From: Adam 

Paul Ranson wrote:

> Is there evidence that Donald Rumsfeld visited Iraq to tell Saddam that it
> was OK to use chemical weapons against the Iranians?
>
> Paul
>
> "Adam"  wrote in message
> news:42f9db60$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>
>>The article is accurate.
>>... Adam
>
>
>
Oh btw wrt fao the orig is n the NYT & was never denied but:

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/iran_iraq_war_american_interest.php

"One of the battles for which the US provided battle planning packages
was the Iraqi capture of the strategic Fao peninsula in the Persian Gulf in
1988. Since Iraq eventually relied heavily on mustard gas in the battle, it
is clear the US battle plan tacitly included the use of such weapons. DIA
officers undertook a tour of inspection of the Fao peninsula after Iraqi
forces successfully re-took it, and they reported to their superiors on
Iraq’s extensive use of chemical weapons, but their superiors were not
interested. Col. Walter P. Lang, senior DIA officer at the time, says that
“The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep
strategic concern”. The DIA, he claimed, “would have never accepted the use
of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military
objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival.” (As
we shall see below, chemical weapons were used extensively by the Iraqi
army against Kurdish civilians, but DIA officers deny they were “involved
in planning any of the military operations in which these assaults
occurred”.) In the words of another DIA officer, “They (the Iraqis) had
gotten better and better” and after a while chemical weapons “were
integrated into their fire plan for any large operation”. A former
participant in the program told the New York Times that senior Reagan
administration officials did nothing to interfere with the continuation of
the program. The Pentagon “wasn’t so horrified by Iraq’s use of gas,” said
one veteran of the program. “It was just another way of killing
people—whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn’t make any difference,”
he said. The re-capture of the Fao peninsula was a turning-point in the
conflict, bringing Iran to the negotiating table. "


The main question revolves around the degree to which the DIA participated in Fao.

Adam

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