It was on December 20, 1983, when Donald Rumsfeld, America's current
Secretary of Defense, for the first time met with Iraq's President Saddam
Hussein. He had come to Baghdad as President Reagan's special envoy
to plead for the normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations.
After the fanatical Khomeini regime in Tehran had kept 62 Americans
hostage from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, the White House
apparently felt justified to help the Iraqi leader in his war of aggression
against Iran. It was well known that Saddam had hundreds of left wing
and Shiite opponents executed after he overthrew his predecessor in
1979. Yet, the dictator had also vociferously condemned the Soviet invasion
of Muslim Afghanistan. The State Department did not want Iraq to lose
the war because that would have threatened the oil supply from all Arab
countries bordering the Persian Gulf.
While Rumsfeld hobnobbed with Saddam Hussein and Foreign Minister Tariq
Aziz, Iran's adroit chargé d'affaires in Washington, Nizar Hamdoon,
traveled all over the country making friends and trade deals for Iraq.
He also visited Jacksonville, Illinois, addressed a convocation at Illinois
College, and tried to convince two inquisitive academics, Professor
Richard Fry and this writer, that Saddam's Iraq was really America's
best ally against Iran's raving ayatollahs.
So it seemed pragmatically, although not morally, justified for the
U.S. to seek improved diplomatic and trade relations with Hussein's
regime that at the time seemed both anti-Iranian and anti-Soviet. Maybe,
the Reagan administration hoped, Saddam's abysmal human rights record
would improve under American influence. The political realities, however,
were much more complex. On June 7, 1981, the U.S. had allowed Israel,
its closest ally, to destroy Iraq's nuclear power plant near Baghdad
in a preemptive bomb attack, while the Soviets and the French were supplying
Saddam with billions of dollars worth of military supplies, including
missiles (such as the French Exocet) and fighter planes (such as the
Soviet MiG 29s). In exchange for removing Iraq from the State Department's
list of states harboring terrorists, Saddam expelled Palestinian guerilla
leader Abu Nidal (but sneakily readmitted him in 1985).
Largely due to Rumsfeld's efforts, the U.S. and Iraq exchanged ambassadors
in 1984. Trade increased both ways: American rice, cluster bombs, and
intelligence for Iraqi oil. According to the Washington Post, "The
administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush authorized 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." That fact was confirmed in 1994 by
an investigation of the Senate Banking Committee. Declassified documents
even show "that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq
was using chemical weapons on an 'almost daily' basis."
Little did the American people know then that their government had been
making a secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran involving 508 American-made
TOW missiles. In 1986, moreover, our Israeli friends accommodated President
Reagan by supplying another 4,000 of those anti-tank weapons to their
anti-Zionist enemies in Tehran. When Beirut's al-Shira'a newspaper revealed
that deal on November 2, 1986, the "Irangate" scandal made
the headlines at last. On May 21, 1987, two Iraqi Exocet missiles hit
the frigate USS Stark, killing 37 sailors. At first, Washington blamed
Iran for the attack. Reports of the use of mustard gas and the colorless,
odorless, and deadly nerve agent Tabun grew more detailed. Thousands
of Kurds and Iranians were killed. Nobody will ever know exactly how
many. In March 1988, Saddam's chemical weapons exterminated another
4,000 Kurds. Soil samples later confirmed the allegations. Both the
Reagan and Bush administrations continued to court Saddam Hussein as
an Arab moderate--until his troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Within
days, the spin specialists of the White House and the media reinvented
him from a flawed statesman into a brutal bogeyman.
Ever since, concerned Americans have been wondering why, 6,000 miles
away from home, their government aided and abetted this tyrant and aggressor
in the production and use of weapons of mass destruction.