The US supplied them with weapons but they used them.
Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate)
Page S8987-S8998http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2002_cr/s092002.html">HOW SADDAM HAPPENED
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, yesterday, at a hearing of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, I asked a question of the Secretary of Defense. I
referred to a Newsweek article that will appear in the September 23,
2002, edition. That article reads as follows. It is not overly lengthy.
I shall read it. Beginning on page 35 of Newsweek, here is what the
article says:
America helped make a monster. What to do with him--and
what happens after he is gone--has haunted us for a quarter
century. The article is written by Christopher Dickey and Evan Thomas. It
reads as follows:
The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave
him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago,
Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the
historic moment.
The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a
private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to
Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a
pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident,"
according to a now declassified State Department cable
obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's
greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad,"
wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business,
talking about the need to improve relations between their two
countries.
Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that
Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was
trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already
bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time,
America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan
administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who
had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats
for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and
its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my
enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support
Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting
between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next
five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States
backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic
aid and covert supplies of munitions.
Rumsfeld is not the first American diplomat to wish for the
demise of a former ally. After all, before the cold war, the
Soviet Union was America's partner against Hitler in World
War II. In the real world, as the saying goes, nations have
no permanent friends, just permanent interests. Nonetheless,
Rumsfeld's long-ago interlude with Saddam is a reminder that
today's friend can be tomorrow's mortal threat. As President
George W. Bush and his war cabinet ponder Saddam's
successor's regime, they would do well to contemplate how and
why the last three presidents allowed the Butcher of Baghdad
to stay in power so long.
The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of
the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again,
America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as
the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No
single policymaker or administration deserves blame for
creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their
decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are
moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one
cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build
biological weapons. Let me read that again:
It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s,
America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission
to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build
biological weapons. But it happened.
SNIP--->
"According to confidential Commerce Department export control documents obtained
<[Page S8989>]
by Newsweek, the shopping list included a computerized
database for Saddam's Interior Ministry, presumably to help
keep track of political opponents, helicopters to help
transport Iraqi officials, television cameras for video
surveillance applications, chemical analysis equipment for
the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, IAEC, and, most
unsettling, numerous shipments of the bacteria, fungi,
protozoa to the IAEC. "According to former officials the bacterial cultures
could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax.
The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5
million atropine injectors for use against the effects of
chemical weapons but the Pentagon blocked the sale.
"The helicopters, some American officials later surmised,
were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds. The United States
almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that
Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops.
"When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a
lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988,
the Reagan administration first blamed Iran before
acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats,
that the culprit were Saddam's own forces. There was only
token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were
unfazed.
"An Iraqi audiotape later captured by the Kurds records
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Ali Chemical,
talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds.
Quote, `Who is going to say anything?' close quote, he asks,
`the international community? F-blank them!' exclamation
point, close quote." 
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