Alan: The United States did not intervene with former ally, Saddam Hussein, not even when "The Butcher of Baghdad" was at his worst. Rather, Reagan and Saddam were linchpin allies in Iraq's "bulwark war" against Iran: in support of that war the United States -- with your tax dollars and mine -- supplied Saddam with all "the makings" of chemical WMD. Bush assumed Saddam had WMD because Reagan supplied them.
Wikipedia's entry, "United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war"
"How Reagan Armed Saddam With Chemical Weapons": http://www.counterpunch.org/
"Shaking Hands with Hussein" - http://www2.gwu.edu/~
"When Hussein Was Our Ally" - http://www.truth-out.org/
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George Will:
"Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons is only his most recent, and he is not the first to have used such weapons in war since the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing them. But because attacking Syria is said to be necessary as reinforcement of the 1925 “norm,” it matters that the norm has been violated before. In the 1960s, Egypt used chemical weapons against Yemen. Saddam Hussein used them not only against disobedient Iraqis but in the 1980-88 war with Iran. A March 23, 1984, CIA reportsaid: “Iraq has begun using nerve agents . . .[which] could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” A new article by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy says that in 1988:
"Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons is only his most recent, and he is not the first to have used such weapons in war since the 1925 Geneva Protocol proscribing them. But because attacking Syria is said to be necessary as reinforcement of the 1925 “norm,” it matters that the norm has been violated before. In the 1960s, Egypt used chemical weapons against Yemen. Saddam Hussein used them not only against disobedient Iraqis but in the 1980-88 war with Iran. A March 23, 1984, CIA reportsaid: “Iraq has begun using nerve agents . . .[which] could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” A new article by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid in Foreign Policy says that in 1988:
“The United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.”
U.S. officials denied acquiescing in such attacks because Iraq never announced them. But Harris and Aid quote retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, a military attache in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, saying, “The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.”"
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"Iran Won The Iraq War"
