Policy on Iraq Before the War

In response to “ ‘Iraqgate’ Witch Hunters Obscure Truth,” Column Right, May 28:

While one can agree with Edwin Yoder that the issue in “Iraqgate” is not criminality, it nevertheless demonstrates the need to examine a system that could produce such awful blunders. These were not simple errors of judgment; they were mostly dishonest mistakes because they were conceived and executed in secret in order to avoid legitimate congressional oversight.

Yoder’s account of “the geopolitical context of the now admittedly failed policy” conspicuously fails to note that we supplied arms to Khomeini’s Iran--via Israel and directly--before we tilted toward Iraq, and that both the Carter and Reagan administrations had declared our neutrality in the Iran-Iraq war.

As Yoder suggests, let a congressional inquiry explore the whole matter. To make sense of our tangled involvements in that area, it should go back at least as far as our foolish decision to overthrow Iran’s nationalist Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, and also look into our disastrous 1983 venture in Lebanon.

A thorough investigation should make us aware of the need to revise the National Security Act of 1947 so as to halt the misuse of the National Security Council as an action agency. This abuse, which culminated in the Iran-Contra scandal, grew out of the obsession of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger with avoiding congressional scrutiny. This was accomplished by appointing Kissinger as a presidential adviser--thus shielded from congressional inquiry--while letting him operate as de facto secretary of state.

MARSHALL PHILLIPS

Long Beach