By Nathaniel Hurd
Global Policy ForumOctober 20, 2005
Saddam Hussein's defense team may present evidence about US Iraq policy 1979 - 2 August 1990 (when Iraq invaded Kuwait). Military, economic and intelligence support was part of that policy, especially during the Iran-Iraq War. Below are several resources on those three forms of support.
1. Alan Friedman, "Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq", (New York: Bantam Books, 1993)
• Friedman had been writing for the Financial Times. The Observer (London) reported "Early this year, Alan Friedman and the team working on the book, Spider's Web, received threatening telephone calls in New York. There were also two break-ins at a flat where they had stored thousands of documents...By April, Friedman had been the target of a dozen such calls, as had the chief researcher on the book. Friedman asked New York District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, to help. Morgenthau provided electronic counter-surveillance and arranged for Friedman and four members of his team to stay at a safe house outside the city...There they completed the book between May and August, protected round the clock by bodyguards armed with assault rifles." (The Observer, "Author Had Armed Guards", 7 November 1993)
• As of 2003, Friedman was writing for the International Herald Tribune.
2. Bruce W Jentleson, "With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982-1990", (New York: WW Norton, 1994)
3. Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, "Unholy Babylon: The Secret History of Saddam's War", (New York: St Martin's Press, 1991)
4. Mark Phythian, "Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War Machine", (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997
Other Resources Include:
5. Bob Woodward, "CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War; Target Data From U.S. Satellites Supplied for Nearly 2 Years", Washington Post, 15 December 1986
6. Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas were finalists for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. They were nominated "For documenting the clandestine effort of the U.S. government to supply money and weapons to Iraq in the 1980's and up to the weeks before the Gulf War." (www.pulitzer.org)
7. Murray Waas and Craig Unger, "In the Loop: Bush's Secret Mission," The New Yorker, 2 November 1992
8. Natahniel Hurd, "U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990", CASI, 15 July 2000
Available at http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html
More Information on the US and British Support for Hussein Regime
More Information on the Historical Background of the Iraq Conflict
More Information on the Iraqi Tribunal
Links and Resources on Iraq