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| | Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East |
 | | If so, he will remember that he was in Baghdad, as a special envoy from then-president Ronald Reagan, assuring his host that, to quote the secret National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) that served as his talking points: the US would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West". |
 | | In early 1982, it removed Iraq from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, making Baghdad eligible for billions of dollars in agricultural credits and sales of "dual-use" equipment goods, such as chemical precursors, sophisticated communications equipment and technology that could be useful in weapons programs, with both civilian and military uses. |
 | | Rumsfeld was soon on his way to Baghdad in a trip that, by 1985, would result in Washington supplying Saddam with some US$1.5 billion worth of weapons equipment and technology, including items applicable to Iraq's nuclear or biological-weapons program, such as anthrax strains and pesticides. |
| www.atimes.com /atimes/Middle_East/EL17Ak01.html (1280 words) |
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