Tom Knapp wrote: DT) and when they were also used against the Kurds, , the Great Communicator suppressed the knowledge for over two years until it could not be hiden any longer. (DT
BH) What is your [David Terry's] evidence that Reagan for two years "suppressed the knowledge" of Saddam's poison attacks on the Kurds? (BH TK) From 1988-1990, the US line was that the attack on Halabja was most likely an Iranian attack, since the condition of the bodies was consistent with cyanide (an agent known to be used by the Iranians but not the Iraqis). It only magically became an Iraqi attack when, for whatever reason, the George HW Bush administration decided to throw hands with Saddam instead of continuing to shake hands with him. (TK I gave Halabja as an example, but it was hardly the only case in which Saddam had been accused of using poison attacks against the Kurds. In fact, it was a very special case, as the attack was not strictly part of the Anfal Campaign, but rather came as the city was being taken by Iranian troops. The DIA concluded that both sides were using chemical weapons in the battle, and that the evidence of cyanide blood agents among the Kurdish civilians pointed to Iran. The U.S. condemned both sides for the use of chemical weapons at Halabja. The facts about Halabja were ambiguous enough that when an Army War College academic monograph repeated the DIA conclusion, a critical reviewer in the 1990 New York Review Of Books said <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3441> : EM) I accept that in the specific case of Halabja the possibility that the chemical attack came from Iran (which might not have realized that Iraqi troops had already evacuated the town), or indeed from both sides consecutively, cannot be ruled out. (EM (It ended up being clear that Iraq had gassed the civilians in Halabja, but Bush critics were themselves finding it convenient to blame <http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2004/12/put_saddamas_ba.php> Iran as recently as 2004.) The 1990 reviewer continued: EM) State Department officials said on September 8, 1988, that US intelligence agencies had confirmed Iraq's use of chemicals in its recent drive against Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. The same information prompted Secretary of State George Shultz, a man who had presided over a strong pro-Iraq tilt in US policy, and who continued to oppose sanctions against Iraq, to accuse Iraq of "unjustifiable and abhorrent" use of poison gas against the Kurds in a meeting on the same day with Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Saadoun Hammadi. Although there was vigorous debate between Congress and the executive branch about the policy conclusions to be drawn, in 1988 and again in 1990, there has been no difference between them about the facts of Iraqi misconduct. (EM Human Rights Watch echoes <http://www.hrw.org/reports/1989/WR89/Iraq.htm> this: HRW) Iraq's use of poison gas against its Kurdish citizens in late August and early September 1988 drew a vigorous protest from then Secretary of State George Shultz. During a visit to Washington on September 8 by Iraqi Minister of State Saadoun Hammadi, a member of President Saddam Hussein's inner circle, Shultz made known publicly, in extraordinarily candid and undiplomatic terms, his and the Reagan administration's dismay over Iraq's action. (HRW Yes, the U.S. should have been tougher with Saddam in the late 1980s, but they knew they had very little leverage over him, and they were foolishly eager to use him as a way to punish Iran for sponsoring Hezbollah and its continuing holding of American hostages and attacks on Israel. However, it's just flatly hallucinatory for David Terry to suggest that Reagan somehow suppressed for two years the world's knowledge that Saddam used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds. This is just blatant disinformation, that you abet with your own suggestion that American assignment of responsibility for chemical attacks against Iraqi Kurds was a cynical function of geopolitical strategy. You can draw all the black hats and curly moustaches you want on the pictures of our nanny state enemies, but distorting the truth will in the long run hurt our cause more than it will help it. BH) Iraq's arsenal was of overwhelmingly Soviet and French origin, and apparently did not include a single weapon system of American origin. (BH TK) I can think of at least four discrete types of Iraqi weapon systems of American origin that I personally saw in 1991: - Thousands of M21 anti-tank mines - Thousands of M16 anti-personnel mines ("Bouncing Bettys") - Several M18 anti-personnel mines ("Claymores") - One F-4 Phantom combat aircraft (TK Hmm, I wonder if the F-4 was this <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6612789209> one. Nothing on the web mentions any F-4s in the Iraqi inventory, nor in Kuwait's 1990 inventory (F-1s and A-4s). Iran received about 200 F-4s, and so perhaps the one you saw was an Iranian Phantom that had defected or been forced down. I'd be surprised if your F-4 had been operational as of Desert Storm, and one or two sightings do nothing to suggest that America was arranging for Saddam to acquire F-4s. Wikipedia says of Bouncing Bettys: "The mines were sold widely and copies were produced in several countries including Greece, India, South Korea and Turkey." Of Claymores: "A number of licensed and unlicensed copies of the mine were produced" in at least 11 countries. I can't find any accusation of U.S. sales of mines to Saddam, and none of the weapons systems you list above are in the 100-row table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_sales_to_Iraq_1973-1990 . It remains the case that apparently none of the militarily significant weapons systems comprising the Iraqi arsenal were of confirmed American origin. TK) I didn't realize that there were that many TOWs involved -- a thousand of the things is hardly "miniscule," in my opinion. (TK Tens of thousands of Saggers played an important role in the free-wheeling two-week Sinai armor battle of the Yom Kippur War, but my understanding of Iran-Iraq is that any significant armor battles were over well before these TOWs were supplied in 1985. In a multi-year war of attrition on relatively static front lines like the later Iran-Iraq war, 1000 TOWs are a miniscule change to the order of battle.
