Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now
infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad
that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam
Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first
alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983
paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and
the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
With the Iran-Iraq war escalating, President Ronald
Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy, a former secretary of defense,
to Baghdad with a hand-written letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
and a message that Washington was willing at any moment to resume
diplomatic relations.
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.
Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan’s
Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from
American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy
began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged
sponsors of terrorism at the Whitehouse's behest in 1982. According to a
February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:
“First on Hussein's shopping list was helicopters --
he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice.
However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell "Huey"
helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted
congressional opposition in August, 1983... Nonetheless, the sale was
approved.”
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State
Department—in the name of “increased American penetration of the
extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”—pushed through the
sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some
$200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New
York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all
[of these helicopters] to his military.”
In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians
with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence
sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the
American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly
bombs.”
In response to the gassing, sweeping sanctions were
unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access
to most US technology. The measure was killed by the republican White
House. (2)
As a result of the openings created by Rumsfeld's
diplomatic triumphs, U.S. companies were recruited and encouraged, both
covertly and overtly, to ship poisonous chemicals and biological agents
to Iraq, by the administrations of both Reagan and George Bush Sr. Care
packages to Saddam included sample strains of anthrax and bubonic
plague, and components which would be used to develop nerve poisons like
sarin gas and ricin. That's where Rummy's connections to major
pharmaceutical and technology companies came into play. (4)
| 13
Aug 1996 |
Tom Brokaw, taped from a satellite
transmission that he did not know was being broadcast announces
to the world "Rummy [Donald Rumsfeld] used to get even with
guys in the White House by leaking stuff to [Dan] Rather that
didn't have any basis in fact." |
The Bechtel connection:
Bechtel has long been intertwined with Republican
foreign policymakers, globally and in Iraq. It turns out that many of
today's war hawks spent a couple years in the 1980s trying to get Saddam
to sign an oil pipeline contract. Even though Saddam was gassing
Iranians at the same time, people like Donald Rumsfeld had some quality
face-time with the "evil dictator" pitching a plan that would
benefit, beyond all other interests, Bechtel -- and, potentially,
Hussein.
Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad, twice, as Reagan's special
envoy. According to newly-available documents, a lot of his business was
nothing more than advancing Bechtel's business. Following a script
crafted by then-Secretary of State George Shultz -- who went directly
from the CEO seat at Bechtel into the Reagan team -- he pitched the idea
of building an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan in December 1983.
But it was all for naught. Two years after Rumsfeld
broached the plan with Saddam, the dictator finally rejected Bechtel's
proposal. He found better pipeline deals involving Turkey and Saudi
Arabia, and thought the U.S. company doubled the actual construction
cost.
While this signaled the end of U.S.-Iraqi oil
diplomacy, the Reagan and first Bush administrations settled into a
constructive engagement routine with Saddam. Bechtel signed contracts
with Saddam in 1988, after "Chemical Ali" gassed thousands of
Kurds, to build a huge dual-use chemical plant on the outskirts of
Baghdad. Saddam named Bechtel as one of the corporate suppliers of
technology for chemical weapons in its U.N. declaration last year.
Construction stopped only after Saddam's troops invaded Kuwait, and his
police held Bechtel employees in confinement. The last Bechtel employee
left Iraq in December 1990. (5)
You know the rest.
