Iraq’s use of Chemical Weapons: The Washington Post -

Then and Now

adapted from: “Today’s outrage was yesterday’s no big deal” by Seth Ackerman http://www.fair.org/extra/0209/iraq-gas.html

Fact: Saddam Hussein used poison gas against Iranian troops in the early 1980s and, in 1988, against Iraqi Kurdish villagers who were thought to have been aiding the Iranian enemy.

Food for thought: Today, the cry that Saddam Hussein has used chemical weapons on his own people is repeated almost daily by President Bush and the media as proof that 1) Iraq poses a terrifying threat to the world; 2) the global oil embargo on Iraq must be maintained; and 3) the U.S. should overthrow the Iraqi government by force when the right moment arises. Is this sound policy? Below, the chronology of events published in the Washington Post indicates that factors other than humanitarian concerns are shaping present U.S. policy. Let us ask ourselves whether Saddam’s atrocities, which caused hardly a ripple in the U.S. at the time, should now be grounds for unprovoked aggression on the part of the U.S. which, as confirmed by government officials, would be expensive in lives, dollars, and goodwill of other nations, and would throw the region, perhaps the world, into irreparable chaos.

Washington Post, March 5, 1984

“The United States has concluded that the available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons” against Iranian troops, according to a prepared statement read by State Department spokesperson John Hughes.

Washington Post, December 2, 1984

The Post’s editorial page sent hearty congratulations to the administration for having reestablished full diplomatic relations with Iraq for the first time since 1967, stating that Washington was “coming into a better position to play a useful regional role” and claiming that Iraq “has been willing to tone down some of the cruder aspects of its policy,” like poison gas, in return for U.S. relations.

Washington Post, April 1, 1985

Acknowledging that Iraq had employed chemical weapons again (five times in March), the Post wrote in another editorial: “It may be a bit odd when you consider all the ways that people have devised to do violence to each other to worry overly about any particular method.”

Five months later, the Administration authorized the sale to Iraq of 45 dual-use U.S.-made Bell helicopters. The Washington Post’s editorial page had nothing to say about it.

In March 1988, as the war against Iran wound down, Saddam used chemical weapons against rebellious Iraqi Kurdish villagers thought to have aided the Iranian enemy (and who were Saddam’s “own people” in the same sense that the Cherokees were Andrew Jackson’s “own people”). In September the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to impose sanctions on Iraq. (These relatively mild sanctions called for a halt to U.S. military aid, commodity credits and loan guarantees, etc.). The Reagan and Bush administrations “adamantly” opposed the bill, and eventually the bill died. Sanctions “would hurt U.S. exporters and worsen our trade deficit,” Assistant Secretary of State John Kelly (now the Bush administration’s top State Department official for East Asia) told a congressional panel in June 1990, six weeks before the invasion of Kuwait.

Today, as the Washington Post demands bombings, sieges and the violent overthrow of the Iraqi government for merely possessing chemical weapons, it is enlightening to read what the Post had to say back in the mid-’80s (4/1/85) about the U.S. response to Iraq’s actual use of them: “The United States sees a strategic interest in supporting Arab Iraq and containing fundamentalist Iran.”

REGISTER YOUR VIEWS:

President Bush   White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1414	Senator Ron Wyden   DC Phone: 202-224-5244   Local Phone: 503-326-7525
Senator Gordon H. Smith   DC Phone: 202-224-3753   Local Phone: 503-326-3386	Representative Peter A. DeFazio   DC Phone: 202-225-6416 Local Phone: 541-465-6732