ambassador
to Iraq telling Saddam that if he invaded Kuwait it wouldn't be a problem, and then onto
W's Iraq war the whole thing is example after example of what should not have been done.
And the whole time "they" waved American flags and talked about patriotism and liberty
as the bodies, lies, and wasted money piled up and up. If we had a real press some of these
bastards should still be in jail for all this crap.
BTW Look @ Benghazi! 
Last edited Mon Aug 26, 2013, 03:47 PM - Edit history (1)
Obama DOJ Asks Court to Grant Immunity to George W. Bush For Iraq War
August 22, 2013
In court papers filed today, the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in a case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-doj-asks-court-to-grant-immunity-to-george-w-bush-for-iraq-war/5346637
And as for Poppy Bush, Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Edit: Added Link.
It would be very upsetting if we're not pulling the strings and determining who the gassers and the gassees are.
agricultural credits to Saddam the following year.
I don't know how many times I've heard that from right-wing sources as justification for the invasion of Iraq. The gassing of the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja was in March 1988. (Remember how all we heard in leadup to the Iraq invasion was "Saddam gassed his own people, he gassed his own people, Halabja, Halabja, Halabja!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack#International_sources_for_technology_and_chemical_precursors
But the U.S. government didn't seem to be so upset at the time -- the next year they extended agricultural credits to Saddam's regime.
By the end of the 1990s, Halabja was rarely mentioned in the American press and almost never by political leaders like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. By the summer of 2002, however, Bush administration officials had developed a certain fondness for the town’s name, invoking it as often as possible as the United State prepared for yet another war against Saddam Hussein. Three days before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, George W. Bush spoke in his radio address about the anniversary of the Halabja massacre:
"Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky. Many who managed to survive still suffer from cancer, blindness, respiratory diseases, miscarriages, and severe birth defects among their children."
U.S. Government Reaction
Reagan administration officials responded to the attacks on Halabja by rhetorically condemning the use of chemical weapons but failing to back their words with action. In fact, not only did the administration fail to penalize Iraq for chemical weapons use on civilians, it actively blocked efforts by others to hold Saddam Hussein and his regime accountable. The administration blamed Iran as well as Iraq for the attacks on Halabja, without ever producing evidence of Iranian involvement, a strategy that diffused international outrage; it tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent the UN from investigating the Halabja attacks; and it successfully stopped a tough Congressional bill—that would have hit Iraq with harsh sanctions for chemical weapons use—from becoming law. The administration put economic and energy-related interests above human rights when formulating official policy on Iraq, and evidence of these priorities appears frequently in memos and cables. The U.S. government, however, was not in lock step concerning Iraq and chemical weapons use. Some members of Congress argued passionately on the floor of the Senate and House to penalize Baghdad; the State Department was not unanimous in its objective to maintain good relations with Iraq, putting Secretary of State George Shultz in the position of having to decide which of his staffers’ policy positions to approve.
For one example of differing views regarding Iraqi policy among State Department staffers, in this case whether to extend Export-Import Bank credits, see Action Memorandum, “Export-Import Financing for Iraq,” Alan P. Larson, Richard W. Murphy, and Richard Schifter to George P. Shultz, 29 December 1988, Digital National Security Archive, document no. IG00739. The Digital National Security Archive
====================================
Just another example of how we helped Saddam get and use gas.
As for Syria, well, let's watch out for phony outrage by some politicians over the use of gas.
People (including myself) voted for him. If I do not support him it MUST be because:
1) I hate black people.
2) I am secretly in the pay of the Koch Brothers and have been ever since I signed up for this board back in 2003 and fought tooth and nail for 5 five years on the e-voting issue.
3) I am a racist.
4) I am an unrealistic purists who expects just too much when I demand the party not sanction or collude with war crimes, murder, illegal spying, etc.
5) I am a bigot.
6) I am a fool.
7) I don't like "dark-skinned people"
8) I get all my news from Al-Jazeera
9) I am a Kloset Klasnman
10) It's because Obama's black.
Detect a theme here?
but if you would just change your outlook a little and come over to the DARK SIDE with the rest of the looney-bins then you might have a better understanding of how things work
It really is no shock for me on what is going on with Obama, Clinton did the same type of thing in his second term
. That's how they forgot. Random rambling - my gut response on the Syria issue - Precisely how do we know Assad had this exact chemical weapon?
This picture and the OP are most likely old news to the average DU reader - and those of us in DC ten years ago to protest Iraq. But this story seems a little too convenient today. *sigh*
I think that died when Turner sold CNN, the instanteous observation of events as they were happening, as news, and not as a product. Since the owners make money off the contracts to the government...
Now the product being sold is another war, and we're being primed to accept it. NATO has just sent their ships off he coast of Syria. USA, UK and France so far. All the nuke powers are looking at Russia. Assad says he wants diplomacy. IDK what the truth is about these regimes over there.
I can't help but think this a delayed PNAC or an End Timer fantasy. The world is tired of this. But I think this OP is suggesting that the nerve gas is all our fault.
It's not like we're the only source for Sarin gas. It goes into that evil Obama meme, USA is always wrong. He has tried to keep us out of this mess. Now the call of genocide, as you said somewhere else, has been made and NATO will act on it. I just don't wanna...
I stumbled on this today, I'd already posted the UK papers claiming that Assad was using Sarin and hundred have gone to the hospital to be treated according to the Doctors w/o Borders group report. Now the Saudis are buying more WMD and Syria is saying they will send these things to Israel.
That's a lot of countries and most of the world's defense spending:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's "Partnership for Peace", with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014576504#post22
I was replying to a post reporting that NATO ships were offshore. Ready to do... well, some thing...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014576504#post7
Which referenced this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014576350/
About that Sarin gas:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023524905#post66
Everyone knows the Guardian is the only reliable source for all the USA's despicable acts.
I don't get the logic.
Obama isn't supposed to object to Assad's use of chem weapons because Reagan didn't care when Saddam used them?
Also, just to note, Foreign Policy is as mainstream as it gets, so I don't get the bit about the mainstream media ignoring this.
Other than that, carry on folks.
