Posted on 10/19/2001 9:52:56 AM PDT by BigTime
I'm in a discussion with a gentleman who is arguing that "the U.S. Government cultivated dried anthrax and gave it to Iraq to use in its (perpetual) war against Iran." He cites the following "report", apparently from a congressional hearing.
From a 1998 report:
In 1982, the Reagan Administration took Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to receive high-tech items generally denied to those on the list. Conventional military sales began in December of that year. Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq," stated in 1991:
"From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted. . . . The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."
Can anybody out there point me to some resources to debunk this? I'm sure this is a favorite conspiracy theory proferred by the Left, but it's a new one to me.
Click on the link I gave -- first line of my post. It's a webpage with several articles and then a transcript from a 60 Minutes piece on it.
One other question though on this point, isn't there a distinction between chemical and biological weapons? The paragraph in question speaks to chemical weapons while antrhax would be a biological weapon, right?
Also, as Dog Gone said above, where is the evidence that Iraq actually used anthrax on Iran?
Thanks for the info!
Iran: The legacy of chemical weapons "The West at best ignored the atrocities and at worst supplied Saddam the know-how to commit them," says Dr Mostafa Zahrani. "Now they say these weapons have to be removed. This makes us crazy. It's mad hypocrisy." Zahrani is a 46 year-old Tehran University professor focusing on Iranian-American relations. He is also infertile and severely lung-damaged from a 1987 Iraqi mustard and nerve gas attack.
Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People? Saddam Hussein used weapons-grade anthrax against his own Kurdish population with lousy results, before turning to more lethally efficient chemical weapons."
Physicians for Human Rights: Four years later, a PHR/Human Rights Watch investigation to document the mass murder of Kurds during Iraq's Anfal campaign yielded a soil sample that, when analyzed by the British Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment, carried trace elements of mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent, sarin.
Jensen: Biological, chemical weapons have long been part of warfare Iraq is known to have used chemical agents during its eight-year war against Iran and again in a series of brutal campaigns to suppress the Kurds. International monitors identified two agents -- mustard gas, an oily liquid vapor that can remain deadly for days, and tabun, a nerve gas that causes violent convulsions and paralysis before death..... Of the million who died in the Iran-Iraq war, only about 5,000 were killed by chemicals, largely because most Iranian troops had gas masks and other protective equipment. But the Kurds, who had no such protection, died in appalling numbers.
Saddam Hussein began his offensive against the Kurds in 1976 after cutting a secret deal with the Shah of Iran, who until then had provided a sanctuary for Kurdish guerrillas fighting for independence in the north of Iraq. It reached a peak of intensity in 1987 and 1988, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, when the Iraqi army demolished 4,700 villages accused of harboring "rebels" and killed more than 180,000 Kurds with conventional weapons and poison gas.
The full extent of the slaughter became known only after the Gulf War when Kurdish rebels took advantage of Saddam's defeat to seize large chunks of territory in the northern oil fields, including the cities of Kirkuk and Suleimaniyah. They found mass graves and 4 million documents, weighing 18 tons in all, confirming the use of gas and chemical weapons in a well-orchestrated genocide.
The documents referred to the Kurds as "saboteurs" and authorized automatic death sentences for any found in "forbidden zones." One verified the death of 5,000 civilians in a single gas attack on the town of Halabja.
IRAQI AIR FORCE CAPABILITY TO DELIVER CHEMICAL WEAP0NS The preferred chemical ordnance delivered by Iraqi aircraft during the war were 250 and 500-kg bombs. During the war, mustard- and Tabun-filled 250-kg bombs were delivered by FLOGGER F and FITTER. Also, 500-kg mustard-filled bombs were delivered by FITTER aircraft, and probably by FLOGGERs as well.
Iraq may have developed the capability to also use cluster bombs, some of which may have been filled with chemicals since the end of the Iran-Iraq War. In addition to bombs, 55-gallon drums filled with unknown chemical agents (probably mustard) were dropped onto forces from altitudes of 3,000-4,000 feet by Iraqi helicopters. Spray systems mounted on the Mi-8 HIP helicopters were also used against troop concentrations. An unknown number of HIPs were outfitted with two spray tanks on their underside, each with a volume of 1000 liters. A B0-105 reportedly observed near Basrah in April 1988 carried a probable chemical spray tank attached to the exterior near the cockpit, although there is no confirmed use of this helicopter delivering chemical ordnance. Finally, 90-mm air-to-surface rockets filled with chemical agent, possibly fired by Mi-24/25 HINDs, were used against Iranian troops.
SADDAM SPILLS SECRETS - TIME Magazine, September 4, 1995 Volume 146, No. 10 In thousands of documents turned over to the U.N., Iraq admitted that as the U.S. mobilized forces to invade Kuwait in November 1990, it had begun filling 191 bombs and Scud missile warheads with deadly biological agents such as anthrax and botulinum toxin. The bombs would have been mounted on missiles, planes or drone aircraft and dropped on enemy troops, fewer than half of whom had received the appropriate germ-warfare vaccinations. Twenty-five Scuds outfitted with biological weapons were aimed at cities in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
See also another Time article.
April 1998 Issue, Anthrax for Export - U.S. companies sold Iraq the ingredients for a witch's brew by William Blum According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing death, were:
* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.
* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment.
The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.
The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.
Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare. Among these suppliers were the following:
* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.
* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.
* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).
The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":
* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA
* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC
* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC
* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT
* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT
* Evapco, Taneytown, MD
* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH
Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol.
The Moscow Times - Saddam murdered some 4,000 Iraqi Kurds with poison gas. This was carried out with helicopters purchased from the United States. The next year, with Pa [Poppy Bush] firmly in the Oval cockpit, the CIA informed the White House that Iraq was greatly accelerating its secret nuclear program and had become the world's leading producer of chemical weapons.
So what did Pa do? Why, he signed a National Security Directive ordering even closer ties to the poisoner. He also overrode his own Cabinet to force through $1 billion in agricultural credits to Saddam, after international banks had stopped giving him loans.
Tons more refs out there ... just do a google search on anthrax Iraq Saddam Kurds or chemical weapons Iraq Saddam Kurds.
Except when you explore that link, you discover that this isn't true. Soil samples prove it.
I don't think there's any doubt that Saddam used chemical weapons. And I don't think there's any doubt that he's been working hard at developing biological weapons, although it's less clear that he's figured out how to actually deploy them.
Certainly, if we had been tougher on him 20 years ago, he might not have developed some of these. But it's darn hard to predict the future.
The United States vs. Iraq -- A Study in Hypocrisy Dozens of other pathogenic biological agents were shipped to Iraq during the 1980s. The Senate Report pointed out: "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction."
"It was later learned," the committee revealed, "that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."
These exports continued to at least November 28, 1989 despite the fact that Iraq had been reported to be engaging in chemical warfare and possibly biological warfare against Iranians, Kurds, and Shiites since the early 80s.
January 21, 2001 - Eric Margolis, Editorial, The Toronto Sun Just before the war began, this writer discovered in Baghdad the principal British scientific team that had been seconded to Iraq by Her Majesty's Government to produce anthrax germs for the Iraq armed forces to use against Iran.
IRAQ- Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and Missile Capabilities and Programs: Has not accounted for 17 metric tonnes of BW growth media.
IRAQ: THE UNSCOM EXPERIENCE Iraq may have produced up to 10 billion doses of anthrax, botulinum toxin and aflatoxin. Anthrax, a highly infectious bacterium, and botulinum toxin, one of the most toxic substances known to man, are among the most likely candidates for biological weapon (BW) agents. Little is known about the development of the BW programme up to 1991.
In the 1980s, intelligence sources were cited as reporting that anthrax had been found in hospitalized Iranians and Iranian sources referred to Iraqi use of microbic and bacteriological weapons. According to a Belgian forensic toxicologist, mycotoxins were said to have been found in samples of body fluids taken from Iranian gas victims, but this was never verified.
Just a hunch ... but considering much of the stuff was obtained from the US, I'm sure there was more than a little pressure to have this remain un-verified.
Iraq Resource Information Site the Iraqi defector Wafiq al-Sammarrai was claiming that anthrax bombs and Scud missiles had been buried around the Salah al Din region
"U.S., Britain Helped Iraq Develop Chemical And Biological Weapons" Source: Reuters, February 12, 1998.
Britain's Channel Four television news said it found intelligence documents which showed 14 shipments of biological materials -- including 19 batches of anthrax bacteria and 15 batches of botulinum, the organism that causes botulism -- were exported from the U.S. to Iraq between 1985 and 1989.
Twenty-nine batches of material were sent after Iraq killed 5,000 people in a gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, the program reported....Channel Four also said it had uncovered U.S. intelligence documents which showed that both the British and U.S. government knew as early as August 1990 of the existence of Agent 15, a deadly nerve gas.
U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990 Examples of items sent from the U.S. during the Reagan Bush Administrations that help Iraq’s non-conventional weapons programs and that were shipped to known military industrial facilities: Computers to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons;[44] machine tools and lasers to extend ballistic missile range;[45] graphics terminals to design and analyze rockets;[46] West Nile Fever virus, a known potential BW agent, sent by the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC);[47] the agents for botulism, tetnus, and anthrax.[48]
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