Pentagon Proposed Training Iraqis : Military: Documents show that three months before invasion of Kuwait, U.S. sought closer ties to Saddam Hussein’s soldiers.

The Pentagon proposed training Iraqi soldiers and arranging reciprocal visits to war colleges shortly before Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, documents obtained by a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee show.

Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-Conn.), subcommittee chairman, said Monday night that the documents were obtained from the Administration as part of a probe of U.S. policy toward Iraq before the Persian Gulf War.

Three months before Iraq’s armed forces invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed to train Iraqi soldiers in land-mine countermeasures, aerial reconnaissance and field operations, an aide to Gejdenson said the documents showed.

The documents also mention arranging reciprocal visits to war colleges and other exchanges, said John Scheibel, staff director of the subcommittee chaired by Gejdenson.

The Washington Post reported in today’s editions that the stated aim of the exchanges was to increase U.S. “access and influence” with the Iraqi military.

The documents add a military dimension to previous revelations of U.S. support for expanding U.S.-Iraqi commercial ties and continuing the sharing of sensitive U.S. intelligence information with Baghdad when the regime there was building up its war machine.

“Even after (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein threatened (in April, 1990) to ‘burn half of Israel’ with binary chemical weapons, attempted (in March, 1990) to smuggle nuclear triggers and moved missile bases (in early 1990) closer to Israel, the Department of Defense wanted to provide him with military assistance,” Gejdenson said. “What could DOD have been thinking?”

Scheibel said the documents first were requested in April, 1991, and a subpoena resulted in Democratic lawmakers receiving most of the material by July, 1991. But those documents referred to two others that the panel obtained just two weeks ago.

The documents have been declassified, Scheibel said.

In October, 1989, President Bush secretly ordered consideration “on a case-by-case basis” of non-lethal military assistance to Iraq, the Post said the documents showed. The Joint Chiefs suggested starting the exchanges in response to Bush’s secret directive.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon could not be reached by telephone for comment Monday night.

Scheibel said the subcommittee “will continue to look” at the documents because “you see references to others.”

“It’s like putting pieces of a puzzle together, to a certain extent,” he said, adding that hearings probably will be held on “why the United States was helping out Iraq.”