Within little more than a year of taking over in Iraq, Saddam Hussein made his first aggressive foreign policy move. He saw that while the oil boom had made his country wealthy and strong, neighboring Iran was struggling economically. He also feared that Iran's new leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, would stir up rebellion among Iraq's Shiite Muslims, who had little power despite being the country's majority religious group.

So in September 1980, Hussein's troops crossed the border into Iran. At first the war went well for Iraq, but eventually Iranian forces pushed the invaders out of their country. By spring 1982, the Iranians had gone on the offensive. And that greatly worried the Reagan White House, knowing that an Iranian victory could have a disastrous effect on America's power base in the oil-rich Middle East.

Before long the Reagan administration began openly courting Saddam Hussein. In 1982, the United States removed Iraq from its list of countries that supported state-sponsored terrorism. In December 1983, President Reagan sent to Baghdad none other than Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy to the Middle East and today one of Hussein's harshest critics as U.S. secretary of defense. Rumsfeld's visit opened up America's relations with Iraq for the first time since the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Later, Rumsfeld said that "it struck us as useful to have a relationship" and revealed that Hussein had indicated he wasn't interested in causing problems in the world.

By January 1984 there were reports that the United States had told friendly nations in the Persian Gulf that the defeat of Iraq would "be contrary to U.S. interests." That sent the message that America would not object to U.S. allies offering military aid to Iraq. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait sent howitzers, bombs and other weapons to Iraq. And later that year the U.S. government pushed through sales of helicopters to Hussein's government.

But that was just the beginning of Reagan's pro-Iraq campaign. The United States sold the Iraqis military jeeps and Lockheed L-100 transports. And, according to a 2002 report in The New York Times, as many as 60 American intelligence officers provided Iraq with "critical battle planning assistance," lending detailed information on Iranian deployments, plans for airstrikes and bomb-damage assessments. The Times story further reported that this intelligence assistance was offered even though American officers knew the Iraqi commanders would probably use chemical weapons against the Iranians.

The military aid helped Iraq hold off the Iranians, and the war dragged on until 1988. That year the U.S. Senate passed the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed sanctions against Hussein's regime. But the Reagan White House opposed the bill, calling it premature. When it eventually passed, the White House made little effort to enforce it.