When US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented the government's case for war before the UN Security Council in February, he managed to convince many Americans that Iraq had a large store of unconventional weapons and was ready to use them against other nations.

Powell's evidence wasn't good enough to convince the Security Council. Yet two decades ago, when a US Secretary of State had undisputable proof that Iraq was using chemical weapons, he did not go to the UN. At the time, the US government was fervently pursuing an oil pipeline deal with Iraq, and use of gas warfare by Saddam Hussein's forces was, as then-State Department head George Schultz wrote in a private memo, "embarrassing".

Quoting from government and corporate memos, letters, and telegrams, a March 2003 report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, in Washington, DC, USA) shows in stark detail how Reagan administration officials put higher priority o­n a petroleum deal than o­n human lives or international law.

Rumsfeld then

One of those officials was Donald Rumsfeld, acting as a special envoy to Iraq. Now 20 years later, as Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld has succeeded in achieving his team's goal - a solid business partnership with the nation sitting o­n top of the world's second largest oil reserves.

On Dec 20, 1983, in the midst of a horrific war between Iraq and Iran, President Ronald Reagan and Secretary Schultz sent Rumsfeld to meet Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Envoy Rumsfeld was to propose that America build a pipeline to carry oil from Iraq through Jordan to the Red Sea. The main contractor would be the Bechtel Corporation, a company Schultz had headed just before becoming Secretary of State.

Throughout the year, the world press had been reporting o­n Iraq's use of gas warfare against Iranian troops. The most recent attack, according to the BBC , had occurred o­n Nov 7. In his talks with Saddam and with Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, Rumsfeld pushed hard o­n the pipeline proposal but did not mention chemical weapons.

On March 5, 1984, the US State Department officially condemned Iraq's use of chemical weapons. But that did not stop Secretary Schultz from meeting with Rumsfeld two weeks later to prepare him for a second trip to Baghdad. According to documents unearthed by IPS, Schultz worried that his own department's chemical weapons charges would harm US-Iraq relations.

Things got worse. Two days later, as Rumsfeld held more discussions o­n the pipeline with Aziz in Baghdad, the United Nations issued a report confirming Iraq's use of mustard gas and the nerve agent Tabun in battle.

On April 6, American diplomat James Placke met an Iraqi official in Jordan to request that Iraq not obtain its materials for chemical war from US suppliers. In a memo about the meeting, Secretary Shultz wrote, "We would ask GOI's (government of Iraq's) cooperation in avoiding situations that would lead to difficult and potentially embarrassing situation." In other words, the use of gas against Iran was not a moral or legal problem, but a public-relations "situation" that threatened to scuttle the pipeline plan.

In the end, Iraq turned us down, and in the years following embarked o­n partnerships with France, Germany and Russia.

Rumsfeld now

Critics of the 2003 Iraq war all around the world have talked about past US support for Saddam Hussein, but the pro-war side always argues that the 1980s are ancient history. Now the IPS report and original documents are out in the open, reminding the world that America's recent military victory will accomplish what friendship and negotiations between the US and Saddam could not: long-term American access to Iraq's oil reserves and limitless multi-billion dollar contracts for their development and management. Bechtel has just landed the first.

In 1983-85, Donald Rumsfeld and George Shultz saw chemical weapons as a potential deal-breaker that could knock the US off the inside track to Iraqi oil. Now, in 2003, Rumsfeld's armed forces are engaged in an impatient search for chemical and biological weapons, to provide the rationale for American invasion and occupation of a nation that spurned us as a business partner 20 years ago.

We finally got the oil, but that weapons question just won't go away.

STAN COX lives in Salina, Kansas, US and is a member of the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice. He works as a senior research scientist at The Land Institute in Salina.