[gusty]

If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes fact in the minds of people eventually. For example, Judge Napolitano, someone who is considered more sympathetic to conservatives,on the radio today repeated the lie that Reagan armed Saddam Hussein with WMD. There is absolutely no truth to the statement, it would even be false if he said we armed Saddam Hussein with conventional weapons. Iraq at the time was armed by the Soviet Union, France, and South Africa, but the lie that it was the US is repeated so often that it becomes gospel to the uninformed. I guess since the vast majority of people do not read, it is easy to make a lie fact.

[Theoria]

We not only lifted many export licenses for Iraq, we removed them from State Department's list of terrorist countries in 82. We also supplied them with satellite imagery, Iranian defense locations and other intelligence assets for the use of chemical weapons against Iran.

As for pathogens and such, look up the Riegle report. We exported over 50 shipments of anthrax alone to Iraq.