A Short History of Regime Change, Gassing People and WMDs
"The United States finds the present Iranian regime's intransigent refusal to deviate from its avowed objective of eliminating the legitimate government of neighbouring Iraq to be inconsistent with the accepted norms of behaviour among nations."
Thus spoke State Department spokesman John Hughes, March 5th 1984
This vehement objection to regime change came three months after Donald Rumsfeld had shaken hands with Saddam Hussein, the 'Butcher of Baghdad'. In his pocket was a hand written letter from Ronald Reagan which stated that the US was ready to resume diplomatic relations at any time. "He [Saddam] assured me that he wasn't interested in making mischief in the Middle East. It struck us as useful to have a relationship," remarked Rumsfeld. He pointed out to Hussein that he would regard "any major reversal of Iraq’s fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." However, "I cautioned him against the use of chemical weapons," he insisted later, when one of the few intrepid reporters for CNN, Jamie McIntyre, rolled the video tape of their meeting. Rumsfeld was lying. Not a word, nor even a hint, of this position can be found in the official record of the visit.
Such was the strength of the US commitment to preventing mischief that in 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down a civilian Iranian airliner in a commercial air corridor, killing all 290 people on board. The Vincennes returned triumphantly to port playing the theme tune from 'Chariots of Fire' over its PA system. Nothing less would smack of a lack of respect for the former Shah and his "highly successful campaign against subversive elements without suppressing democracy" as the New York Times noted. They failed to share with their readers that the CIA had produced films for his regime that detailed the best methods of torturing women, and that tens of thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. They didn’t fail to share, however, President Jimmy Carter’s rhapsody that Iran was "an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas in the world" and that the Shah had won, with a secret police force trained by Norman Schwartzkopf Sr. "the respect and the admiration and the love" of the Iranian people.
But I digress.
"What we didn't expect was the Ba-athist counter-coup that took place [in Iraq] six months later," opined James Critchfield, former head of the CIA's Middle East desk, bemoaning that their regime change, which killed 3000 people (a familiar figure now) had somehow gone wrong. Impossible to predict, obviously, the cruelty of their client, Saddam Hussein, whose first political act was the attempted assassination of Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Qassim. Obviously just a case of backing the wrong horse. Or dog. "We don't have a dog running in the East Timor race," explained one State Department official whilst close ally and business partner Indonesia slaughtered what was left of the East Timorese population in 1999, driving hundreds of thousands into appalling concentration camps that made Bosnia look like Butlins. "He [Suharto] is our kind of guy," explained a low ranking Clinton official. Plainly seeing the "gleaming light in Asia" as James Reston of the New York Times put it.
But I digress. Again. It's difficult not to.
Back to Iraq then. And gassing people to death in Halabja with our acquiesence. Ignore the fact that autopsies on the bodies revealed that a blood-based weapon [cyanide] had been used, rather than an asphixiant [mustard gas] which the Iraqis had used in the battlefields around Halabja, thus implicating the Iranians. Ignore that. Pay attention instead to the response of the US media at the time. It is "not surprising" remarked the Washington Post that Iraq would use gas, given the ferociousness of their enemy. Indeed it was "arbitrariness" to "sanction one form of warfare and not another." Whilst horribly scarred victims of Iraq's gas attacks mounted up throughout 1988, the Post philosophised that it was "a bit odd when you consider all the ways that people have devised to do violence to each other, to worry overtly about any particular method."
What, me worry? British journalist Farzad Bazoft was worried. Enough to investigate Iraq’s weapons development program, for which he was arrested in Baghdad, jailed and later executed by the regime on the direct order of Saddam Hussein, to the obvious delight of British Conservative M.P. Terry Dicks: "He deserved to be hung"
The Daily Telegraph agreed, chastising Bazoft for having the temerity to do his job, in an editorial entitled "When Innocence Can Equal Guilt."
A former US weapons inspector demonstrated the more popular lack of concern. The 1980's, he said, "were a more innocent time". A time when, as Charles Glass reported, "the US-Iraqi Business Forum, headed by American businessmen and former diplomats, were praising Saddam’s moderation and his progress towards democracy" and the US was the principal buyer of Iraqi oil.
In possibly the only humanitarian gesture of his political career Senator Jesse Helms co-sponsored the ‘Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988’ which passed unanimously in Congress and called for sanctions against Iraq. The bill was killed by the Reagan White House and its allies in the House of Representatives. Former Ambassador Peter Galbraith recalls that "Secretary of State Colin Powell was then the national security advisor who orchestrated Reagan’s decision to give Hussein a pass for gassing the Kurds. Dick Cheney, then a prominent congressman, could have helped push the sanctions legislation but did not."
In late 1989 Bush the First ignored the objections of officials in three government agencies and signed a secret directive ordering closer ties with Iraq and opening the way for 1 billion dollars in aid, placing the US "in a better position to deal with Iraq’s human rights record" announced the State Department, with a straight face. This human rights record was regarded by Jack Straw, during his tenure as UK Home Secretary, as sufficiently fair that an Iraqi exile seeking refugee status was deported back to Iraq where he could "expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted judiciary." Shorthand for attaching electrodes to his testicles before being beaten to death and dumped in an unmarked grave.
Why all the fuss? "The west was well served by Iran and Iraq fighting each other" mused Alan Clarke, former UK Defence Minister, during the Matrix / Churchill trial. "I’ve never concerned myself with what one set of foreigners is doing to another," he later remarked. Henry Kissinger shared similar sentiments: "Too bad they both can’t lose. I hope they all just kill each other." Sentiments which underpinned Margaret Thatcher’s relentless drive to make the UK the number two arms exporter in the world, rising from its formerly paltry ranking of fourteenth.
Thus selling Iraq WMD capability was a moot point. "They were sent for legitimate research purposes," explained Nancy Wysocki, vice president of public relations at the American Type Culture Collection company in Maryland. Legitimate research into weaponised strains of anthrax and bubonic plague that were later found and destroyed by UNSCOM inspectors. Shipments from the US began in earnest in 1984, and extended up until at least 1989, as a 1994 Congressional investigation revealed. $695 million worth of advanced field communications equipment was supplied by the US to Iraq on August 1st 1990, one day before the invasion of Kuwait.
All of this is, of course, "embarrassing" even "a complete Horlicks". But nobody is responsible, culpable or will face charges of any kind, because the noble foreign policy cause of bringing democracy (at the point of a gun or via gas) to "uncivilised tribes" as Churchill described them, is unassailable. This policy must have "something in it for the jigs" Richard Nixon quipped, whilst Alexander Haig pretended to beat a drum on the table during National Security Council meetings.
And should there be flaws in the plan, such as the unfortunate fact of 1.5 million dead in Iraq, you can just blame it all on the BBC and be patient. Iraqi mothers’ gratitude, according to Geoff Hoon, will "one day" be forthcoming. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that "perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy." He should know, as, alongside Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays, he was the founding father of what in more honest times was openly described as propaganda.
If only I could find a way to explain the difference between ‘propaganda’ and ‘spin’ to an Iraqi child with half their head blown off.
Perhaps Alastair Campbell could help, but if not, any suggestions?
© Grant Wakefield June 2003