Building Baghdad's arsenal.

"American officials in Baghdad have identified at least 30 businesses and individuals in the United States that investigators said they suspect sold tens of millions of dollars in military technology to Iraq before the war," reported the October 16 New York Times. The officials are investigating cases in which U.S. businesses are "suspected of illegally providing Mr. Hussein's government with military technology or items that bad both military and civilian applications." If convicted, the suspects face 10 years in prison. The total value of the hardware in question amounts to tens of millions of dollars.

Heading the list of suspects are Sabri Yakou, a 69-year-old, permanent U.S. resident who was born in Iraq, and his 43-year-old son Regard, an American citizen. The Yakous are accused of selling three 85-foot-long patrol boats equipped with machine guns to Baghdad at a cost of $11 million. The boats may have been used in combat operations against U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq.

By all means, those Americans guilty of building Iraq's war machine should be prosecuted. But the roster of suspects should be expanded to include Donald Rumsfeld, who opened the floodgates of aid to Iraq in a December 1983 visit to Baghdad. Henry Kissinger, founder of Kissinger Associates, helped broker deals that fed billions of dollars into Saddam's war chest--money that was used to build the despot's abortive WMD program. Former Kissinger Associates co-founders Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, who helped close Iraqi aid deals with the firm, went on to hold key posts in the first Bush administration (national security adviser and secretary of state, respectively).

On October 2, 1989, President George Bush (the elder) issued National Security Directive (NSD) 26, declaring: "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our long-term interests and promote stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East." NSD 26 authorized the government to "pursue, and seek to facilitate, opportunities for U.S. firms to participate in the reconstruction of the Iraqi economy"--and even conduct some .joint U.S.-Iraqi military exercises. This all took place months after revelations of Saddam's nuclear program leaked out into the press--and two years after 37 American fighting men perished in an Iraqi attack on the U.S.S. Stark in the Persian Gulf.

About a week after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, President Bush (the elder) signed a federal conflict-of-interest waiver on behalf of 11 members of his administration including then-Secretary of State James Baker and Scowcroft--whose investments might be affected by the impending war in the Gulf.

Most Americans would agree that if the Yakous and other small businessmen are guilty of aiding our nation's enemies, they should rot in jail. But so should the likes of Kissinger, Scowcroft, Eagleburger and other power players who committed that same crime on an immeasurably larger scale.