Can anyone help me answer question about Iraq?

[booley]

Actually two questions.

1. How much "Aid" did the US give Saddam under Reagan and Poppy. I know about the satelite photos and the intelligence and the Hughs helicopters. How much MONEY did the US give Saddam?

2. How much was the iraqi military budget under Saddam. In other words, what was the proportion of US money to what the Iraqis were spending anyway?

have tried googling this under every search word and combomination I could find with no luck. The best I could come up with was that Saddam had loans from 65 to 100 billion but nothing on the AID that wasnt' a loan (I know the US often gave Saddam Agriculteral "aid" when the state dept knew he was using it for weapons)

Any help would be appreciated. And sources are good.

Seems a lot of this has gone right down the memory hole. Some of the documents may even have been re-classified by Shrub.

[Breeze54]

1. Under Reagan, Secret Deals Brokered by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein

Published on Sunday, June 13, 2004 by the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
Ronnie & Saddam

Under Reagan, Secret Deals Brokered by Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein Secured the Dictator an Arsenal of WMD

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0613-03.htm

by Neil Mackay

======================================

June 17, 2004

The Ties That Blind

How Reagan Armed Saddam with Chemical Weapons

http://www.counterpunch.org/dixon06172004.html

By NORM DIXON

On August 18, 2002, the New York Times carried a front-page story headlined, "Officers say U.S. aided Iraq despite the use of gas". Quoting anonymous US "senior military officers", the NYT "revealed" that in the 1980s, the administration of US President Ronald Reagan covertly provided "critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war". The story made a brief splash in the international media, then died.

While the August 18 NYT article added new details about the extent of US military collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous aspect of the scandal: not only did Ronald Reagan's Washington turn a blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

more.........

------------------------------

April 18, 2004, 11:36 p.m.

Oil-for-Terror?
There appears to be much worse news to uncover in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/rosett200404182336.asp

By Claudia Rosett

Beyond the billions in graft, smuggling, and lavish living for Saddam Hussein that were the
hallmarks of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, there is one more penny yet to drop.

more........

==============================================

U.S. Identifies Front Companies for Saddam Hussein Regime

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/transcripts/20040415_front_companies.html

The U.S. Treasury Department has designated eight companies and five associated individuals as fronts for Iraq's former Ba'athist regime.

According to an April 15 press statement, the companies and individuals "were procuring weapons, skimming funds, operating for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and doing business in support of the fallen Saddam Hussein regime."

More......

[lligrd]

2. Here Is What I Could Find

According to (http://www.alternative-online.org/IraqEconomy.htm):

"The drastic drop in output can be attributed to the extensive militarization of the economy which started in the 1970s but became quite pronounced in the late 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. As a percentage of GDP, military spending captured some 14% in 1975. In 1988, military expenditures rose to 57% of GDP."

From another source (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/iran_iraq_war_american_interest.php)

"For another, in Iraq Saddam had drawn on the country’s oil wealth to carry out a major military build-up, with military expenditures swallowing 8.4 per cent of GNP in 1979. Starting in 1958 Iraq had become an increasingly important market for sophisticated Soviet weapons, and was considered a member of the Soviet camp. In 1972 Iraq signed a 15-year friendship, cooperation and military agreement with the USSR. The Iraqi regime was striving to develop or acquire nuclear weapons. Apart from Israel, the only army in the region to rival Iraq’s was Iran’s. But after 1979, when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, much of the Iranian army’s American equipment became inoperable."
Brisk trade was done in supplying Iraq. Britain joined France as a major source of weapons for it. Iraq imported uranium from Portugal, France and Italy, and began constructing centrifuge enrichment facilities with German assistance. The US arranged massive loans for Iraq’s burgeoning war expenditure from American client states such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The US administration provided “crop-spraying” helicopters (to be used for chemical attacks in 1988), let Dow Chemicals ship it chemicals for use on humans, seconded its air force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts (from 1986), approved technological exports to Iraq’s missile procurement agency to extend the missiles’ range (1988). In October 1987 and April 1988 US forces themselves attacked Iranian ships and oil platforms."

<snip>

"Militarily, the US not only provided to Iraq satellite data and information about Iranian military movements, but, as former US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) officers have recently revealed to the New York Times (18/8/02), prepared detailed battle planning for Iraqi forces in this period—even as Iraq drew worldwide public condemnation for its repeated use of chemical weapons against Iran. According to a senior DIA official, “if Iraq had gone down it would have had a catastrophic effect on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and the whole region might have gone down —that was the backdrop of the policy.”

One of the battles for which the US provided battle planning packages was the Iraqi capture of the strategic Fao peninsula in the Persian Gulf in 1988. Since Iraq eventually relied heavily on mustard gas in the battle, it is clear the US battle plan tacitly included the use of such weapons. DIA officers undertook a tour of inspection of the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces successfully re-took it, and they reported to their superiors on Iraq’s extensive use of chemical weapons, but their superiors were not interested. Col. Walter P. Lang, senior DIA officer at the time, says that “The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern”. The DIA, he claimed, “would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.” (As we shall see below, chemical weapons were used extensively by the Iraqi army against Kurdish civilians, but DIA officers deny they were “involved in planning any of the military operations in which these assaults occurred”.) In the words of another DIA officer, “They (the Iraqis) had gotten better and better” and after a while chemical weapons “were integrated into their fire plan for any large operation”. A former participant in the program told the New York Times that senior Reagan administration officials did nothing to interfere with the continuation of the program. The Pentagon “wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas,” said one veteran of the program. “It was just another way of killing people—whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference,” he said. The re-capture of the Fao peninsula was a turning-point in the conflict, bringing Iran to the negotiating table.

A US Senate inquiry in 1995 accidentally revealed that during the Iran-Iraq war the US had sent Iraq samples of all the strains of germs used by the latter to make biological weapons. The strains were sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Type Culture Collection to the same sites in Iraq that UN weapons inspectors later determined were part of Iraq’s biological weapons programme (Times of India, 2/10/02)."



Interesting facts at this website (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php) including the following snips:

"November, 1983. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its Branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, purchased computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. <14>"

"October, 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. <16>
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php
January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of "dual-use" export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application. <2>"

"May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. <3> "

"May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. <7>"

Another site http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/united_states_iran_iraq_war1.php

"When the war first broke out, the Soviet Union turned back its arms ships en route to Iraq, and for the next year and a half, while Iraq was on the offensive, Moscow did not provide weapons to Baghdad.<30> In March 1981, the Iraqi Communist Party, repressed by Saddam Hussein, beamed broadcasts from the Soviet Union calling for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Iraqi troops.<31> That same month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks.<32> The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism<33> (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country)<34> and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq.<35> In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.<36>"