A few words about the undeclared war in Iraq and US interests in that country, 1980-2000
Laure Akai

We need to better understand US business interests in Iraq but going back to
the 80s and the time of the Gulf War may help us better understand some of
the issues driving the current war in Iraq.

(Note: This article was written for a Polish audience. Poland is one of four
countries which has sent soldiers to Iraq. Some members of the government
and peace activists are trying to bring the issue to court has the move
should be approved by the Sejm according to the constitution. The ruling
"leftist" party has claimed that there is no war, simply an
intervention. Hence the opening question.)

If this ain't a war, then what is?

The question of whether or not there is technically a war on is a pointless
one. People are dying because of taxpayer-funded bombs. All the debate about
whether or not there is a legally declared war is just legal manipulation of
terms used to avoid responsibility for the actions taken.

The sad part about it is that most people in the world are not aware that
the US has been at this war with Iraq for quite some time. And here we're
not just talking about the over 1.2 million people who have died because of
sanction-related health and nutrition issues, over one half children. That's
nothing more than collateral damage; Madeline Albright once said on the
top-rated US TV show, "60 Minutes" - not at all disputing these figures - "I
think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is
worth it." (60 Minutes, May 12,1996. Interview with Leslie Stahl.) We're
talking about the bombing of the country - acts of agression that also have
not been "wars", just military actions, and, although on nothing like the
scale of the current attack, still constitute invasions into another
country. Iraq has been bombed hundreds of times by the US between Dessert
Storm and Iraqi Freedom. (sic) (Jim Huck, 200 Years of Imperialism.)

Does Iraq have chemical weapons?

Well, if they do, then the US is probably responsible for them.

Saddam Hussein was not always the villian he is now; at one time, he was
very cozy with the CIA. Like Noriega, he just was not useful anymore, or
maybe was more interested in his own power than the CIA. Saddam first comes
on the scene when General Abdel Karim Qassim found himself on the CIA
hit-list. Qassim had overthrown and executed the British puppet-king, King
Faisal (1958) and Qassim pulled out of the pro-Western Baghad Pact, founded
OPEC and claimed sovereignty over Kuwait. (Kuwait was one part of Iraq and
was set up by the British for oil and to secure access to ports.) The CIA
wanted Qassim dead and an ambitious Hussein gave it a try but failed and had
to hide in Cairo. The Ba'ath Party finally succeeded in making a coup in
1963 and Saddam went to work. The first thing was to get a CIA-provided list
of leftists to be purged. (Mark Zepezauger, Boomerang; How our Covert Wars
Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America.)

Hussein had a history of allying with the US or Soviets whenever their
interests converged. Hussein became very important to the CIA when the
US-backed Shah on Iran (another CIA plot to give someone "freedom") was
overthrown by Khomeini (and by those who didn't understand anything about
the "freedom" the US had given them). Saadam met with the Saudis and CIA in
Amman and got the green light to invade Iran and was promised all sorts of
support. During the War, the US covertly supplied Iraq which chemical and
biological weapons. This is well documented and the US does not even deny
this. US firms shipped Anthrax and botulism to Iraq. (In his 1998 book
"Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, " Under that same
[weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied
to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located
near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare
labs.") Worse yet, these shipments were approved by the government. (An
front-page article by Michael Dobbs in the Washington post on Dec, 30, 2002
entitled U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup pointed out, "The
administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to
Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications,
including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax
and bubonic plague." A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee
turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s
under license from the Commerce Department.)

Saddam Hussein eventually used nerve gas against the Kurds. Of course the
Kurds were also victims of geopolitical games. In the seventies, when
Hussein was more interested in the Soviets and Iran was a US-client state,
Iranians came up with an idea to arm Kurdish rebels as a way to put pressure
and perhaps ultimately topple Hussein. This was at a time when Iran and Iraq
had some border disputes. Once they were resolved, the US stopped backing
the Kurds and they were put down by Hussein who saw them as potential
traitors and a people living on rich lands who might want to overthrow him
one day.

You wonder why the US is so worried about anthrax and chemical weapons
scares. It would seem that a war more effective way to eliminate that threat
would be do incarcerate those responsible for commerically or covertly
distributing these things than to bomb some market in Baghdad. But of course
this is just a pretext for the war anyway.

The US knew very well about the use of weapons. Domald Rumsfeld visited
Baghdad when the use was in full swing. They gave weapons to destroy Iran.
National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983 (which still
remains classified) stated, according to sources, that the United States
would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the
war with Iran. (Dobbs,Washington Post) On Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State
Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P.
Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to
"almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. (ibid) But Hussein was
Washington's puppet then and enjoyed good diplomatic relations with the
states including visits by Rumsfeld who was special envoy to the Middle
East.

According to Alan Friedman (the Spider's Web: the Secret History of how the
White House Illegally Armed Iraq), military aid was often disguised as
'agricultural loans". (In 1997, the State Department and Commerce Department
was still lending Iraq money and gave over $1bn to Saddam in such loans,
much of which was diverted to weapons. - Emanuel Winston, Big Oil, The State
Department and Saddam Hussein, 2 February 1998). One US branch of an Italian
bank sent $5 billion in questionable aid to Hussein. (A story by Russ W.
Baker, in the March/April issue of the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR),
points out that "... the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank,
Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans,
funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans
were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate
the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture
department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took
advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions.") The loans are
guaranteed by US taxpayers, who not only have wound up paying dear to arm
Saddam, but have seen an unprecedented amount of their tax money spent on
bombing people into oblivion.

To what extent the US was knowingly and actively arming Iraq as late as 1989
is hard to say. But it is easy to say that prior to that, arming Iraq was
done quite actively and often through front companies. According to a sworn
court statement by a Mr. Teicher made in 1995, the United States "actively
supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of
dollars of credits, by providing 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." Teicher pointed out that
(former) CIA director William Casey used a Chilean front company, Cardoen,
to supply Iraq with cluster bombs. (Dobbs, Washington Post)
And when UN weapons inspectors went to Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they
returned with long lists of chemicals, missile components, computers and
other things used in weapons which came from American suppliers such as
Union Carbide and Honeywell.
Back to the subject of US aid, it is an extremely telling incident that
while thinking about invading Iraq, the US at the same time was trying to
give it aid. Was it trying to make it aid-dependant or to buy Saddam
Hussein? It is hard to say but The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, exposed
secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in
1989 ordering closer ties with Iraq and proposing $1 billion in new aid.
"Truth in Politics" points out that they had found "buried deep in a 1991
Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting
with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened
personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."

It's all for business

Several articles have already appeared in Polish discussing American
business interests in the war. It's important to note however that the
business aspects of American politics with Iraq were also a major issue
during the Gulf War, known as "Desert Storm".

First, it should be pointed out that Kuwait was also invaded by Hussein
because of business reasons. And one of the factors that played a part was
the fact that Kuweit had been slant drilling underneath the border into Iraq
's Rumaila oilfield. To the amount of $14 billion. Interestingly, the
special equipment to allow for this slant drilling was produced by a company
owned by Brent Snowcroft, Bush Sr.'s national security adviser. (Zepezuaer)
(It looks more and more that in order to be a national security adviser in a
Bush administration, you have to have held a major post at an oil extracting
or equipment company. It's tells you a lot about what they are securing.)

Of course, it's not even sure how far the Iraqis even got into Kuwait. The
government forged satellite photos of Iraqi troops. The photos were brought
to Riyadh by none other than Dick Cheney, then the Secretary Of Defense.
(The original article by Jean Heller was published January 6, 1991 in the
St. Petersburg Times and made some small waves before, of course,
disappearing. See also Carl Jensen, 20 Years of Censored News, 1997.)

Then again, the US had been holding war games scenarios against Iraq for 18
months before this invasion of Kuwait. Just like they sent some troops to
the region one year before the current war, Desert Storm was going to happen
and they just needed a reason to do it. Maybe selling the drilling equipment
to the Emir of Kuwait was a way to provoke Iraq into moves that would
justify their war.

America's business connections in Iraq and Kuwait are very complicated to
follow, but they always lead back to the same place: the White House. The
Commercial Bank of Kuwait, owned by Chase Manhattan, were located in a
building with Kissinger Associates, a "consulting firm" which used political
influence for clients. Who worked there besides Kissinger? Brent Snowcroft,
who became a VP in 1986. One of his top clients was the state-owned Kuwait
Petroleum Corporation. Sure, they had a long history. Another company which
he became director of in 1981 was then bought by the Kuwait Petroleum
Corporation. Ex-President Gerald Ford was on the Board of that company. This
company, Santa Fe International, drilled oil wells in Kuwait. (Murray
Rothbard, Why the War? The Kuwait Connection from the Irrepressible Murray
Rothbard.) A Secretary of Defense and ex-President working for an oil
company? Hell, that's to be expected! (Look at ex-Chevron Condie Rice and
oilman Bush!) With such a long-standing and lucrative business in Kuwait
(including drilling Iraqi wells), no wonder it was Snowcroft who pushed for
war at what the New York Times has referred to as the decisive National
Security Council meeting. (New York Times Feb. 21, 1991.)

After the war, oil revenues from Baghdad went to Kuwait for reparations but
ultimately, much of this money came back to corporations.The Emir interested
heavily overseas. The Kuwaiti government bought 10% of Britain's Midland
Bank. US companies got fat contracts for reconstructing Kuwait. Enron
rebuilt a power plant. Rumaila was annexed to Kuwait, doubling its oil
capacity. Iraq was made to send money to Kuwait which ultimately also lined
the pockets of US businessmen and politicians who then generously proposed
that Iraq borrow more of US taxpayer money.

WHAT THE SANCTIONS AND WAR HAS DONE TO ORDINARY IRAQIS

The US is lying when it says that it will try to avoid civilian casualities;
it's all the same for the army which buried Iraqis alive in the last war.
(Patrick Sloyan, "Buried Alive" in NY Newsday, Sept.12, 1991.) During Desert
Storm, destruction of cilivilan areas was always labelled "accidental"; they
accidentally destoryed 38 schools, 28 hospitals, 31 sewage facilities, four
water pumping station (more than half in the country) and all major power
plants. So much for accuracy.

The sanctions, designed to bring Hussein to capitulation, has exacted a high
toll. But Hussein did not capitulate and the White House blames him for the
disaster. One of the worst problems, after water and sewage facilities were
destroyed, has been a clean water supply. This, as US intelligence documents
clearly show, has lead to outbreaks of diseases and a public health crisis.
Thomas Nagy has argued that destroying the water supply was not a accident
which the humanitarian Americans regret, but rather counters that, "For more
than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of
destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in
Iraqi lives." ("The Secret Behind the Sanctions; How the U.S. Intentionally
Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply" in the Progressive, Sept. 2001.)

It has to be said that although the war and spectacular explosive events
draw all the attention in the media, it has been the US-led sanctions that
have hit Iraq the hardest. Several UN officials have resigned in protest
over the sanctions. Among the most important, Denis Halliday, former
Assistant Secretary General at the UN resigned and has said, "I've been
using the word 'genocide', because this is a deliberate policy to destroy
the people of Iraq." (Z magazine, March 2000.) His successor, Hans von
Sponek also resigned for the same reasons.

Over 1.2 million people dead. A small price to pay for toppling Saddam - and
taking control of Iraq's oil.

To add insult to injury, the US offers an "oil for food program" where
people can trade their most valuable commodity for a fraction of what it's
worth. This is the US's idea of a humanitarian deal. What ever happened to
just sending food? Surely the average taxpayer would rather feed a child
than drop a bomb on its house, maiming or killing it?

The US says, again, that it is not targeting civilians, yet every day we see
more and more civilians victimized by the war. Then again, anybody who
believes what the US says about its tactics and motives given all the
statements and evidence which contradict them, has probably already had
their brains obliterated by the state propaganda offensive.

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