Senator Kennedy opposed Saddam

PRESIDENTIAL spokesman Scott McClellan, who charged that Senator Edward Kennedy was more critical of George W. Bush than of Saddam Hussein, needs a history lesson (''Bush rips critics of Iraq war invasion," Page A8, Nov. 12).

In 1988, Saddam Hussein launched extensive chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds, killing tens of thousands. Senator Kennedy strongly supported sanctions on Iraq in order to stop these ongoing crimes, but was opposed by the Reagan administration. National security adviser Colin Powell coordinated the opposition to Senate-passed sanctions legislation in 1988, while Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was part of the first President Bush's national security team that opposed efforts to revive the sanctions bill in 1989 and 1990.

Thus, at the very time Hussein was gassing his own people, the current vice president and Bush's first secretary of state -- as well as President Bush's father -- favored taking no action at all. In October 1988, Senator Kennedy brought the Senate to a halt in a valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful, effort to win final enactment of the aptly named Prevention of Genocide Act.

PETER W. GALBRAITH
Townshend, Vt.

The writer was a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1988 and led a mission that documented Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons attacks on the Iraqi Kurds. He drafted the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988.