"The enemy of my enemy is my customer." -- said
to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
in 1992 by a US customs official who had
stopped the sale to Iraq of detonation capacitors
that could be used in a nuclear weapon.
Saddam Hussein received tremendous help
from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush,
and from US corporations, and continues
to receive passive economic assistance from the current
Bush administration. One article could
hardly list everything the Reagan and Bush administrations
have given Iraq, but even a quick overview
suggests the picture.
Reagan official Howard Teicher was a staffer
for the National Security Council from 1982 to 1987.
He had regular contact with CIA Director
William Casey and Deputy Director Robert Gates and
traveled with Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq.
In a 1995 affidavit for a civil lawsuit, Teicher describes
Reagan's Iraq policy as one of consistent,
unequivocal support for Saddam Hussein in the war
against Iran, when Iran was perceived to
be the greater threat (ironically, the fear was that a
victorious Iran would then invade Saudi
Arabia):
"CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded
the effort to ensure that Iraq had sufficient military
weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid
losing the Iran-Iraq war ... the United States actively
supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying
the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing
US military intelligence and advice to
the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales
to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military
weaponry required. The United States also provide
strategic operational advice to the Iraqis
to better use their assets in combat. For example, in 1986,
President Reagan sent a secret message
to Saddam Hussein telling him that Iraq should step up its
air war and bombing of Iran. This message
was delivered by Vice President Bush, who communicated
it to Egyptian President Mubarak, who in
turn passed the message to Saddam Hussein. Similar ... advice
was passed to Saddam Hussein through various
meetings with European and Middle Eastern heads of state."
"I personally attended meetings in which CIA Director
Casey or CIA Deputy Director Gates noted the
need for Iraq to have certain weapons such
as cluster bombs and anti-armor penetrators in order to
stave off the Iranian attacks. When I joined
the NSC staff in early 1982, CIA Director Casey was
adamant that cluster bombs were a perfect
'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend
against the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers.
I recorded those comments in the minutes ..."
Teicher's NSC files are in the Ronald Reagan
presidential archives in Simi Valley, Calif. The affidavit
can be found online at realhistoryarchives.com
(search for "teicher").
President Reagan legalized conventional
military sales to Iraq in 1982, and resulting sales amounted
to more than a billion dollars' worth of
exports with military use in the same year. Along with direct
military-use products and even more "dual-use"
exports, however, the Reagan and Bush administrations
furnished more indirect potencies: with
the assistance in intelligence -- if you call it that -- and money and
arms, the United States also furnished
Saddam with biological and chemical capabilities.
The US Department of Commerce licensed 70
biological exports to Iraq between 1985 and 1989,
including at least 21 batches of lethal
strains of anthrax, sent by the American Type Culture Collection,
then located in Rockville, Md., and now
in northern Virginia. (It shares one building with George Mason
University; its landlord for its main building
is the Prince William County, Va., Board of Supervisors.)
Shipments continued beyond Reagan under
President Bush, after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988.
In other words, Saddam Hussein was still
able to purchase biological products for at least four more
years after the justification of US/administration
worry about Iran's threat to Saudi oil was past.
Also between 1985 and 1989, Iraq's Atomic
Energy Commission got 17 batches of "various toxins
and bacteria." In 1985, the CDC (Centers
for Disease Control) shipped at least 3 samples of West Nile
Fever virus to Basra University. Other
lethal biological samples included botulins and E. coli.
In 1994, then-Sen. Don Riegle (D-Mich.)
reported a list of lethal bio-products sent to Iraq. Their presence
was verified by UN inspectors in Iraq.
Too many US corporations supplied Iraq with
chemicals to list here; a class-action lawsuit filed by over a
thousand Gulf War vets in Galveston, Texas,
in 1994 (Coleman et al. v Alcolac et al.) names several,
including Alcolac, Phillips Petroleum,
Unilever, Allied Signal and Teledyne.
However, the Texas Supreme Court dismissed
the American Type Culture Collection as a defendant, saying
it cannot be sued in a Texas state court
because it has no Texas location. A federal district court in Texas has
already dismissed the case for lack of
federal jurisdiction.Your tax dollars, and Republican judges, at work.
Aside from biological and chemical products,
American companies were also licensed by the Commerce
Department to supply Saddam with computers,
components, electronics, and specialized equipment for future
weaponry. Other US shipments went to Iraq
without benefit of license, some directly to Iraq and some through
other countries including Canada, Germany
and Switzerland. The late US Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Texas),
chairman of the House Banking Committee,
entered at least 30 documents into the Congressional Record as part
of his heroic investigations into US assistance
to Iraq -- investigations in which he was thwarted at every juncture,
be it noted, by the CIA, the Bush Department
of Justice, and their supporters -- mostly GOP -- in Congress.
(See www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1991
and 1992.)
Again, too many companies provided essential
assistance to Iraq to list here. A scant list would include 60 Hughes
helicopters in 1982, at least 56 military
helicopters from Bell Textron in 1984, and $8 million worth of Sikorsky
Black Hawk helicopters in the late '80s;
equipment for a tungsten-carbide manufacturing plant (later blown up)
from Kennametal (Latrobe, Pa.); mainframes
and other advanced computer systems from Digital, IBM and
Hewlett Packard; a supercomputer from Silicon
Graphics in California; and military technology including glass fiber
and machine tools from Matrix-Churchill
(based in Britain and Cleveland, Ohio). Matrix-Churchill also sold
equipment to an arms dealer and manufacturer
in Chile, Carlos Cardoen, who sent it to Iraq. The lawsuit in which
Teicher's above affidavit is filed involves
Cardoen.
Congressional committees in both the House
and the Senate in the early '90s documented extensive provisions
to Iraq. Rep. Samuel Gejdenson (D-Conn.)
reported that "From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government
approved 771 licenses for the export to
Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment
with military application."
Every significant decision approving the numerous pricey deals with Iraq
was made
at the highest levels of government, and
involved federal agencies including the CIA, the DOJ, the Export-Import
Bank, the Commerce Department, and the
Agriculture Department among others.
The Financial Times on Nov. 3, 2000,
reported that Halliburton or its subsidiaries did more than
$23 million worth of work for
Iraq between 1988 and 1999. With Dick Cheney at the helm, the
company basically ensured that Saddam
Hussein's oil fields would stay up and running after the
Iran-Iraq war and again after the Gulf
War. You'd think that American security personnel at some
of these subsidiaries would be prime
sources of intelligence information, if the administration were
intensively investigating 9/11.
Doesn't Vice President Cheney have any pull with his old company?
The current Bush administration does not
mention where the much-touted "weapons of mass destruction" came from,
nor that they've been extensively bombed
already. But regrettably, the same corporations that profited by dealing
with Iraq before -- including Cheney's
Halliburton -- would also profit from an invasion of Iraq, and from a "rebuilding"
afterward. The same companies are well
able to purchase both Bush foreign policy and the bloodthirsty commentary
that supports it -- defying reason, evidence,
and common sense -- in the media.
Halliburton, of course, is an enormous oil-field-supply
company, providing the equipment and facilities that make
it possible for oil fields to operate.
Its more than 500 subsidiaries include dozens of companies in the United
Kingdom,
where it began (explaining the hapless
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's twinship with Bush's Mideast policies),
11 or so companies in Saudi Arabia, and
at least 28 companies in that notable oil-producing behemoth, the Cayman
Islands. It also has companies in Pakistan,
Russia and Kazakhstan, meaning it profits from any pipeline conducting
Russian oil to the West across Afghanistan
or thereabouts.
There can be little doubt that the whole
get-Saddam campaign is bogus on moral grounds. Iraq depends for
existence on its oil revenues (as even
the CIA World Fact Book shows). It would go under if not for exporting
oil.
And it exports oil to -- whom? Why, to
US allies: Russia, France, Switzerland, Jordan and Turkey. But far from
dampening that oil commerce, Bush's saber-rattling
has boosted oil prices for Saddam (as well as for Bush
campaign donors in the American energy
sector).
But then, it would be ethically inconsistent
for Bush to pressure US allies to keep them from doing what the
administration itself does: As of last
May, the American Petroleum Institute listed Iraq number eight on the
top-ten list of foreign suppliers of oil
to the US.
A year earlier, indeed, the US got over
90% of Iraq's UN-approved oil-for-food deals; now those UN-certified
oil sales are dropping -- which means that
Putin's Russia can become a bigger customer for Iraqi oil, through
backdoor deals that release Putin from
UN constraints. Putin is currently meeting and greeting the Iraqis,
along with leaders of North Korea and Iran
- all of whom were softened up for dealing with Russia by Bush's
"Axis of Evil" remarks. It would
be good to know whether Putin somehow influenced those comments,
which have worked to Russia's benefit in
the short run.
Most observers agree by now that the porous
administration "sanctions" against Iraq have done more to injure
the Iraqi populace than to injure Saddam
Hussein. There is only too much reason to believe that, if the
administration were to replace Saddam with
a Bush-White-House puppet like the one in Afghanistan,
the main beneficiaries would similarly
be not the Iraqi people but some of the largest energy and technology
companies, and incidentally the demented
"think tanks" and other white-collar goon squads they hire in D.C.
and New York, now so busily justifying
an undeclared war and unprovoked invasion of another country.
Margie Burns is a Texas native who now writes from Washington,
D.C. .
Email margie.burns@verizon.net.
This article was posted on Sept. 13.