theatlantic | The U.S. knew about, and in one case helped, Iraq's chemical weapons
attacks against Iran in the 1980's, according to recently declassified
CIA documents obtained by Foreign Policy.
Their detailed timeline, also constructed with the aid of interviews
with former foreign intelligence officials, indicates that the U.S.
secretly had evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks in 1983. The evidence,
FP writes, is "tantamount to an official American admission of
complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever
launched."
Ever since last week's devastating evidence of chemical attacks in Syria, analysts have looked for benchmarks to predict the U.S.'s response. On Sunday, a U.S. official suggested that
the U.S. is moving closer to possible military action in the country as
the U.S. has "little doubt" that an "indiscriminate" chemical attack
took place. Officials are reportedly looking to the 1998 air war on Kosovo for a precedent
— a similar humanitarian crisis in the face of virtually no chance of a
U.N. Security Council resolution to authorize use of force, thanks to
dissent from Russia. And while Foreign Policy's additional reporting
places the Iraq situation in contrast to today's debate over Syria, the
details reveal just how sharply, in the past, the razor of U.S.
interests in the Middle East has cut: "it was the express policy of
Reagan to ensure an Iraqi victory in the war, whatever the cost," the
report explains. And apparently, that went up to and including helping
Saddam Hussein gas Iran.
