If he croaks, Bushco wins.
The diplomacy of imperialism: Iraq and US foreign policy
Part seven: US financial assistance for Hussein in the 1980sBy Alex Lefebvre
26 March 2004
This is the seventh in a series of articles on the history of Iraq and its relationship with the US. The previous articles appeared on March 12, March 13, March 16, March 17, March 19 and March 24. Parts five and six documented the increasingly close ties of the American government with the Saddam Hussein regime during the 1980s. This article examines ways in which the US sought to help finance Iraq’s arms purchases. Unless otherwise noted, all citations are from documents publicly available in the Iraq section of the National Security Archive at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv or http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com.Having formally decided to covertly back the Hussein regime in the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan administration had to plan how best to support Iraq’s war effort. The Hussein government’s existing arms purchasing programs—with the USSR, with European allies of the US such as Britain, France, and Italy, and with US-supplied Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt—guaranteed it technical military superiority over Iran.
However, this massive outlay for weapons completely undermined Iraq’s public finances. A key element in the US program to bolster Hussein was therefore the search for ways to provide Hussein with funds. The Reagan administration explored two principal avenues: first, building an alternate oil pipeline from Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea, and second, providing credit, ostensibly for purchases of US produce, through the US Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). The latter means of support was continued by the first Bush administration up until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The Aqaba oil pipeline projectAlthough it never came to pass for lack of funding, the pipeline project was a favorite of high-level Reagan administration officials. It involved influence-peddling with US corporations and cold calculations concerning the US ruling elite’s interests in the Middle East. The pipeline would have been largely situated in Jordan, a US ally, and would have ended at the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
It would have had the advantage not only of securing Iraqi export revenue and improving its position in the war, but also of undercutting other key countries in the Middle East. It would have cut out Syria, a key exporter of Iraqi oil not aligned with the US. It would also have reduced Saudi Arabia’s bargaining power by providing the US with another source of cheap Middle Eastern oil.
CONTINUED TREACHERY...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/iraq-m26.shtmlBush Family Motto: "Dead men tell no tales."
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