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Al Jazeera (English)
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Iraqi Civilian Deaths ... caused by Bush's unprovoked war

 

The US knows very well that Hussein has chemical and biological weapons. Because the US provided them to him. The US also knows that they are old and mostly worthless. The US also admits that they know that 90 percent of Iraq's post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction was discovered and dismantled by UN weapons inspectors.
How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them! (September 8, 2002)
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration knew Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons almost daily against Iran. At the time, Donald Rumsfeld was Reagan's special Middle East envoy. They did little to stop Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. And today, Mr. Rumsfeld is one of the leading hawks on Iraq, frequently denouncing it for its past use of such weapons! The US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons of mass destruction.

The US supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical warfare materials even after it became clear that he was producing and using chemical weapons. The US had licensed dozens of companies to export various materials that helped Iraq make mustard gas, VX nerve agent, anthrax, and other biological and chemical weapons. The same micro-organisms exported by the US were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program.

Shipments to Iraq continued even after the United States learned Hussein had used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq in 1988, according to Senate investigators. The information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the "evidence of proof" that Bush and Blair use to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

The same micro-organisms exported by the US were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program. The US strongly supports the UN's ban on the very things the US sold to Iraq!
The Senate committee's reports on "US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq," undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986. . . The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: "The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs." This assistance, according to the report, included "chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment, and missile system guidance equipment." . . . Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: "UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs." . . . Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the "executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record."

posted by Hal 7:56 AM