“The United States was officially neutral throughout the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war. Unofficially, however, the Reagan administration was hoping to make Iraq ‘the new Iran’–or rather, what the pre-1979 revolution Iran was to the United States and its corporations. …Thus, in May 1981, the State Department’s William Eagleton met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Eagleton described the meeting in a telegram to the State Department: ‘I said the U.S. government supports the participation of American firms in projects designed to restore Iraq’s oil facilities as rapidly as possible after the war.’ He added that the meeting ‘should be helpful to our position and that of U.S. business interests in Iraq.’ ” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.]
– Antonia Juhasz, The Bush Agenda, Page 158