Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988
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. 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. 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.