Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Poland says Iraq shells date to Iran war

The United States knew of the use of chemical weapons and in choosing not to deal effectively with the problem and taking an extremely restrained view signaled that Saddam’s use of chemical weapons was okay.

-Am


Warsaw, Poland, Jul. 2 (UPI) -- The Polish military has said shells containing a chemical weapons agent found in Iraq date back to the Iran-Iraq war, Polish radio reported Friday.

Polish radio said 17 rocket shells and two mortar shells had been found by Polish forces in late June. Some are said to contain a chemical agent called cyclosarin, a substance several times more potent than sarin.

The report said the shells dated back to the 1980-88 period and were of a type that had been used against both Kurdish separatists and the Iranians.

The U.S. military is investigating.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was justified by the Bush administration as a necessary pre-emptive strike against Saddam Hussein's regime, which was believed to have large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

No such stockpiles have so far been found.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040702-055713-6502r.htm

Reference:

March 28, 1988 -- Uses chemical weapons against Kurdish town of Halabja, killing estimated 5,000 civilians.

[From Iraq's first use of chemical weapons in 1983, the U.S. took a very restrained view. When the evidence of Iraqi use of these weapons could no longer be denied, the U.S. issued a mild condemnation, but made clear that this would have no effect on commercial or diplomatic relations between the United States and Iraq. Iran asked the Security Council to condemn Iraq's chemical weapons use, but the U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to try to prevent a resolution from coming to a vote, or else to abstain. An Iraqi official told the U.S. that Iraq strongly preferred a Security Council presidential statement to a resolution and did not want any specific country identified as responsible for chemical weapons use. On March 30, 1984, the Security Council issued a presidential statement condemning the use of chemical weapons, without naming Iraq as the offending party. (Battle.)

At the same time that the U.S. government had knowledge of that the Iraqi military was using chemical weapons, it was providing intelligence and planning assistance to the Iraqi armed forces. (Patrick Tyler, "Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq In War Despite Use Of Gas," New York Times, Aug. 18, 2002, p. 1.)

When Iraq used chemical weapons in March 1988 against Halabja, there was no condemnation from Washington. (Dilip Hiro, " which at least 50,000 and possibly 100,000," The Observer, September 1, 2002, p. 17.) "In September 1988, the House of Representatives voted 388 to 16 in favor of economic sanctions against Iraq, but the White House succeeded in having the Senate water down the proposal. In exchange for Export-Import Bank credits, Iraq merely had to promise not to use chemical weapons again, with agricultural credits exempted even from this limited requirement." (Rubin, "The United States and Iraq: From Appeasement to War," p. 261.)]