The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988 was a United States Senate bill to punish Iraq for chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds at Halabja during the Iran–Iraq War. It was defeated after intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House which then supported Iraq's Saddam Hussein as a counterbalance to post-revolutionary Iran.
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Background
In the Halabja poison gas attack of March 16–March 17, 1988, Iraqi government forces used chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja - killing 3,200-5,000, most of them civilians. This was during the Iran–Iraq War, in which the US government supported Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
On learning of the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians the US government sought to obscure the facts by falsely suggesting Iran bore equal responsibility - and opposed any sanctions against Iraq.
Support and defeat
Peter W. Galbraith, then a staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations drafted the bill. Senators Claiborne Pell, Jesse Helms, Christopher S. Bond, Wendell H. Ford, Al Gore, Carl Levin, Richard G. Lugar and William Proxmire sponsored it.
The bill aimed to punish Iraq by embargoing all dual-use technological exports, stopping all Export-Import bank credits, banning US imports of Iraqi oil, and mandating US opposition to any loans by the International Monetary Fund or any other multilateral financial institution.
The bill was defeated – in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan. U.S. Representative Bill Frenzel publicly opposed it, arguing it was unlikely to prevent genocide but sure to cause Americans economic loss.
Later significance
The history of the bill marks legal efforts to deter genocide, or punish those responsible. American politicians later cited the Halabja poison gas attack to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraq citizens." --President George W. Bush, March 22, 2002 "As he said, any person that would gas his own people [sic] is a threat to the world."--Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary, May 31, 2002