Rumsfeld's Iraq overture.(Ahead Of The Curve)

ITEM: A headline in the December 19, 2003 Washington Post proclaimed: "Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 To Reassure Iraqis, Documents Show." A very telling subtitle added: "Trip Followed Criticism of Chemical Arms' Use." The article began:

 
   Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad 
   in March 1984 with instructions to 
   deliver a private message about 
   weapons of mass destruction: that the 
   United States' public criticism of Iraq 
   for using chemical weapons would 
   not derail Washington's attempts to 
   forge a better relationship, according 
   to newly declassified documents. 

ITEM: The New York Times for December 23, 2003 published a similar story, headlined "Rumsfeld Made Iraq Overture in '84 Despite Chemical Raids." The story stated:

 
   As a special envoy for the Reagan administration 
   in 1984, Donald H. 
   Rumsfeld, now the defense secretary, 
   traveled to Iraq to persuade officials 
   there that the United States was eager 
   to improve ties with President Saddam 
   Hussein despite his use of chemical 
   weapons, newly declassified documents 
   show.... During [the Iran-Iraq] 
   war, the United States secretly provided 
   Iraq with combat planning assistance, 
   even after Mr. Hussein's use 
   of chemical weapons was widely 
   known. 

AHEAD OF THE CURVE: Shortly before Christmas 2003, the nation's "prestige press" were all atwitter about supposedly new information concerning Donald Rumsfeld's 1984 trip to Baghdad as a special envoy of Secretary of State George Shultz and President Reagan. More recent subscribers to this magazine are most likely unaware (and veteran readers may have forgotten) that we have covered this issue several times over the years--and have provided considerably more detail and context than the recent stories about the new "revelations."

In a March 30, 1998 article, "Arming Saddam," for instance, senior editor William Norman Grigg reported:

 
   In fact, secret deals had been struck 
   between Iraq and the U.S. foreign 
   policy establishment in 1983. Even as 
   the Soviets were nurturing Iraq's embryonic 
   chemical and biological 
   weapons program, the U.S. State Department 
   was making its own overtures 
   to Saddam. With the help of an 
   obscure U.S. Department of Agriculture 
   program, an equally obscure Atlanta 
   branch of an Italian bank, and 
   the involuntary assistance of the U.S. 
   taxpayers, the foreign policy establishment 
   helped Saddam build his 
   war machine, including his weapons 
   of mass destruction. 
 
      In 1982, as a prelude to the U.S. 
   "tilt" toward Iraq in its war with Iran, 
   the State Department dropped Iraq 
   from its list of states that sponsor terrorism. 
   As ...