Maurice Hinchey: “this amendment is important, because as we have seen in the past, particularly during the Reagan and first Bush…”

“this amendment is important, because as we have seen in the past, particularly during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, the Commodity Credit Corporation has been manipulated by those administrations, particularly for elicit purposes. After the gassing of the Kurds in Halabjah, for example, the administration in 1988 when that occurred took Iraq off of the list of terrorist states and arranged for them to get substantial amounts of funding in a variety of ways, and principal among those ways was through the Commodity Credit Corporation. Probably more than $4 billion flowed to Iraq through CCC, even though the Commissioner of Agriculture objected to it on many grounds, not the least of which was that they were not likely to be repaid. Nevertheless, the then Vice President of the United States and others in the White House intervened, and the money was sent. Commodities were sent. We are not sure where they went. Weapons were sent. And now we are confronted with a situation where people take a very sanctimonious point of view. Saddam Hussein gassed his own people, the Kurds. Yes, he did, and in a very evil way; and 5,000 people or more were killed. What was the response of the American administration? More support through Commodity Credit Corporation, more weapons, more armaments, more chemical weapons.”