General Discussion

I hope.

In the early/mid 1980's I worked for an electrical distributor, we did a lot of business with Iraq.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/09/16/at-war-iraq-courted-us-into-economic-embrace/b47ffece-d081-44a5-8163-c00b8a52eabd/


"From the early 1980s until the invasion of Kuwait Aug. 2, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein aggressively courted U.S. companies and government agencies, securing food, loans and technology to help survive a bloody war with Iran and to promote his dreams of Iraqi greatness.
It was a mutual seduction. The U.S. government, bitterly opposed to Iran and its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, first tilted toward Iraq to ensure that Iran did not win the war; later, it became equally interested in Iraqi oil and trade...

In the end, Iraq largely won out. Presidents Reagan and Bush repeatedly opposed Congress's proposed trade sanctions against Iraq -- the last time only two days before Kuwait was invaded. Between 1983 and 1989, annual trade between Iraq and the United States grew nearly sevenfold, from $571 million to $3.6 billion. Using loans from U.S.-based banks, many guaranteed by the federal government, Iraq during that period bought $5.2 billion in U.S. exports of food, technology and industrial goods. The United States in turn bought $5.5 billion in Iraqi petroleum over the same period...

.... Soon the relationship began to change. In March 1982, the State Department removed Iraq from its list of countries supporting terrorism, making Iraq eligible for a fuller range of trade and credits with the United States....

... Defense Department officials repeatedly objected to the sale of computer technology, according to internal government documents. In one case, the Pentagon said it was "inclined to deny completely this export because of the high likelihood of military end use." In a second case, defense officials said "this system has uses in the production of chemical weapons and we have no credible assurances that it will not be used in that way." The department called a third system "ideal" for designing and testing weapons, and rejected Iraq's contention that the computers were for bookkeeping as "not believable."