David Allen Morris

I am a historian and scholar who has been writing a dissertation, which I hope to turn into a book, about the U.S.' first war with Iraq. I hope to be done with my research by the spring of 2014-- or perhaps sooner.

In the summer of 1986 Vice President George Bush made a trip to the Middle East. On July 29 in Jerusalem he was briefed by Amiram Nir, an Israeli official, on the status of the operation to trade arms to Iran for American hostages.

According to an article in this week's issue of The New Yorker, George H, W. Bush had a more urgent covert mission on that trip. It was to ask King Hussein of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt to pass a message to Saddam Hussein of Iraq that he should use his air force to bomb deep inside Iran. The two countries were in the midst of their long war.

Why did Mr. Bush urge that aggressive Iraqi bombing? The article says the idea was that Iran would need more air defenses, would come to the United States for them -- and could then be pressed more effectively to release hostages.

The authors of the New Yorker article, Murray Waas and Craig Unger, do not offer conclusive proof of that grotesque Bush mission. In the nature of things probably no one could. But they do have supporting evidence.