An Arab dictator gases his own people. Then and Now

America's outrage over the use of chemical weapons by Arab dictators depends on which dictator did the gassing and when they did it.

For instance, the regime of Syrian tyrant Bashar Al-Assad is exchanging accusations with Syrian rebels over the use of chemical weapons in their increasingly deadly battle. Both sides cite, among other things, video footage that apparently shows attack survivors—soldiers and civilians--gasping for breath.  

So far, investigators say evidence of a chemical attack by either side is far from convincing. But proof that Assad was indeed using such weapons of mass destruction would represent a major turning point in the conflict. 

The Obama administration—which has long been reluctant to intervene directly—has warned the Syrian dictator that the use of  chemical weapons would “constitute a red line for the United States.”

Republican Senators John Mc Cain and Lindsey Graham are particularly outraged. Their feelings are understandable-right? How could any U.S. administration stand by as an Arab dictator gassed his own people?

President Ronald Reagan not only turned his back on such ruthless attacks, though they were substantiated by grisly video evidence, but continued to aid the tyrant who was ordering the savagery.   

The dictator in question was Saddam Hussein. That of course was before the invasion of Iraq ten years ago when the George W. Bush acted to topple the tyrant he compared to Hitler .

It was in the 1980’s when the U.S. secretly backed Saddam after he invaded Iran. (Along with Michel Despratx I did a TV documentary covering on this subject)

When word first broke in 1983 that Iraq was using mustard gas against Iranian troops, the Reagan administration (after a verbal tap on the wrist delivered by then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld) studiously ignored the issue. Saddam, after all, was then the West’s de facto partner in a war against the feared fundamentalist regime of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

Saddam’s chemical weapons were provided largely by companies in Germany and France (these days, France is also outraged that Assad may be using chemical weapons).

For its part, the United States provided Saddam with –among many other things — vital satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions.

U.S. support for Saddam increased in 1988 when Rick Francona, then an Air Force captain, was dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency. His mission: to provide precise targeting plans to the Iraqis to cripple a feared a new Iranian offensive. Shortly after arriving, Francona discovered that the Iraqis were now using even more deadly chemical weapons — nerve gas — against the Iranians. 

He informed his superiors in Washington.

The response, he said, was immediate. “We were told to cease all of our cooperation with the Iraqis until people in Washington were able to sort this out. There were a series of almost daily meetings on ‘How are we going to handle this, what are we going to do?’ Do we continue our relations with the Iraqis and make sure the Iranians do not win this war, or do we let the Iraqis fight this on their own without any U.S. assistance, and they’ll probably lose? So there are your options — neither one palatable.” Francona concluded, “The decision was made that we would restart our relationship with the Iraqis … We went back to Baghdad, and continued on as before. ”

This policy continued even after it was discovered that Saddam was using chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurds of Halabja.

Fourteen years later, in March 2003, attempting to justify the coming invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush repeatedly cited the Halabja atrocity. “Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky,” he said. “The chemical attack on Halabja provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam Hussein is willing to commit.”

 But President Bush never explained the assistance that the United States had given Saddam at the time.

When news first broke about the atrocity in 1988, the Reagan administration did its utmost to prevent condemnation of Saddam, fighting Congress’ attempt to impose restrictions on trade with Iraq.

President George W. Bush’s father was then vice president. Another key administration figure involved in the fight was Reagan’s national security advisor, Gen. Colin Powell.

A few years later, with their former ally in the Gulf now their targeted enemy, George W. Bush (assisted by Colin Powell) brushed this history of complicity with real weapons of mass destruction under the rug, while using nonexistent WMD as a reason for war.

Could the issue of chemical weapons propel the U.S. into yet another bloody Middle Eastern conflict?

[On the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, you might be interested in checking out other chapters of the documentary I did with Michel Despratx of Canal + on America’s complicity with Saddam.]

Ahmed Chalabi:the Conning of America

It’s ironic that only now, eight and a half years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as the last American troops pull out, that we finally get a book dissecting the machinations of one of the men most responsible for that catastrophe: Ahmed Chalabi, the brilliant, treacherous, endlessly scheming Iraqi refugee who, from 1991 to 2004, played a singular role in contorting U.S. policy towards Iraq.

The book, “Arrows of the Night,” (Doubleday) written by “60 Minutes” producer, Richard Bonin, is based on lengthy and remarkably frank interviews with Chalabi as well as scores of others who dealt with him over the years. The result is a chilling chronicle of how this charismatic and totally amoral Iraqi exile, without any power base among his own people, was, at various times, able to con everyone from the New York Times, to the CIA, to the U.S. Defense Department, to Dick Cheney-- even Iran’s intelligence chiefs--in his single-minded determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein and take power himself. 

It is a also an alarming tale of how a feckless American President, George W. Bush, buffeted by conflicting counsels of feuding advisors, stumbled into one of the most disastrous military quagmires in America’s history.  

Chalabi was born to an Iraqi family of immense wealth and influence, remarkable because they were Shiites in a country dominated by a Sunni minority. In 1958 ,however. the family was forced to flee Iraq after a military coup.  Almost from the beginning, the young exile was obsessed with overthrowing the regime in Baghdad which, after 1968, was led by Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi studied first in London, then at the University of Chicago and MIT. He was an outstanding mathematician, but with a con man’s soul. At age 32 he founded what would quickly become Jordan’s second largest bank. But his triumph was brief: Chalabi was obliged to flee that country as well when he was charged –and then convicted—of fraud and embezzlement of more than a hundred million dollars.

The contretemps might have ended the career of lesser men, but not Ahmed Chalabi. Still determined to topple Saddam, he came to the United States, convinced that the path to Baghdad led through Washington, D.C.

Lacking any real backing from Iraqis, by his own brilliance and conniving, Chalabi created a support network among influential Americans, many of them prominent neo-conservatives. They saw in the articulate Iraqi an ingenious strategist whose vision of sparking an uprising in Iraq with U.S. help, coincided with their own view: it was time for America to step forward and wield its vast power to promote democracy and other vital U.S. interests abroad. (Key among such interests were ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil and the survival of Israel.) Chalabi and his new allies set out to transform Iraq and Saddam into a hot-button U.S. political issue.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush agreed to clandestinely fund an Iraqi exile group and Chalabi was picked to head the operation, receiving a stipend of $340,000 per month. Actually, as the administration and the CIA saw it, that move was just window dressing to make it appear as if the U.S. was really doing something to overthrow Saddam. 

In fact, they had no intention of getting the U.S. involved militarily. Nor did they want a popular uprising that could have brought the majority Shiites to power, and increase the influence of neighboring Iran. What they wanted was to topple Saddam by a military coup and replace him with a more tractable government of Sunni generals.

But Ahmed Chalabi had different ideas. Rather than the CIA using him, he would use them. He deployed his secret U.S. backing to get himself elected leader of the exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, then started dictating policy to an outraged CIA. His plan, to take power himself after a popular uprising, protected by an American military umbrella.

Incredibly, at the same time he was pocketing Washington’s money, Chalabi was also dickering with Iran. He calculated that to take power in Baghdad, he would also have to win the backing of America’s prime foe in the region, the mullahs in Tehran. And, for a while, he did. In fact, in 1995, by his cunning and deceit, Chalabi almost succeeded in provoking a U.S. military intervention in Iraq and a possible war between Iraq and its neighbors.

When outraged government officials tried to rein him in, Chalabi turned to his powerful Washington backers. Over the years, they would include such figures as Steve Solarz, John Murphy, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney. Shrewd, supposedly worldly men with brilliant Washington resumes, they were dazzled by Chalabi: he was an Iraqi De Gaulle, a George Washington. They ridiculed CIA and State Department experts and rode roughshod over their warnings. 

In 2001, George W. Bush came to power and Chalabi’s lobby grew more shrill. To build their case to invade Iraq, the White House turned to Chalabi’s INC for hard evidence of Saddam’s WMD’s and his links with Al Qaeda. And, presto, Chalabi produced informants with precisely the tales required. After the invasion, when it was revealed that those informants were lying,  Chalabi was unabashed.

Similarly, when Washington asked Chalabi to gather his much-vaunted thousand-man Iraqi army, only a motley 600 showed up, many of them Iranian-speaking with no knowledge of Arabic. Turned out they were mercenaries hired at $5000 a piece—on America’s tab.

Still Chalabi’s Washington fans were unfazed. When the U.S. occupied Iraq, the exile leader was appointed to key positions in the interim government—which he then milked to build his own political base as well as a huge personal fortune.

And all the while, he continued his double-dealing with Iran; for instance, turning over to them sensitive files seized from Saddam’s secret police. Finally, in March 2004, outraged American intelligence agents discovered that Chalabi had informed the Iranians that the U.S. was deciphering Iran’s most sensitive communications.

Incredibly, Chalabi still had his protectors in Washington. President Bush only learned of the Iraqi’s treachery when he read about it in the May 10, 2004 edition of Newsweek. He also learned of Chalabi’s $340,000 monthly stipend—which was still continuing.

According to Bonin’s account, at a meeting of his National Security Council, Bush asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,  “Who does Chalabi work for? Who pays him?” Rumsfeld claimed not to know, though Chalabi’s payments were coming from the Pentagon’s own intelligence agency.

“If we’re paying this guy and he’s giving away our secrets” Bush ordered. “it needs to stop. Condi look into it.”

But even the President’s National Security Advisor, Condelezza Rice, was no match for Chalabi’s Pentagon supporters: it took two more NSC meetings, the President growing ever more irate, before, on May 19, Paul Wolfowitz announced that the INC stipend was ending. Not because of Chalabi’s treachery, but because it wasn’t “appropriate” for the U.S. to be funding an Iraq political party. 

Ironically, it was the Iranians who finally thwarted Chalabi’s ambitions. In February, 2005 the Iranian ambassador to Iraq bluntly ordered Chalabi to drop out of the race for prime minister.  Tehran would never accept a secular Shiite like Chalabi running Iraq. Chalabi might defy the Americans, but never the Iranians. “He would be dead in two days, and he knew it,” a Chalabi aide later told Bonin.

In 2007, however, Chalabi would again profit from U.S. backing. With the support of U.S. General David Petraeus, Chalabi was appointed by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to another key post, charged with restoring Baghdad’s shattered infra-structure.

True to form, within a few months Chalabi betrayed Maliki and the Americans by siding with Iranian-backed Shiite radical Moqtada-al-Sadr, whose goal was to drive the Americans from Iraq.  

Today, according to Bonin, Chalabi remains ensconced in his sprawling Baghdad compound, surrounded by a small army of security guards, and the enormous wealth his government positions enabled him to amass. But he’s no longer a contender to lead post-Saddam Iraq. History, says Bonin, has finally passed him by.

                                                            - - -

America’s military adventure in Iraq is, hopefully, ended. But there’s still much to be learned from this case study of national hubris--how the policies of the most powerful country on the planet were shaped by a group of arrogant players with insiders’ cunning and their own, often shadowy, agendas. 

It’s a lesson particularly relevant today, as the political climate heats up and another American president ratchets up tensions with Iran, while simultaneous dispatching U.S. troops to the Pacific in a new but vague and open-ended challenge.

Iran-A murky, perilous game

The downing of a sophisticated U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel drone over Iran is the latest ratcheting of tension between Washington and Tehran and Jerusalem. Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been crippled by sophisticated cyber attacks; key Iranian scientists and officials have been killed, including a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander who died when a rocket research site was hit by a spectacular and still unexplained explosion.

That we know. But what else is going on in this murky, perilous game?

In July, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker  that in 2007 the U.S. Congress agreed to a request from President George W. Bush “to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program."

 

That American backing included support for actions, which, were they to be committed against the United States or one of its allies, would definitely qualify as “terrorism”. 

           

Has the support for such operations continued under President Obama? If so, what does it include? Just financial backing? Training? Logistics? Clandestine raids into Iran? American “boots on the ground”?  

Predictably, such aggressive acts will provoke retaliation from Iran—a situation, which, in the context of America’s superheated presidential primaries, could spiral dangerously out of control. Which is just what militants in Tehran, Jerusalem, and Washington may be out to provoke. 

We know from President George H.W. Bush’s decision to fund the opposition to Saddam Hussein in 1991, that once such a program is launched it takes on a life of its own--extremely tricky to control, even more difficult to shut down by succeeding presidents, as Bill Clinton would discover. The funding created its own lobby, ready to run to the media and sympathetic congressman at any attempt to rein it in.

Such a potentially explosive situation would be nothing new. Washington has already been involved in a much more violent clandestine war against Iran, via its de facto ally of the time, Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran in 1980.

From early in the conflict, the U.S. secretly supplied Saddam with arms as well as satellite intelligence. By 1987, Washington was shipping American-made weapons directly to Iraq from the sprawling U.S. Rhine-Mein Airbase in Frankfurt. Some of Saddam's elite troops were even being sent to the United States for instruction in unconventional warfare by U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg.

As I detail in my book, Web of Deceit, the Reagan administration would be dangerously sucked even deeper into the conflict. Encouraged by the U.S., Saddam intensified his attacks against vital Iranian economic targets, including neutral tankers in the Gulf. Iran of course retaliated. Concerned about the safety of their own ships, the Kuwaitis asked for protection.

Some U.S. officials worried back then--just as they do today--that by venturing into the narrow confines of the Gulf, the U.S. risked direct conflict with Iran. Despite such concerns, American warships were dispatched.

On May 1987, it became dramatically clear how dangerous that policy was. An Iraqi Air Force plane mistakenly attacked an American frigate, the U.S.S. Stark, killing thirty-seven of the crew.

Then, to counter mounting congressional opposition to the operation, the Reagan administration decided to go one step further. They would justify a continued U.S. presence in the Gulf by permitting Kuwaiti ships to operate under the American flag.

That fiction would give the Kuwaitis the right to American protection.

A U.S. liaison officer was stationed in Baghdad to avoid a repeat of the Stark incident.

That, at least, was the cover story; in fact, over the following months, American officers would help Iraq carry out long-range strikes against key Iranian targets, using U.S. ships as navigational aids. "We became", as one senior U.S. officer told ABC's Nightline, "forward air controllers for the Iraqi Air Force."

The Reagan administration, in effect, decided to undertake a secret war, not bothering with congressional authorization.

Heavily armed U.S. Special Operations helicopters, stealthy, sophisticated killing machines that could operate by day or night, were ordered to the Persian Gulf. Their mission was to destroy any Iranian gunboats they could find. Other small, swift American vessels, posing as commercial ships, lured Iranian naval vessels into international waters to attack them. The Americans often claimed they attacked the Iranian ships only after the Iranians first menaced neutral ships plying the Gulf. In some cases however, the neutral ships which the Americans claimed to be defending didn't even exist.

Beginning in July 1987, the CIA also began sending covert spy planes and helicopters over Iranian bases. Several engaged in secret bombing runs, at one point destroying an Iranian warehouse full of mines. In September 1987, a special operations helicopter team attacked an Iranian mine-laying ship with a hail or rockets and machine-gun fire, killing three Iranian sailors. Official authorization for those clandestine attacks was purposely restricted to a low level in the Reagan administration so that top government officials could deny all knowledge of the illegal operations.

By early 1988, officers from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency dispatched to Baghdad were actually planning day-by-day strategic bombing strikes for the Iraqi Air Force. In April 1988, the day before a key Iraqi offensive, U.S. forces sank or demolished half the Iranian navy--one destroyer and a couple of frigates.

If Saddam had not ultimately prevailed, the Pentagon had prepared an even more ambitious strategy: to launch an attack against the Iranian mainland. "The real plans were for a secret war, with the U.S. on the side of Iraq against Iran, on a daily basis," retired Lieutenant Colonel Roger Charles, who was serving in the office of the secretary of defense at the time, told British reporter Alan Friedman.

As Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons, who was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet put it, "We were prepared, I would say at the time, to drill them back to the fourth century."

Relatively cooler heads prevailed. According to Richard L. Armitage, who at the time was assistant secretary of defense "The decision was made not to completely obliterate Iran. We didn't want a naked Iran. We wanted a calm, quiet peaceful Iran. However, had things not gone well in the Gulf, I've no doubt that we would have put those plans into effect."

Which brings us back today.

Libya 2011-Iraq 1991

Rebels rise up to overthrow a bloody dictator and the world looks on as the revolt turns into a stand-off.  Libya in 2011 is a distant echo of Iraq in 1991, when Iraqi Shiites and Kurds erupted after U.S. forces defeated the Saddam’s military after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

That led to one of the more shameful episodes in America’s dealings with Iraq:  an American president calling for an uprising, then turning his back, leaving tens, possibly hundreds of thousands to be slaughtered. I recounted that sorry affair in a documentary about “The Trial of Saddam Hussein”,excerpted on Youtube. See part5 and part 6.

In fact, it was President George H.W. Bush who, in February 2001, as the Iraqi army was being driven from Kuwait, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

That call was rebroadcast in Iraq by clandestine CIA radio stations and printed in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force across the country. Problem was, the Iraqis didn't realize until it was too late that Bush and James Baker, his pragmatic secretary of state, didn't really mean it.

When it looked as if the insurgents might actually succeed, the American president turned his back. The White House and its allies wanted Saddam replaced not by a popular revolt which they couldn't control but by a military leader more amenable to U.S. interests. They were also fearful that Iranian influence might spread in the wake of a Shiite takeover. In fact, however, American officials refused to meet with rebel leaders desperate to explain their cause.

Though Washington explained later explained they had turned against the uprising because key Arab allies in the region, like the Saudis, were fearful of a Shiite victory in Iraq, in fact, the U.S. later turned down a Saudi proposal to continue aiding the Shiites.

So, as the United States permitted Saddam's attack helicopters to devastate the rebels, American troops just a few kilometers away from the slaughter were ordered to give no aid to those under attack. Instead they destroyed huge stocks of captured weapons rather than let them fall into rebel hands. According to some of the former rebels in Iraq, American troops prevented them from marching on Baghdad.

Then, as Saddam's forces began carrying out the horrific acts of repression, American forces were ordered to withdraw from Iraq. And all the while George H.W. Bush answered calls for the U.S. to act with denials that the U.S. had any responsibility in fomenting the rebellion in the first place.

In the end he agreed to provide a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds in the North, but that was only because the plight of the Kurdish refugees was being dramatically broadcast around the globe by CNN. Bush had no choice. There was no such TV coverage of the slaughter of the Shiites in the South. So no need for Bush to react.

(The description of the U.S. role in the 1991 uprising is recounted at length in my book Web of Deceit-a History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush--and (as mentioned above) in video form, from a segment of a documentary I did on the Trial of Saddam Hussein, which is posted on Youtube )