Defensible Idea--Went On Too long : President’s explanation of aid to Iraq is weak

President Bush concedes now that it might have been a mistake to provide American aid to Iraq throughout most of the 1980s, but in comments to the American Society of Newspaper Editors he raises the familiar argument that the need to keep anti-Western forces in Iran in check was a compelling motive for doing so.

Concerns about what course Iran’s militant Islamic revolution might take were demonstrably justified and, to the extent that Iraq might have provided a counterbalancing force, a respectable case could be made for giving it some help. The problem, as confidential documents recently obtained by The Times disclose, is that the help extended by the Reagan and Bush administrations was not only extraordinarily generous but lasted until the spring of 1990, just a few months before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Lower-tier officials who raised alarm signals about the scope of this program were overridden at the highest levels. Several congressional committees now want to know why.

George Bush, as the recent three-part series in this paper by Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas made clear, took a lead role from his position as vice president in the Reagan Administration in the pro-Iraq lobbying. The wide-spectrum help extended to Baghdad included intelligence data on Iran’s armed forces; sales of advanced technology, some of which had direct military applications; and commodity loans to buy American farm products. The intelligence data may have helped Iraq prepare for its invasion of Kuwait. Some of the technology--along with that provided by other Western countries--aided Iraq’s nuclear and chemical warfare programs. And the commodity loans let Iraq divert foreign exchange to buy weapons abroad. Baghdad’s default on those loans, incidentally, has cost American taxpayers $2 billion.

The over-arching mistake in all this was the belief that by getting palsy-walsy with Saddam Hussein the United States could curb his ambitions to dominate the Persian Gulf, convert him from supporting terrorism and maybe even moderate the viciousness of his dictatorship. This self-deluding policy was pursued by the Bush Administration literally to the eve of the invasion of Kuwait, as it sought to head off moves in Congress to get tougher with Iraq.

In the end, of course, the tiger was found still to have its stripes, and the United States found itself looking not just a bit foolish but even culpable. Something to remember the next time policy-makers think they see virtue in getting all warm and cozy with a dictator.