Interview with Joyce Battle, National Security Archive, Senior Fellow

July 14th, 2004
Transcribed by Ben Tupper

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Alright so -- Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and what you do here at the National Security Archive.
JOYCE BATTLE: My name is Joyce Battle. I'm the director of publications here at the National Security Archive. And I also, when I have the opportunity, am an analyst for Middle East Affairs.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. So why don't you talk a little bit about the importance of having historical context for whenever we look at foreign policy issues.
BATTLE: Well, to understand -- Foreign policy obviously means you're engaging with the people in governments of other countries, and to understand their perspectives to understand how they are likely to respond to US decisions -- to US policy initiatives -- You need to have some understanding of their -- the contexts that they will be operating from. Their sense of their own history, their sense of their own interests, and so forth. I think the United States has tendency to have a rather parochial view of the world, to not really understand the perspectives and interests of other countries, and that can lead to very difficult situations.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. How's that sound? Is that loud enough? -- [Yeah.]-- Okay. -- [It's a little soft, but it's good. I can hear it.] -- You can hear it? Okay. And -- So in the context of Iraq, what are some of the historical details that may have been left out by the official government viewpoint -- some our history towards Iraq.
BATTLE: Well, I think that there were a great many. One that --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Oh, I'm sorry. In the actual film, I'm not going to be having my question at all. So if I have to stop you -- I just want to make sure that whenever you start speaking that it can stand on its own. So try to incorporate the question somehow.
BATTLE: Okay. The Bush administration's decision making regarding Iraq -- at least to the extent that it was reflected in the public discourse in the news media -- seemed to be almost totally bereft of any understanding or any consideration of Iraqi history -- or to the extent that the Bush administration policy makers were aware of that history, it didn't seem to affect their own views of how the United States should proceed. I mean, one very obvious example of that is the extreme importance of nationalism in the view of many Iraqis toward the world. At least in the way that the US explained its planning for invading Iraq, they tried to convey the impression that the vast majority of Iraqi people would welcome a US invasion and the US presence in their country. Obviously that is not what is going on now. And that would not be surprising to anyone who has an understanding of Iraq's history, especially during the twentieth century. Because much of that history was based on dealing with the effects of British and French colonialism in the Middle East, and attempts of the British to maintain their influence in that country for as long as possible. If there's one thing that you can expect -- you could have expected that a very large proportion of the Iraqi people would be opposed to, it would be the presence of foreign forces in their country. And the fact that that seems to have surprised many US decision makers and many members of the media is a rather astonishing thing.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And can you speak on -- in general terms, but also specifically to this issue, of how there may be a difference between the government rhetoric and what their actual actions and their policy are? And how the importance of re-looking at a lot of these documents to kind of get the full -- the other side of what was actually happening?
BATTLE: Well, it was clear, I felt, during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, that obviously when a government decides to go to war -- and that was a decision made quite early on by the Bush administration -- they need to win the support of the public. And to influential people in the country in order to carry out that policy. During the first war with Iraq back in 1991, the first Bush administration after sort of floundering around experimenting with the justifications for committing US troops to respond to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and persuading other countries to join in that US reaction, they found that raising concerns about Iraq's nuclear program was the most effective in persuading members of the American public to go to war. When the second Bush administration wanted to gain the same sort of public support for invading Iraq -- and they had to work a while to gain that support at the outset -- my recollection is that public opinion polls showed that most -- the majority of Americans did not favor going to war, which is sort of routine. Normally populations do not welcome the idea of going to war with another country. But that public support was gained by emphasizing and exploiting certain issues. One of those was creating an equation in the mind of the public between the events of September 11th and Saddam Hussein, even though there was no such evidence of any connection. And it seemed to be very unlikely that there should have been a connection, given the traditional disparity between the Islamists who are associated with al Qaeda and the worldview of Saddam Hussein and his government in Iraq. Second issue that was exceedingly important was evoking Iraq's programs for weapons of mass destruction. There was a certain amount of credibility to that, and that's always useful when you're trying to wage a public relations campaign. Because Iraq did have advanced -- or extensive chemical and biological warfare programs and had used chemical weapons during the war with Iran without generating more than pro forma opposition from the US government at that time. Nuclear weapons -- The idea of Iraq having nuclear weapons, using them against the United States or providing them to an enemy of the United States was of course a concept that was extremely frightening, and it was effective in winning public support for the war. The problem is it is extemely unlikely that Iraq would have ever made a decision to utilize such weapons against the United States or to in any way participate or contribute to the use of such weapons by any other entity because there's no way that Iraq could have dealt with any retaliation from the United States. And again, traditionally, during recent decades, Iraq has not been particularly interested in hostile relations with the United States. Iraq has been very interesting in trying to improve those relations to the extent that it could, and there was -- You couldn't really devise any reason why Iraq would ever have initiated aggressive actions in the this way against the United States itself. Iraq's interests in its region, obviously don't conform to the United States. You might have been able to make a credible argument that the Iraqi government could have initiated actions that would have threatened US allies in the region, but on the other hand it was very well known that Iraq's military and economic and political infrastructure had been decimated by the first Gulf War and by the sanctions regime that was imposed by the US and British after that war. So it was hardly credible that Iraq could ever have figured in any way as a real threat to the United States. But it was very important in that case to evoke fear and insecurity in the American people. And to build up their support for taking preemptive action against the Iraqis.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: A lot of people on the Left will say, "Well we supported Saddam in the 80s." And then some people on the Right will say "It doesn't matter -- 'the dirty hands argument '-- whether we supported him or not. It just matters what's happening right now." Can you give your sense of the importance of our history with Iraq and where you fall in that?
BATTLE: Well, one aspect of that -- One problem with that is
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I'm sorry, when you say "that" --
BATTLE: Oh. I'm sorry.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: That's alright.
BATTLE: You're asking -- As to the question -- As to whether the fact that the United States -- the Reagan and first Bush administrations -- supported the Iraqi government when it served US interests during the 1980s, whether that has any relevance to policy now. I guess, it wouldn't have relevance if the view of the US -- the Bush administration -- for a apparently short period of time that it could act in the world totally unilaterally, and did not need the support of other governments or other peoples, then perhaps you can make that case. But it appears at this time in the summer of 2004 that even the Bush administration feels that it does needs wider international support in order to defend US interests. And there is an interest among the people of the world in avoiding hypocrisy. If the United States wants to evoke the Geneva Convention and the United Nations charter and international law in criticizing programs for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, then there is an expectation among many, I think, that that -- those standards be applied consistently. It weakened the Bush administration's argument among the views of many -- who had familiarity with what US policy had been during the Iran/Iraq war -- it weakened the argument that the US was extremely opposed to chemical and biological weapons programs because many people knew that during the period of time that Iraq was actually using those weapons. At that time, it was felt to be -- to serve US interests to see that Iraq was not defeated in the war with Iran. And so again, it's criticism of the actual use of those weapons was quite muted.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you talk about international law -- Talk about some of the international law implications of the US knowing that this was going on. And actually go into what the US knew. I think in a lot -- you hear about Halabja as being the humanitarian reasons for going to war in Iraq without any sort of historical context with what the US policy actually was during that time. So can you elaborate on -- talk about when that happened what the US tried to do.
BATTLE: The Bush administration often evokes Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in Halabja when it's making its case about criminal and how evil the regime of Saddam Hussein was. It tends to de-emphasize, if it mentions at all, Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians. And I don't think that's an acceptable argument, because in a way the lack of an international response -- a strong international response to Iraq's use of chemical weapons against the Iranians probably was a necessary precedent for the Iraqi government to assume that it could use the same sort of weapons against the Kurds. From the Iraqi point of view, the Iran/Iraq war was a very complicated conflict. And part of it involved both the Iraqis and the Iranians supporting opposition groups in their protagonist country -- among their protagonist populations. So throughout the war, the Iranians were providing a certain amount of support to Kurds in Iraq because that was helpful to the Iranian war effort. So from the Iraqi point of view, I'm not justifying this obviously, but they could have felt that their use of chemical weapons against the Kurds was just a continuation of their use of such weapons against the Iranians, because there was a certain amount of collaboration between Iraqi Kurds and the Iranians. Again the support for anti-government activities occurred on both sides. And again, by the time of the Halabja attacks and other policies that the Iraqis had carried out against Iraqi Kurds in 1987 and 1988, it had been known for a good 5 years about Iraq's persistent use of chemical weapons. And this had not in any way deterred the United States from providing political support to the Iraqis, considerable economic support to the Iraqi government, intelligence support to the Iraqi government, and probably at least direct military support to the Iraqi government, plus the sale of dual-use technology, which is the sort of technology that can be used for military purposes even if it has other uses as well in Iraq. The United States government had not imposed really restrictive controls on the export of agents that could possibly have served as the precursors for the preparation of chemical and biological weapons, even though it had -- when it was providing such exports to the Iraqis it had known about Iraq's use of nuclear [sic] weapons against Iranian forces for at least several years.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So I just want to encapsulate that point, again, because I think it's important -- That -- After the chemical weapons attacks that the United States actually was supporting Iraq still. Can you say that again, and then emphasize like "Why they were doing that ?"-- Why we would still supporting Iraq after we knew they were using chemical weapons?
BATTLE: The United States didn't want either Iran or Iraq to come out of the Iran/Iraq War as a clear victory. It didn't have very good relations with either country. It didn't want Iran to win because that would have reflected well on the Islamic revolution in Iran. And relations between the US and Iran were very, very hostile after the Islamic revolution of 1979. But traditionally, relations between the US and the Iraqis had been rather distant as well. Iraq had -- was a nationalistic government, it had experimented with socialist policies, it was extremely critical of the conservative Gulf monarchies that were closely allied with the United States. So the US didn't really want Iraq to come out of the war in great shape either. But again, it did not want either side to win a clear victory. The US started providing considerably more assistance to Iraq during 1981 and 1982 when Iranian forces started doing better in their fighting with the Iraqis. Again, the US did not want to see Iran defeat Iraq. So it started having discussions with the Iraqis about what sort of assistance could be provided. It had discussions with it's allies in the region, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia to a certain extent, were extremely concerned about Iran winning in the war. They were very supportive of US assistance for the Iraqis. And that remained basically the policy. The US remained -- would have been interested in improving relations with the Iranians if that had been possible. But Iran, under the Ayatollah Khomeini were not really interested in -- The Iranians under the Ayatollah were not really interested in improving US-Iranian relations. And the US wanted to provide enough assistance to Iraq to make sure, again, that it wasn't defeated in the war. The war lasted -- dragged on for 8 years, and it was extremely economically difficult for the Iraqis. Oil prices declined during the war as well. And of course, Iraq's economy is dependent on Iraqi -- on the sale of oil. So in order to allow the Iraqis to sustain the war effort and not to have to give in to Iranian demands, economic and other assistance had to be provided to them. And it was felt to be in the interest of the United States during both the Reagan -- well, this is primarily a Reagan administration policy -- to provide enough assistance to Iraq to make sure that it was not defeated by the Iranians. That was the greater good, to prevent an Iranian victory.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And what was the public position of the Reagan administration? And what were they actually doing?
BATTLE: The declared position throughout the war was one of neutrality. And throughout the war the United States declared that it was not providing any weapons to either Iran or Iraq. It modified its policy -- You have to talk about the war historically, because again it lasted for 8 years and the policy sort of changed depending on how things were happening on the ground. At the outset, the US opposed weapons sales to either Iran or Iraq, because the international response -- the United Nations response to the war was to do everything that could be done to end it as quickly as possible. It was obviously a disastrous war -- a very, very bloody, very disruptive. And that was the US policy as well. So again, throughout the war the US declared policy was neutrality, but depending on -- in response to how things were going in the fighting. Within the first couple of years as Iraqi forces were stopped in their initial advance into Iran, the United States increased its discussions with its allies about the way -- about ways that that support could be provided to the Iraqis. US policy toward the war was not guided strictly by its views of either Iran or Iraq, that aspect has to be kept in mind as well. The US was very concerned about this war because there was the potential that it would widen and involve closer US allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf monarchies. And an issue that was of extreme concern to the United States was that either Iran or Iraq would undertake initiatives that would threaten Gulf shipping and the transit of Middle Eastern oil out to the US, Europe, and Japan. So that was another very strong motivating factor for US policy toward the war. It undertook measures to try to make sure that nothing happened that would interfere with the oil facilities in the region, and that again tended to argue in favor of providing assistance to the Iraqis.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Was that sound okay? [It wasn't good. I could hear the people walking by.] Oh okay. Maybe a little -- I think the -- Just -- Because we had some interference, I just want to get that section again where -- The US wanted to stop the war from spreading to our allies.
BATTLE: Right.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Just start from that point. That the reason why the US was concerned with Iran/Iraq was not necessarily about them individually.
BATTLE: Right. US Policy toward the Iran/Iraq War was to some extent motivated by US views -- US relations with Iraq and Iran, but there were a lot of other factors involved as well. And a very important motivation for United States' policy was preventing the war from expanding and threatening long-established US allies in the region -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the small Gulf monarchies. And of extreme importance to the United States was making sure that the war did not interfere with oil faculties in the Gulf region and the transit of oil from the Gulf to the US, but even more so Europe and Japan -- US allies in other parts of the world. And so much of the US decision making about how to respond to developments in the war was keeping those concerns in mind in trying to make sure that the export of oil from the region was not impeded or threatened by developments in the conflict.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And it seems -- If you look toward their policy towards Iraq over a long period of time, and you look at there's a lot of questions that are unanswered as to why exactly we went to war in Iraq in 2003. Did you kind of get from your sense from looking over this area for a long period of time as to your sense as to why we went to war in Iraq?
BATTLE: I think that United States went to war with Iraq because it was the expectation of the members of the Bush administration who were strong proponents of the war that it would allow the United States to expand its control over developments in the Middle East -- political, economic, and military. It saw the United States establishing a base in Iraq. As we know, the US as we speak is establishing bases throughout the country -- a way to exert control over Iraq's politics, to exert greater control over Iraq's oil resources, which are quite extensive, and try to make sure that, again developments in the region were conducive, reflective of US interests. This is a very longstanding goal. The US became the dominant foreign power in the Gulf region and the Middle East after the decline of Britain following World War II. And the US has been the major regional superpower since that time, and has been very influential in determining the policies of states in the region by its very extensive political, military and economic presence. I believe that the United States feared that its sanctions regime in Iraq was breaking down. There was -- There had -- From the instigation of that sanctions regime been a lot of international criticism that the effects that the sanctions regime had on the Iraqi public, the destruction of their healthcare system, etc, etc. International support for the continuation of that regime, again, was weakening. I think that the Bush administration felt that something would have to be done, and rather than allow the Saddam Hussein regime to emerge from that regime, it seemed preferable to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government and exert direct United States control. This was motivated again in part by US interests in exerting as much control over the international oil market as it possibly can. And this does not mean necessarily in a crude way "seizing control of Iraq's oil." But the US wants to have an influential role in determining how oil is produced, the volume of oil produced, oil pricing and so forth. It has traditionally played that role through its close association with the Saudis. And if it had more direct control over Iraq's enormous oil resources, its ability to influence the international oil market would have expanded. And of course, there were a number of officials in the Bush administration who were extremely concerned about Israeli interests and felt by eliminating a nationalist regime in Iraq they would eliminate one of Israel's more -- eliminate a potential threat from what had been one of the Arab states' most antagonistic to Israeli policies.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: You mentioned earlier when you said "US/UK sanctions policy." And a lot of people on the Right would say, "No, it's a UN policy." Can you go into your knowledge of the 661 Committee, which was kind of in control of controlling the sanctions, but also the secrecy that was around this committee, and if you've gotten more evidence of that. I mean, I think a lot of people would take a point with you saying that "It's a US/UK policy on the sanctions" when it's under the umbrella of the UN. So if you could elaborate on that --
BATTLE: As an aside, I don't know if I can answer in as much detail as you seem to be going for. But I'll say in general.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay.
BATTLE: The sanctions regime was a UN policy, but the chief supporters and sustainers of that policy were the United States and Great Britain. They were the two countries that supported the no-fly zones in Iraq -- increasingly restricted no-fly zones, they were the countries that policed the no-fly zones. The US in particular was the country that was concerned about controlling what sort of exports reached the Iraqis. It is correct to say that it was a UN policy, but it was sustained principally by the extreme interests of the US and its British ally to make sure that that policy continued.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And one of the things I've noticed is that a lot of the news is event-based and the historical context is removed. And I think the sanctions policy over the last 10 years or so is a big influence about how the other members of the international community were dealing with us on this Iraq policy. So could you kind of try to put that into some sort of historical context -- the international perspectives of the US in Iraq.
BATTLE: Again, I have the feeling that problems from the point of view of the US with the sanctions regime were one of the motivations for the invasion of Iraq. There was a lot of attention paid internationally to the hardships that were imposed on the Iraqi people by the continuation of that sanctions regime. You could say a part of the reasons for those hardships was that the Iraq leadership was not on allowing what those revenues that were reaching Iraq from benefiting the public at large. But you could also say that the nature of the regime facilitated the ability of the Iraqi leadership to exploit the sanctions -- The leadership could exploit the sanctions to its own benefit. And it provided a rationale for the Iraqi regime to explain why things were in such difficult -- why the Iraqi people were in such difficult straits, it was because of the sanctions regime that were maintained by the US and the British. But there was fairly widespread international opposition to the continuation of the regime. The point was made that it was primarily hurting Iraq's civilian population. It was not doing anything to lead to an overthrow of the government in Iraq, which was supposedly what US policy called for. And I believe that the Bush administration was becoming concerned that it would not be able to sustain that regime indefinitely because the ill effects on the Iraqi population were just becoming too dire and too well-known.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Can you talk -- A phenomena I see is the phenomena of public relations of getting the point of view out in the first news cycle to make people have this perception of what the reality is. And then if it comes out late that it's not to be true, then no one is -- you know, not as many people are going to read the correction or read these declassified documents. So can you talk about that phenomena from your perspective?
BATTLE: During the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, it appeared to be far to easy for the Bush administration to determine the parameters of the debate. And I feel that the news media, particularly the American news media -- and in addition the opposition party, the Democratic party -- were chiefly responsible for that. The Bush administration framed the issue in certain ways in order to justify an invasion of Iraq. There could have been a more critical view from the news media, a demand that there be a more clear, more rational explanation for "Why the invasion of Iraq was necessary? What would be the implications of a long-term presence in Iraq? What would be -- What could the US do if things did not go exactly as planned? etc, etc." And these questions weren't raised. And I think that the news media in the United States tended not to provide any sort of historical, long-term context at all. And that included covering events as they happened, and not really going back and reinterpreting events after further information became available.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And so just -- I want to reiterate that point is the National -- Talk about some of the documents that the National Security Archive released during the build-up. And did you see from your perspective that a lot of this information was incorporated as story lines?
BATTLE: I think during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, there was very limited attempts to view the Bush administration policy more critically. My feeling was that the news media as a whole was supportive of this war -- of the idea of invading. There was a lot of information -- historical information about the history of US policy in the Middle East, about Iraqi history, about the events that had created the conditions that existed in the Spring -- leading up to the invasion in the Spring of 1990 -- in 2003 rather, that could have been included in the media's coverage of the war. But I think they were much more likely to simply uncritically accept the Bush administration's rationale -- their explanations. When we at the National Security Archive for instance, posted online documents discussing the Reagan administration's policy of reaching out to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, the dispatch of Donald Rumsfeld to the region in order to establish relations between the US and Iraq at the highest levels. Donald Rumsfeld carried a personal letter from Ronald Reagan to Saddam Hussein in order to further the -- this ["ray-posh-mont" ???] between the US and Iraq, and the re-establishment of US/Iraqi relations. These issues would be covered to a certain extent, but they didn't really have any effect, I think, in the overall support that was reflected in the media toward the idea of invading Iraq. I think to a certain extent the media coverage reflected what's been described recently in the Senate's investigation of why dissident views on the idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destrction and so forth were dismissed -- the response was "The decision had been made to go to war. And there was no point about talking about any opposing views, because we all know what's going to happen. The Bush administration is going to invade." And I think that kind of became the prevailing policy of the media as well. They weren't that interested. They didn't want to appear to be unpatriotic. There was an untold amount of information that they could have made use of. They could have read books on Iraqi history or the history of US policy in the Middle East that would provided relevant information, but there was not any interest in bring in this sort of widening, deepening of the debate. Because, again, I think, the viewpoint was -- the understanding was that "The administration had decided this war was going to happen, and the thing to get on the program and just cover events as they occurred."

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And what were some of the things that you would have liked to see incorporated within the media's coverage -- some of these historical context -- that would have provided a larger context? Just briefly summarize some of the points.
BATTLE: Well -- In the media coverage of the preparations for the war, there could have discussions for the unpredictability of any war. You can't always assume that things are going to turn out exactly as planned. I think that there was great confidence that US would easily prevail in the war, and I think there was no question about that. Iraq's armed forces were never viewed as being -- Iraq had a very large army, but it was not viewed at being especially effective -- and especially after Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf war, and the ravages of the sanctions regime. There was no doubt that the US would win militarily. But there was remarkably little discussion of what would happen then. I don't think there was any reason to conclude there would be overwhelming US -- overwhelming Iraqi acceptance of a continuing US role in that country. There wasn't much discussion about what exactly what sort of governance was going to be established in Iraq. How were things going to be worked out that would satisfy the aspirations of Iraq's disparate ethnic and religious groups who have always had difficulties in cohering effectively? The US was taking on an enormous array of problems when it decided to take over that country. and there was remarkably little discussion about what that would entail. There wasn't much discussion about what it would mean for the US to become an occupying power in Iraq. Occupying powers traditionally engage in extremely repressive activities in order to maintain their control. It was extremely predictable that there would be opposition to a US presence, and that that would lead to collective punishment, imprisonment, repressive measures that would include torture. I think the likelihood of that happening was extremely predictable. That was not really discussed as an issue. What would that mean for the US for Americans' own self-image to be engaged in that sort of activity? Again, Iraqi nationalism has been such an important component of the perspective of Iraqis toward the world. It should have been extremely obvious that a very great many Iraqis, if not the majority, would be extremely opposed to a continuing foreign presence. Despite that fact, it was what US expectation was that they were going to establish a large and widespread military presence. They obviously had plans to build this huge embassy that they're currently constructing in Iraq. They obviously were expecting to play a very prominent role, and it should have been understood that there was going to be strong Iraqi opposition to any such US policies.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And from your sense, there's a debate within international legal circles that this war wasn't even legal, and the justification that the US gave wouldn't really hold up. Can you talk to your views on that, but also the US' view toward international law in general historically?
BATTLE: Well, the interesting thing about the ramifications of this war is, I don't know exactly what Bush administration policy is. In the prelude to the war, obviously, the view was -- it became the dominant view in the Bush administration, that support from the international community was a "nice thing to have" but it was not necessary. The Bush administration seemed to have such a strong sense of US dominance of the world, since it is the sole remaining superpower. And again, I think its confidence in terms of its plans for the invasion of Iraq were based to some extent on the fact that Iraq was really a total paper tiger. Its armed forces were hardly existent at all. So the US had no doubts I think about being able to easily defeat Iraq. It would have liked to have had moral and other support from other countries, both in the region and elsewhere, but it felt that that support was not necessary. The fact that it went into this war without that sort of rationale, without that sort of legitimacy has made its current position in Iraq that much harder, because it's extremely difficult for very close US allies in the region -- by which I mean the Jordanians, the Egyptians, and the Saudis -- to provide direct support to the US presence in Iraq, because that would seen as supporting an occupying power that does not have any right to there. It's been very difficult for the US to get support from its allies in other parts of the world as well. I think a lot of that is driven by popular reaction more so than the reaction of allied governments. It could be that other European powers in addition to the British and the small states that are supporting the US in Iraq would be more forthcoming in terms of providing economic -- financial assistance to the Iraqi -- the occupation if Iraq by the US to provide ground forces that would alleviate some of the strain on US armed forces and reservists if there was greater legitimacy for the US presence. But since the US did not have international support for its invasion of Iraq that makes its continuing presence there appear to be legitimate and makes it difficult to win either governmental or popular support for helping the US to make its continuing policy in Iraq effective and successful.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And at the National Security Archive you've seen quite a number of declassified documents. So can you speak about government secrecy, and what the government is trying to keep secret from people from knowing? And is it always protecting national security? And any instances that may come up in Iraq? But just in general -- the secrecy policies of the US government.
BATTLE: Some withholding of information on national security grounds is legitimate, especially for a short period of time, but it's generally felt that after a few years, there are very few secrets that need to be withheld because to release them would in some way endanger national security. We deal with an enormous number of formerly classified documents here. And we see what sort of exemptions are made, because quite often we get documents that are classified that had sections of the text withheld at one period of time that are later declassified and released in their entirety. It's very clear that the declassification -- that classification decisions are often made on the criteria of protecting the government from embarrassment, and often for preserving other relationships with governments that, shall we say, are not based on "idealism" or "the highest principles," but are based on expediency. So decisions to withhold information, again, are often made to present US foreign policy in the best possible light and the most idealistic light as possible. Because most Americans like to view their country in a very idealistic way, and that is not always the way that the government always conducts itself in the world. And also to shield the government from embarrassment in terms of past mistakes, in terms of cultivating good relations with someone like Saddam Hussein, who is now viewed as this villain beyond belief. The US hides this information to the extent it can, and also tries to keep discussion of such issues out of the public debate. Again, I think one of the major criticisms one can make of the lead up to the Iraq war is -- that's an understandable policy for the US government or for any government -- what you need is for opposition parties and for the free press to widen the debate and make sure that these issues are raised. And again, I think a major problem with the interval of time before the invasion of Iraq was that the press in this country was not playing that role.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Alright. Let's just see here -- Can you talk about some of the support -- just go over some of the different things that the United States was giving to Iraq -- import/export bank, agricultural loan guarantees, intelligence -- some of these things that the US was providing -- to some of the specifics that the US was giving to Iraq.
BATTLE: Iraq invaded Iran in September of 1980, and initially it was able to -- Iraq was able to advance quite far into Iran and seemed to be quite effective in pursuing the war. Iran rallied quite quickly, and was able to stop the Iraqi advances. By the Spring of 1981, there were widespread fears that Iran was going to be able to defeat the Iraqis totally and to push them back -- to perhaps counterinvade Iraqi territory. US allies in the region -- by which I'm referring primarily to the Gulf monarchies Jordan and Egypt -- were very concerned about this happening, and were very supportive of the idea of the US providing support to the Iraqis. So the US started considering ways in which it could sustain the Iraqi military effort. In addition, the US when it provides assistance to any country is always interested to some extent in furthering US policy, but also it wants to provide assistance in ways that are going to be domestically helpful to the United States. So very soon it occurred to the Reagan administration that one way of helping the Iraqis militarily was perhaps not to provide direct military support at the outset. But this war was extremely expensive for both Iraq and Iran. There was enormous expenditure of weapons and ammunition and so forth. And it was very difficult for Iraq to sustain the expenditures necessary to keep its military forces fighting. One way that the Reagan administration identified that it could be helpful to the Iraqi government was to provide assistance for the purchasing of food stuffs -- principally grains, but other material as well. And the genius of that is it -- not only was it a way of providing economic support to the Iraqis without appearing to directly provide military support -- because again, the declared US policy was that it was neutral in the war and it was not providing assistance to either side -- was to provide credits, which allowed Iraq to purchase US agricultural products. This helped the Iraqis a great deal, but also was a way of subsidizing the export of US commodities to a country that otherwise would not be able to afford them. Many of the states that produce large volumes of exported agricultural commodities are Republican states -- so that was beneficial to the Reagan administration as well. So that was one principle way the US -- at least indirectly -- provided economic assistance to Iraq. And the comment was often made at the time that this sort of assistance was "fungible" meaning even though the United States may not have been providing direct military support to Iraq, it provided support for purchases of necessary food stuffs, which allowed Iraq to use other revenues to buy weapons. So that happened very early in the war. By 1982, that program had been established and was sustained throughout, and even after the Iran/Iraq war ended. In addition, there were frequent discussions between the US and Iraq -- between US and Iraqi representatives about ways the US could demonstrate its support for Iraq, and its interest in making sure that Iraq held up during the war. One of the ways that Iraq wanted this US interest to be expressed was by expanding US exports to Iraq principally high tech exports, because Iraq was very interested in providing such products to the United States and obtaining the means for purchasing such products. So the Reagan administration encouraged the export/import bank to provide loans to the Iraqis, which again predominantly assisted the Iraqis in purchasing US exports, which was beneficial to the Iraqis and also those US corporations which produced those exports. EXIM Bank -- the Export Import Bank tended to be rather resistant to the idea of providing such financial assistance to the Iraqis, especially by the midpoint of the war, because the war was very draining, oil prices had dropped during this period of time, Iraq was incredibly indebted to many countries, a lot of foreign -- international financial institutions were not willing to provide credits to Iraq. So the Reagan administration did everything that it could to provide -- to persuade the US Export Import Bank to provide such financial assistance to the Iraqis. The US never provided as much as the Iraqis would have like to achieve, but again this was very -- patently a way for the US -- the Reagan administration -- to demonstrate its interest as being as supportive to the Iraqis as possible. In addition, the US provided intelligence support to Iraq. This again, began during the first several years of the war in 1982 or 1983. This followed from intelligence sharing arrangements that the US had expanded with its more traditional allies in the region. Right after the war began, the US had dispatched AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia to keep an eye on developments in the Gulf region to watch the military activities of both the Iranians and the Iraqis, and eventually information from that intelligence-sharing infrastructure that the US had set up and expanded with the Saudis was shared with Iraqis as well. And that was very useful to the Iraqis in being able to predict what Iranian military operations were going to be and how to respond to them. There's a question about how much direct military support the US provided to Iraq. Again, it was contrary to US policy to provide any such weapons, and I think policy -- official policy remained throughout the war that the US was not directly providing weapons to the Iraqis. But US allies in the region, the Egyptians and the Jordanians, were exporting very large volumes of weapons from other parts of the world to the Iraqis. And the US was very supportive of these policies of its allies in the region to make sure that Iraqi armed forces were sustained. In addition, the Reagan administration took a more relaxed view, again, on the export of US high technology -- dual-use technology to the Iraqis. This was a sensitive issue, because Iraq was known to be using chemical weapons. It was known to have a biological weapons program. It was known to have an interest in developing nuclear weapons. But US concerns about opposing the proliferation of such weapons were tempered by this concern with demonstrating US support for the Iraqis, and satisfying their interest in obtaining as much high technology from the United States as they possibly could obtain. So there was quite an extensive trade in dual-use technology from the United States to the Iraqis during the middle and later parts of the Iran/Iraq war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: A lot of people on the Left will say, "We helped Saddam build his weapons of mass destruction." From your sense, talk about the effect of the chemical precursors or some of this technology that you were talking about -- dual-use technology -- high technology in actually developing the weapons of mass destruction programs.
BATTLE: I haven't seen smoking gun documents that say that the US purposely supported Iraq's chemical weapons programs, and I only want to speak from what I have actually seen with my own eyes from the documentation. There are cases when it became known that US companies were exporting chemical precursors to the Iraqis. And the US explanation is -- What actually happened is that when these exports became known to the Customs Service, for instance, the Custom Service responded, and these exports were cut off -- curtailed. This does not necessarily mean that such exports had they not become known to the Customs Service would have continued. But I can't say that I've ever seen any documentation that shows that it was declared, and overt and purposeful US policy to support Iraq's chemical weapons program.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: But if -- Well, I think some of the documentation-- The reporting I've seen is that it was a third-party cutout from a CIA, who was -- you know with these agricultural -- So there was no paper trail in a sense. So, if it's -- Do these types of black operations occur, historically? Or is it a possibility that there could have been more going on that wasn't documented?
BATTLE: It's -- I'm sure there are still aspects of the US/Iraqi relationship that are not known. There was a very well-known case of the branch of a Italian bank based in Atlanta that provided huge loans to the Iraqis through the agricultural commodity program we were talking about -- I mentioned previously. And other intermediate-term loans that paid for other exports to the Iraqi government. And there was a view that revenues from those loans were diverted to purchase weapons for the Iraqis including perhaps non-conventional weapons. I don't think that that relationship was ever fully explored. There were several official US government investigations of this funding that was provided to Iraq. There were reports that some of the companies -- the US companies that participated in these US exports to Iraq were set up and controlled by former United States Central Intelligence Agency officers, which contributed to the feeling that they were a means of covertly providing military assistance to the Iraqis. But I have still not yet seen complete answers to all the answers one might have about what kind of direct military assistance the US provided to Iraq, especially in connection with non-conventional weapons.