The USA supported Iraq during the 8 years of the war, with money, sattelite photos of enemy positions, and equipment INCLUDING chemical and bio weapons, technical expertise, and plans for chemical weapons factories.
-The US rewarded Saddam after the Iran-Iraq war with billions in loan guarantees and agricultural credits right up until Aug 2, 1990, the day Iraq invaded Kuwait.
In the fall of 1989, at a time when Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was only nine months away and Saddam Hussein was desperate for money to buy arms, President Bush signed a top-secret National Security Decision directive ordering closer ties with Baghdad and opening the way for $1 billion in new aid.
* In 1987, Vice President Bush successfully pressed the federal Export-Import Bank to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Iraq, the documents show, despite staff objections that the loans were not likely to be repaid as required by law.
* After Bush became President in 1989, documents show that senior officials in his Administration lobbied the bank and the Agriculture Department to finance billions in new Iraqi projects.
* As vice president in 1987, Bush met personally with Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq's ambassador to the United States, to assure him that Iraq could buy more dual-use technology. It was three years later that National Security Council officials blocked the attempt by the Commerce Department and other agencies to restrict such exports.
* After Bush signed NSD 26 in October, 1989, Secretary of State James A. Baker III personally intervened with Agriculture Secretary Clayton K. Yeutter to drop Agriculture's opposition to the $1 billion in food credits. Yeutter, now a senior White House official, agreed and the first half of the $1 billion was made available to Iraq at the beginning of 1990.
* As late as July, 1990, one month before Iraqi troops stormed into Kuwait city, officials at the National Security Council and the State Department were pushing to deliver the second installment of the $1 billion in loan guarantees, despite the looming crisis in the region and evidence that Iraq had used the aid illegally to help finance a secret arms procurement network to obtain technology for its nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile program.
An Agriculture Department official cautioned in a February, 1990, internal memo that, when all the facts were known about loan guarantees to Iraq, the program could be viewed as another "HUD or savings-and-loan scandal."
Of the $5 billion in economic aid provided to Iraq over an eight-year period, American taxpayers have now been stuck for $2 billion in defaulted loans.
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2000/msg00776.htmlYes, U.S. helped Iraq get chemical, biological weaponsYou don't have to dig deep to find that from 1982 to 1990 the United States supplied Iraq with not only conventional arms and cash but also chemical and biological materials, including the precursors for anthrax and botulism.
A 1994 investigation by the Senate Bank Committee found that U.S. companies had been licensed by the Commerce Department to export a "witch's brew" of biological and chemical materials, including precursors of anthrax and botulism. The report also noted the exports included plans for chemical and biolgical warfare facilities and chemical warhead filling equipment.
"Only on Aug. 2, 1990, did the Agriculture Department officially suspend the (loan) guarantees to Iraq -- the same day that Hussein's tanks and troops swept into Kuwait," a Los Angeles Times expose on Feb. 23, 1992, noted.
http://www.belleville.com/mld/newsdemocrat/5674107.htmI've more links in here somewhere...my "faves" file is a deep dark bottomless pit...can find more if you need. :)
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