[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 17 (Thursday, January 30, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1767-S1770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE SITUATION IN IRAQ
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, as I understood the President in his
State of the Union speech earlier this week, it is his intention to
begin military action against Iraq sometime in the near future. That
stated intention of the President causes me some grave concern, and I
wanted to come to the Senate floor today and express that concern.
Let me begin by stating the propositions with which we all agree.
First, I think we all agree Saddam Hussein is a brutal despot who has
terrorized his own people and has threatened his neighboring States for
many years. Second, whether or not Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction in a readily usable form at this time, we must assume that
given the opportunity he will obtain those weapons. Third, it is very
much in our interest as a Nation, and in the interest of our allies,
that Saddam Hussein be prevented from acquiring or maintaining those
weapons.
But the question before the country today is narrower than these
propositions. The question before the country is whether we should cut
short the inspection process that is currently underway. The U.N.
inspection process is a process that we rightly insisted upon in our
earlier deliberations with the Security Council. So the question is
whether we should cut short that inspection process and begin a
military action to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.
The President has moved aggressively to prepare this Nation for war.
The total number of personnel who have been either ordered to deploy,
or who have been put on alert to do so, is roughly 148,000. There are
roughly 23,000 marines en route to the Persian Gulf aboard three major
task forces. There are roughly 25,000 sailors and aviators attached to
the various carrier battle groups and amphibious task forces that are
either en route to the region, on standby, or are on surge status.
These forces include some 175 aircraft of all types and over 1,000 VLS
launch tubes carrying nearly 500 cruise missiles.
So steps have been taken to prepare us militarily for war. Today, we
are, simply put, on the brink of war. But while these military
preparations have occurred, there has also been a parallel effort going
on through the U.N. to ascertain what weapons of mass destruction
Saddam Hussein holds, where those weapons are located, and what threat
those weapons pose to his neighbors and to other free nations.
We have come to a difficult decision point. The Pentagon is advising
the President that military preparations are nearly complete. The
President must decide whether this country should proceed militarily in
the next few weeks or whether we should continue to support the efforts
of U.N. inspectors to carry out the instructions that were given them
by the U.N. Security Council, on which we sit.
In my view, the President should allow the U.N. inspectors to
continue their work. If they are denied access to sites they wish to
inspect, then the use of military force will be justified. If they find
substantial evidence of a weapons program that threatens Iraq's
neighbors, then we should join with those neighbors in eliminating that
threat. But up until this date, up until today, neither of these
circumstances prevails. The inspectors themselves have so stated, and
they have asked for additional time to complete their work.
The decision the President makes on going to war with Iraq will be
the first test of the new National Security Strategy that was issued by
the White House in September of last year. In that document, the
President acknowledges that the legitimacy of preemptive military
action depends ``on the existence of an imminent threat.''
Right after that statement appears in this document, however, the
document speaks of ``adapting the concept of imminent threat.'' How
much adaptation of that concept is wise? How much adaptation of that
concept makes sense for ourselves and our allies as a precedent for the
future?
This National Security Strategy document that the administration
issued in September of last year goes on to talk about our willingness
as a nation to take military action to preempt emerging threats. Here
the President is contemplating, in the circumstance before us today,
military action not to meet a specific identified military threat but
to depose a hostile government, even though no imminent military threat
has been identified.
In his State of the Union Address, the President framed the issue as
being whether ``war is forced upon us.'' He stated that, ``If war is
forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the U.S.
military--and we will prevail.'' I, and I am sure most Americans, agree
with that statement. But in my view, as of this date, war has not been
forced upon us. It is not credible for us to assert as a nation that
war has been forced upon us.
The U.N. inspection process proceeds. If there is evidence of an
imminent threat that requires us to take preemptive military action, I
have not seen
[[Page S1768]]
that evidence. Many Americans and many of our allies also have been
unpersuaded by the evidence they have seen.
The more willing we are to assert the right to start a war to change
the government of a sovereign state, the more we risk encouraging
preemptive action by other nations against governments they wish to
depose. And the less we need to identify an imminent threat before
beginning a war, the more we undermine efforts to avoid unprovoked
conflict in the future.
The President was right to go to the United Nations and to insist
that U.N. inspectors return to Iraq. His latest decision to send
Secretary Powell to the Security Council to present evidence of the
threat posed by Iraq is also proper, and I look forward to hearing what
that evidence is. But unless that evidence demonstrates a threat that
requires military action now, the wise course is for us to hold off on
that military action and allow the U.N. inspectors to do their work.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, I rise to share with my colleagues my
very great concern over ties between Iraq's probable possession of
biological and chemical weapons and the potentially catastrophic
actions taken by the Reagan and Bush, Sr., administrations, including
the active assistance of then ``special envoy'' and now Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This arming of Saddam Hussein with weapons of
mass destruction by the Reagan and Bush, Sr., administrations has now
been disclosed from what were previously classified documents, as
reported recently by the Washington Post.
I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2002]
U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup; Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed
Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds
(By Michael Dobbs)
High on the Bush administration's list of justifications
for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of
chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his
contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials
rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a
period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.
Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward
Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H.
Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting
with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way
for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified
documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time
when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an ``almost daily''
basis in defiance of international conventions.
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the
years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait--which included large-
scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a
Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of
chemical and biological precursors--is a topical example of
the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which
deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations
sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms
proliferators, all on the principle that the ``enemy of my
enemy is my friend.'' Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq
was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an
Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark
against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-
American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even
Jordan--a Middle East version of the ``domino theory'' in
Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a
strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to
routinely refer to Iraqi forces as ``the good guys,'' in
contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as ``the bad
guys.''
A review of thousands of declassified government documents
and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S.
intelligence and logistical and support a crucial role in
shoring up Iraqi defenses against the ``human wave'' attacks
by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald
Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of
numerous items that had both military and civilian
applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly
biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.
Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former
government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether
Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad
of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.
``It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right
now,'' says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst
and author of ``The Threatening Storm,'' which makes the case
for war with Iraq. ``My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were
warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character.
We were constantly fighting the State Department.''
``Fundamentally, the policy was justified,'' argues David
Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an
anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. ``We were concerned
that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that
would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-
term hope was that Hussein's government would become less
repressive and more responsible.''
What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein
of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of
the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait
that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from
awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United
States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001
terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S.
policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat
posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an
Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to
the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The
United States did not have diplomatic relations with either
Baghdad or Teheran. U.S. officials had almost as little
sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism
as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries
fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was
disposed to intervene.
By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had
changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on
the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a
few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S.
intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve
a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the
Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S.
oil supplies.
``You have to understand the geostrategic context, which
was very different from where we are now,'' said Howard
Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who
worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration.
``Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation
from getting worse.''
To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration
supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups
to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi
Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National
Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the
few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still
remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the
directive stated that the United States would do ``whatever
was necessary and legal'' to prevent Iraq from losing the war
with Iran.
The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of
reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in
their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle,
Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a
practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice,
U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked
relatively low on the scale of administration priorities,
particularly compared with the all-important goal of
preventing an Iranian victory.
Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official,
Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz
that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were
resorting to ``almost daily use of CW'' against the Iranians.
But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to
a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad,
culminating in several visits by the president's recently
appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H.
Rumsfeld.
Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit
to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114,
including the statement that the United States would regard
``any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat
for the West.'' When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on
Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready
for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a
State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders
later described themselves as ``extremely pleased'' with the
Rumsfeld visit, which had ``elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to
a new level.''
In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he
``cautioned'' Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a
claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his
90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon
spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the
issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq
Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it
largely in passing as one of several matters that
``inhibited'' U.S. efforts to assist Iraq.
Rumsfeld has also said he had ``nothing to do'' with
helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S.
officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects
of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq--he was a
private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy--the
documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to
[[Page S1769]]
closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts.
Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations
immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step
until the following year.
As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan
administration removed Iraq from the State Department
terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections
from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would
have been ``impossible to take even the modest steps we were
contemplating'' to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq--along
with Syria, Libya and South Yemen--was one of four original
countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.
Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the
terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the
Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983.
On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged
terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu
Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found
refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for
masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille
Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American
tourist.
While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad,
Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across
Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms
buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi
charg d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who
impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most
skillful lobbyists in town.
``He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight
out of the mafia,'' recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East
specialist in the Reagan White House. ``Within six months, he
was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he
parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was
particularly effective with the American Jewish community.''
One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green
Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian
soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle
East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem.
Hamdoon used to ``parade the scarf'' to conferences and
congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over
Iraq would result in ``Israel becoming a victim along with
the Arabs.''
According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in
1995, the United States ``actively supported the Iraqi war
effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of
credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the
Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to
Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required.''
Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director
William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq
with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian
human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.
At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating
the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it
was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under ``Operation
Staunch.'' Those efforts were largely successful, despite the
glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the
White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in
violation of the policy that the United States was trying to
impose on the rest of the world.
Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply
involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry
to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind
eye to the export of ``dual use'' items such as chemical
precursors and steel tubes that can have military and
civilian applications. According to several former officials,
the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such
items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political
leverage over Hussein.
When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into
Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of
chemicals, missile components, and computers from American
suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide
and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.
A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned
up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the
mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department,
including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified
by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological
warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the
export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions
that they were being used for chemical warfare.
The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a
secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman
effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling
warning to Iran. ``The invaders should know that for ever
harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of
annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation
insecticide.''
In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical
agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq
that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to
State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a
``scorched earth'' strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled
villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed
demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and
White House were also outraged--but not to the point of doing
anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad.
``The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our
long-term political and economic objectives,''
Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a
September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical
weapons question. ``We believe that economic sanctions
will be useless or counterproductive to influence the
Iraqis.''
Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of
chemical weapons ``against his own people''--and particularly
the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah--to
bolster their argument that his regime presents a ``grave and
gathering danger'' to the United States.
The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the
Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force
intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding
widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw
peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its
recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered
with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an
antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.
Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military
intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to
a 1999 book by Francna, ``Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness
Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace,'' Informed sources said
much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the
Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.
Altough U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in
the late 1980s, thee were still many loopholes. In December
1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq,
despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as
chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official
reported in a memorandum that he could find ``no reason'' to
stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were
``highly toxic'' to humans and would cause death ``from
asphyxiation.''
The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and
reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded
Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S.
ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on
July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she
assured him that Bush ``wanted better and deeper relations,''
according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation.
``President Bush is an intelligent man,'' the ambassador told
Hussein, referring to the father of the current president.
``He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq.''
``Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam,'' said
Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in
Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein.
``Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to
deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and
commercial relationships that would have the effect of
moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this
was a miscalculation.''
Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. President, my concern today is not to lay blame for
past decisions which now place every American family, every American
community in very real jeopardy from these weapons of mass destruction
and which now give rise to the clear possibility, if not great
likelihood, of war in Iraq with its attendant costs in lives of
combatants and innocent civilians alike. Rather, it is my concern that
this Senate and this Nation clearly understand how we arrived at this
point so that we might learn from our Nation's past tragic mistakes.
As Mr. Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post writes:
The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the
years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait--which included large-
scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a
Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of
chemical and biological precursors--is a topical example of
the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which
deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations
sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms
proliferators. . . .
The United States also provided billions of dollars in credits to
help arm Iraq, ostensibly to assist with its war at that time against
Iran.
The review of declassified documents and interviews with former
policymakers:
reveals that the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George
H. W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that
had both military and civilian applications, including
poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as
anthrax and bubonic plague.
Anthrax and bubonic plague from the United States to Iraq.
The Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State
Department terrorism list in 1982 over the strong objections
of Congress. Despite this delisting, Iraq continued
throughout the 1980s to harbor terrorists, including even Abu
Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Front.
The Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to
the export of dual use items such as chemical precursors and
steel
[[Page S1770]]
tubes that can have military and civilian applications. . . .
When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq
after the 1991 Gulf war, they compiled long lists of
chemicals, missile components, and computers from American
suppliers.
Mr. President, sadly, there is no new precedent in our Government
using our citizens' tax dollars to finance the purchase of weaponry for
antidemocratic, antihuman rights, and unstable foreign nations only to
see their short-term friendship disappear and to have them become
enemies to the United States and the Western World. What is truly
shocking here, however, is that the very possession of chemical and
biological weapons of mass destruction, which is the justification for
a new war in Iraq and which places in jeopardy the safety of American
families, American communities, and American military personnel, is, in
large measure, the consequence of decisions made by the Reagan and Bush
administrations.
As we speak, tens of thousands of U.S. gulf war veterans continue to
suffer from exposure to chemical agents over a decade ago. We in
Congress debate whether and how to inoculate hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of Americans to protect them from biological weapons that
their own Government helped create in Iraq.
It is one thing that our Nation would have provided cluster bombs and
conventional weaponry to Saddam Hussein--it no doubt seemed important
and strategically helpful to the purpose of stabilizing the Middle East
during the 1980's. But how can members of this Senate look members of
our military in the eye--and I include my own son, a sergeant in the
101st Airborne and a veteran of Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan--and
acknowledge that these past administrations, albeit without
congressional knowledge or consent, allowed Iraq to acquire the
anthrax, and bubonic plague viruses?
The circumstance our Nation now faces, from the threats of Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction as well as the possibility that these
weapons have or will fall into the hands of Al-Qaida or other non-state
terrorist organizations, are to a great degree, circumstances of our
own making. Obviously, no American administration has ever supported
terrorism against our own people, though interfering with Iraq's use of
these weapons against many of its own people was apparently not a
matter of first concern to the U.S.
The lesson should be clear--to the extent that the U.S. arms the
world, it undertakes a risk that those weapons could be used against
our own citizens. While helping proven democratic allies to defend
themselves will always be a legitimate role for the U.S., it is hard to
imagine a lesson driven home more profoundly than we find today that
arming non-democracies is a much greater risk, and arming non-
democracies with weapons of chemical and biological warfare capability
is an outrageous and utterly unacceptable risk to the U.S. and the
world. It may be impossible for our Nation to avoid reaping what is has
sown in the past, but this administration, this Congress and the
American people must be united now in committing never again to be even
a unwitting instrument of chemical, biological or nuclear terror in the
world.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
____________________