ANOTHER RONALD REAGAN FACT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW

By "they" I mean hacks like Sean Hannity and all the other conservative gasbags who have canonized Reagan.

History lesson: When the United States looked the other way on chemical weapons
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 09/04/2013
WaPo

But there is an even more striking instance of the United States ignoring use of the chemical weapons that killed tens of thousands of people -- during the grinding Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. As documented in 2002 by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs, the Reagan administration knew full well it was selling materials to Iraq that was being used for the manufacture of chemical weapons, and that Iraq was using such weapons, but U.S. officials were more concerned about whether Iran would win rather than how Iraq might eke out a victory.

We even gave Saddam valuable targeting information:

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
BY SHANE HARRIS AND MATTHEW M. AID | AUGUST 26, 2013
FOREIGN POLICY

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.