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In 1988, the United States government conveyed important information that helped Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military to counter the Iranian military. The information given to the Iraqi military included maps and images regarding Iranian locations and troops, as well as critical logistics and details about Iranian air defense.
The United States was at that time aware that Hussein’s military would attack using chemical weapons. Iraq’s military had used mustard gas and a lethal nerve agent, sarin before, on “four major offensives in early 1988.” The U.S. helped Iraq to win the war, as Iraqi intelligence used the satellite imagery, maps and other information to their benefit. The result was that Iran was forced to “come to the negotiating table”
U.S. officials have “long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein’s government never announced he was going to use the weapons. “Retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona was a military attaché in Baghdad during 1988, he comments, “the Iraqi’s never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.”
New CIA documents reveal new details that show the “depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. Though ForeignPolicy.com mentions that this is ultimately an “American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical attacks ever launched,” I don’t think complicit is an appropriate word. America has been the ‘world police’ since before my birth, but I still am clueless as to why it is the role of the U.S. military to control and observe every government’s doings. As much as I read history, I don’t see that Vietnam was a necessary war, cold-war notwithstanding. Why does having knowledge make you complicit?
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The CIA commented that the nerve agent’s use “could have a significant impact on Iran’s human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy.” The CIA also intuited that if the Iraqis had the nerve agent, surely they would use it on their enemies in the current war. Also the CIA went on to speculate that if the Iranians found out that the US was involved and had evidence, that they would take the situation to the international courts and to the UN.
Col. Francona reported that thousands were reported dead due to the nerve agent sarin, and that he himself scooped up sarin-cure injectors as proof from battlegrounds that the Iraqi’s were using the chemical in their warfare. The agent was put into bombs as well. The last large attack using the nerve toxin was called the ‘Blessed Ramadan Offensive’ and used more of the toxin than ever had been employed. Until the strikes at Damascus last week.
