AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973-----Episode 19

              PENTAGON'S MASTER PLAN FOR 1984--1988

    The Pentagon's master plan for 1984---1988 ranked defense of the Middle East second only to the defense of North America and Western Europe. The plan explained : 

     Our principal objectives are to assure continued access to the Persian Gulf oil and to prevent the Soviets from acquiring political--military control of the oil directly or through proxies. It is essential that the Soviet Union be confronted with the prospect of a major conflict should it seek to reach oil resources of the Gulf. Whatever the circumstances, we should be prepared to introduce American forces directly into the region should it appear that the security of access to Pesian Gulf oil is threatened. 

   To put this into effect, the United States spent a billion dollars modernizing military bases and deployed nuclear-armed cruise missiles to Comiso, Italy, from which they could reach targets throughout the Middle East. It inserted itself into the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. It provided arms to Iran, helping it turn the tide and begin advancing, by mid-1982, toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Administration officials then had a change of heart and decided to do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent an Iranian victory. They did so knowing full well knowing that Iraq was using chemical weapons. On November 1, senior State Department official Jonathan Howe informed Secretary of State Shultz that Iraq was resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against Iran. In December 1983, Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Embassy reported that Saddam showed "obvious pleasure" at Rumsfeld's visit and the letter he presented from the president. 

   Rumsfeld assured Saddam that the United States was doing all it could to cut off arms sales to Iran. 

   Rumsfelt returned for a second visit the following March, partly to assure Saddam that the United States' priority was defeating Iran, not punishing Iraq for using chemical weapons. Howard Teicher, a Reagan NSC Iraq expert, later admitted in a sworn affidavit that the United States had "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." More than sixty officers at the Defense Intelligence Agency provided combat planning assistance. Teicher reported that Casey used a Chilean company to deliver cluster bombs, which could effectively repel Iran's human-wave attacks. U.S., British, and German arms manufacturers happily supplied Iraq's growing needs. Under license by the Commerce Committee, U.S. companies shipped several strains of anthrax that were later used in Iraq's biological weapons program and insecticides that could be used for chemical warfare. The Iraqi military brazenly warned in February 1984 "the invaders should know that for every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever the number and Iraq possesses the insecticide. " 

   Iran asked for a UN Security Council investigation. Although U.S. intelligence reports confirmed Iran's charges, the United States remained silent for several more months, before finally criticizing the Iraqi use of chemical warfare in early March. But when Iran proposed a UN resolution condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, U.S. Ambassador Kirkpatrick lobbied other countries to render "no decision." Upon the Iraqi ambassador's suggestion, the United States preempted the Iranian measure by getting a presidential statement in late March opposing the use of chemical weapons but not mentioning Iraq as the guilty party. In November 1984, the United States restored diplomatic relations with Iraq. Not only did the use of chemical warfare persist until the end of the with Iran, but in late 1987, the Iraqi air force began dropping chemical weapons against Iraq's own Kurdish citizens, whom the government accused of supporting Iran. The attacks against rebel-controlled villages peaked with the chemical warfare assault on the village of Halabjah in March 1988. Despite widespread outrage in the United States, including many from inside the administration, U.S. intelligence aid to Iraq actually increased in 1988 and, in December 1988, the government authorized a sale to Iraq of $1.5  million in insecticides by Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the napalm used in Vietnam.