Iraq-gate (Gulf War)

Iraq-gate refers to allegations that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush illegally built up Iraq's military right up until Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Although the charges received extensive attention in the early 1990s and are periodically repeated today, they were eventually discredited. Numerous high-profile investigations failed to produce any criminal indictments or even any evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Bush Administration officials.Fact|date=February 2008

U.S. military aid to Iraq

Because of fears that revolutionary Iran would defeat Iraq and export its Islamic Revolution to other Middle Eastern nations, the U.S. began giving aid to Iraq. From 1983 to 1990, the U.S. government approved around $200 million in arms sales to Iraq, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). [cite web |url=http://web.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/atirq_data.html |title=Arms transfers to Iraq, 1970-2004 |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |format= |work= |publisher=Stockholm International Peace Research Institute |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] These overt sales amounted to less than 1% of the total arms sold to Iraq in the relevant period. [cite web |url=http://web.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/atirq_data.html |title=Arms transfers to Iraq, 1970-2004 |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |format= |work= |publisher=Stockholm International Peace Research Institute |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

At the same time, the CIA began covertly directing non-U.S. origin hardware to Saddam Hussein's armed forces, "to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war." [ [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf Statement by former NSC official Howard Teicher] to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida. [http://www.overcast.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/print/spidersweb/teicher.htm Plain text version] ] The full extent of these transfers is not yet known, and details do not appear in the SIPRI Arms Transfers Project, which relies entirely on open sources. [cite web
url= http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/sources.html
title= Sources used in compiling the database
publisher= Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
accessdate= 2008-03-22 ] Former United States National Security Council staff member Howard Teicher nevertheless maintains that this assistance was legal.

An investigation by the Senate Banking Committee in 1994 determined that the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved, for the purpose of research, the shipping of dual-use biological agents to Iraq during the mid-1980s, including "Bacillus anthracis" (anthrax), later identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program, as well as "Clostridium botulinum", "Histoplasma capsulatum", "Brucella melitensis", and "Clostridium perfringens". The Committee report noted that each of these had been "considered by various nations for use in war." [cite web |url=http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html |title=The Riegle Report: U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author=Donald W. Riegle, Jr. |authorlink= |coauthors=Alfonse M. D'Amato |date=1994-05-24 |format= |work=Gulf War Veterans Resource Pages |publisher= |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that the U.S. government had confirmed that Iraq was using chemical weapons (but not biological weapons that the agents being exported could have been used for) "almost daily" during the Iran-Iraq conflict as early as 1983. [cite web |url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm |title=Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1983 |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author=Joyce Battle |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |format= |work=National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82 |publisher=The National Security Archive |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record”. [cite web |url=http://www.sundayherald.com/42647 |title=How America armed Iraq |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date=2004-06-13 |format= |work= |publisher=Sunday Herald |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

The level of U.S. covert aid to Iraq during this period is difficult to quantify. Saddam Hussein is widely known to have received battlefield intelligence from the U.S. [ Bob Woodward, "CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War; Target Data From U.S. Satellites Supplied for Nearly 2 Years," Washington Post, 15 December 1986.]

U.S. economic aid to Iraq

The United States government furnished Iraq with several billion dollars of economic aid during the war. Iraq’s war with Iran and the consequent disruption in Iraq's oil export business had caused the country to enter a deep debt. United States government economic assistance allowed Hussein to continue using resources for the war which otherwise might have been diverted. Between 1983 and 1990, Iraq received $5 billion in export credit guarantees from the Commodity Credit Corporation program run by the United States Department of Agriculture and Department of Agriculture, beginning at $400 million per year in 1983 and increasing to over $1 billion per year in 1988 and 1989, finally coming to an end after another $500 million was granted in 1990. Besides agricultural credits, the U.S. also provided Hussein with other loans. In 1985 the U.S. extended more than $684 million in credits to Iraq to build an oil pipeline, with the construction being undertaken by a California construction firm.

Cooling of relations

Following the war, however, there were moves within the Congress of the United States to isolate Iraq diplomatically and economically over concerns about human rights violations, its dramatic military build-up, and hostility to Israel. Specifically, in 1988 the Senate passed the “Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988,” which imposed sanctions on Iraq. The bill was not, however, adopted by the House. [cite web |url=http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d100:SN02763:@@@L&summ2=m& |title=A bill entitled the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988". |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author=Claiborne Pell |authorlink= |coauthors= |date=1988-09-08 |format= |work= |publisher=The Library of Congress |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] These moves were disowned by some Congressmen though some U.S. officials, such as Reagan's head of Policy Planning Staff at the State Department and Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs, Paul Wolfowitz, who disagreed with giving support to the Iraqi regime. [cite web |url=http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48782.000/hfa48782_0.htm |title=U.S. OPTIONS IN CONFRONTING IRAQ |accessdate=2007-10-07 |author=COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS |authorlink= |coauthors=HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES |date=1998-02-25 |format=text |work= |publisher=Congressional Records |pages= |language=English |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

On October 2, 1989, President George H.W. Bush signed secret National Security Directive 26, which begins, “Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security.” [cite web |url=http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsd/nsd26.pdf |title=National Security Directive 26 |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date=1988-10-02 |format= |work= |publisher=The White House |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] With respect to Iraq, the directive stated, "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and promote stability in both the Persian Gulf and the Middle East."

It has been noted that after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the United States had both direct and indirect reasons for a cooling of relations with Iraq. For example, the direct interest that the Western powers had in oil supplies from the Middle East meant that it would be undesirable for Iraq to dominate a large proportion of these supplies. Indirectly, in terms of the geopolitics, it was further undesirable that there should be an Iraqi hegemony in the Persian Gulf. [/Ken Matthews (1993). The Persian Gulf Conflict and International Relations. London, Routledge pp182-184 ]

An investigation by the Senate Banking Committee in 1994 determined that the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved, for the purpose of research, the shipping of dual-use biological agents to Iraq during the mid-1980s, including "Bacillus anthracis" (anthrax), later identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program, as well as "Clostridium botulinum", "Histoplasma capsulatum", "Brucella melitensis", and "Clostridium perfringens". The Committee report noted that each of these had been "considered by various nations for use in war." [cite web |url=http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html |title=The Riegle Report: U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author=Donald W. Riegle, Jr. |authorlink= |coauthors=Alfonse M. D'Amato |date=1994-05-24 |format= |work=Gulf War Veterans Resource Pages |publisher= |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that the U.S. government had confirmed that Iraq was using chemical weapons (but not biological weapons that the agents being exported could have been used for) "almost daily" during the Iran-Iraq conflict as early as 1983. [cite web |url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm |title=Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1983 |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author=Joyce Battle |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |format= |work=National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82 |publisher=The National Security Archive |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record”. [cite web |url=http://www.sundayherald.com/42647 |title=How America armed Iraq |accessdate=2006-10-12 |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date=2004-06-13 |format= |work= |publisher=Sunday Herald |pages= |language= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ]

ee also

*U.S. support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war

References