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Why did Donald Rumsfeld meet with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s? (last updated June 2004)
While speculating about what George W. Bush might have been thinking as he sat for several minutes after hearing about the World Trade Center attack, Fahrenheit 9/11 mentions Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983. There is some irony in such a meeting given the military action 20 years later, but it is worth noting the very different context.
At the time, Rumsfeld was acting as President Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy and was visiting Iraq as one of many stops in that time period. His first visit to Iraq was no secret; instead, the New York Times reported at the time that the State Department was hailing it as "an effort to demonstrate to the Arabs the American desire for good relations with them as well as the Israelis."
At the time, Iraq was involved in a war with neighboring Iran, a war that Iraq started with an attack in 1980 and that would go on until 1988. The United States was officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, but did saw Iran as more of a threat to U.S. interests. Iranian students had held Americans hostage from December 1979 to January 1981, Iran's new leader the Ayatollah Khomeini regularly referred to the United States as the "Great Satan," and Iran threatened to cut off oil supply routes.
Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran does appear to have been a concern to the United States at the time. Official documents indicate that the United States did know that Iraq had used chemical weapons against Iran and had warned Iraq against doing so as early as November 1983. According to official documents available on-line here, Rumsfeld did not raise concerns about chemical weapons in his December 1983 meeting with Saddam Hussein, but did tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the United States' "efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us[,] citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights."
The United States then publicly condemned Iraq's chemical weapons use on March 5, 1984. Rumsfeld visited Iraq again weeks later, and documents indicate that "bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW use, despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge sooner or later."
Despite Iraq's continued use of chemical weapons, the United States formally restored diplomatic relations with Iraq in November 1984 (Iraq and all other Arab nations broke ties with the United States in 1967 after Israel's war defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan).
Sources: Bernard Gwertzman, U.S. 'expects' Irsrael to stop hindering Arafat evacuation, New York Times, December 20, 1983. George Washington University's archive on the Rumsfeld visit to Iraq is on-line here.
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Sept. 11, 2001
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