I thought I read that we originally got Saddam started with some anthrax during the Iran-Iraq war. If that is true, Saddam's anthrax would have a USA signature. So, if we gave it to Saddam, Saddam could have conducted the attack with our own anthrax and it would have been traced back to our own supply.
"I thought I read that we originally got Saddam started with some anthrax during the Iran-Iraq war. If that is true, Saddam's anthrax would have a USA signature. So, if we gave it to Saddam, Saddam could have conducted the attack with our own anthrax and it would have been traced back to our own supply."
Nope, anthrax occurs all over the world. We diagnose cases in livestock in several US states every year and the same can be said in other countries. This was not an unusual anthrax strain but one found in multiple locations throughout the world. Nevertheless, I see Al Qaeda fingerprints all over the human targets on the basis of common sense. Just as a side note--the head of Saddam's bioweapons program did her graduate work at the University of Missouri.
The Ames strain was provided to Iraq as part of a then routine exchange between agricultural schools -- anthrax was generally considered a veterinary medicine issue.
And the US didn't supply Saddam with anything other than some relatively low level intelligence (by our standards) concerning the location of the Iranian military.