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.
The burden is on them to prove that we gave Iraq anthrax, which that statement by a Democrat congressman does not do.
At the time, Iraq's attitude was "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and accepted our military aid. After we accidently shot down an Iraqi AirBus, we even were for a period providing Iraq with AWACS surveillance.
However, as signatory to the ban on Biological weapons, we at no time provided Iraq with Anthrax. We may indeed have supplied laboratory equipment that allowed them to grow and refine Anthrax, but this same equipment is also used in medical research.
I don't think there's any evidence that we supplied Iraq with an anthrax weapon.
The biological materials included:
Thiodiglycol, which is used to make mustard gas, was also exported.For more information check out the article, "Anthrax for Export" by William Blum in the April, 1998, issue of The Progressive or his article, The United States vs. Iraq - A Study in Hypocrisy.
One thing I remember from films in high school history class was that the draconian provisions imposed on Germany by the Allies after WWI led to the destruction of their economy and directly to Hitler and WWII. I thought of that many times during the ten year persecution of Iraq by the U.S. following the end of the Gulf War.
I don't think there's much doubt that the US exported dual-use items to Iraq 20 years ago. One of them may have been some anthrax cultures. I'm also sure you could find that we export similar dual-use items to most other countries, even today.
The question was whether the US provided Iraq with an anthrax weapon, and I'll think you'll have to agree that bacteria samples are not a weapon.
Germ culture to grow the anthrax was freely imported from the US military's centre for chemical and biological research at Fort Detrick, Maryland, via civilian laboratories operated by ATCC, the American Type Culture Collection.
American investigators have established that several shipments of biological material, including 21 batches of anthrax , were licensed for export from the US to Iraq between 1985 and 1988. They were sent to the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Trade in Baghdad.
and
A Nobel laureate who headed a 1994 Pentagon study that dismissed links between chemical and biological weapons and Persian Gulf War illnesses was also a director of a U.S. firm that had earlier exported anthrax and other lethal materials to Iraq before the 1991 conflict, according to federal records.
Renowned geneticist Joshua Lederberg of New York served as chairman of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects. At the time of the 1994 study, Lederberg was also one of 10 directors on the board of American Type Culture Collection, or ATCC.
Newsday has found that the nonprofit Rockville, Md., firm made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraqi scientists between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records. Lederberg became a director, an unpaid position, in 1990, a year after the shipments were halted by the Bush administration. Lederberg resigned from ATCC last year.
....ATCC's role as a supplier of anthrax to Iraq became public on Feb. 9, 1994, when Sen. Donald Riegle (D-Mich.) delivered a Senate speech outlining ATCC's shipments and criticizing Commerce Department export controls.
"I think the U.S. government approving export of these materials to a government like that and to someone like Saddam Hussein violates every standard of logic and common sense," Riegle said. By then it had been widely reported that Iraq had inflicted heavy casualties on Iranian troops with chemical weapons since 1981.
The senator noted that ATCC shipped "bacillus anthracis," twice - in May, 1986, and September, 1988. There were also two shipments of clostridium botulinum - a bacteria used to make botulinum toxin - on the same dates. The batches, frozen in tiny vials, were shipped to Baghdad's Ministry of Education.
and
"By 1986, Iraq had proven itself better at the use of chemical weapons than any fighting force in the world," said a former senior U.S. diplomat involved in Iraq. By 1988, Iraq's use of gases had also repeatedly been documented by U.N. specialists. "It was all done with a wink and a nod," said a former U.S. intelligence official. "We knew exactly where this stuff was going, although we bent over backwards to look the other way." Washington knew Iraq was "dumping boatloads" of chemical weapons on Iranian positions, he added.
Actually, I was just taking up BigTime on his initial request for refutations of the quote he provided (and accidently referenced your post#2 instead of the first one). Plugged a snippet of the quote into the google.com search engine, and found the source was this guy William Blum. Other than that I am completely dispassionate on the subject. I've continued to look for refutations and have found none. Are you claiming that a substantive refutation of Blum's contentions is not possible, even in theory? I wouldn't.
Incidently, I was reading the small pox thread, in which I meant to complement you on the info you were providing (i.e. a small pox attack on the U.S. would end up infecting the world; Hussein might do it any way if he felt he was on his last legs, so any attempt to take him down would have to be a complete suprise attack).
Blum's contentions are primarily that we shouldn't demand that Iraq give up its sovereignty and that we provided the building blocks that Saddam used to make his biological weapons program.
The first contention is political science stuff, and the second contention probably is true. I think it is possible that it can be proven to be true, although I don't think we intended Saddam to convert the technology into bio warfare stuff.
But let's just imagine that there is no evidence that we supplied those materials. That still wouldn't be proof that we didn't. It would only establish that no evidence could be found. It's very difficult, if not impossible to prove a negative, which is why we put the burden on the state in criminal cases.
I guess you could argue that an alibi defense might constitute proof that someone didn't commit a particular crime, but even that would be impossible to employ by a country. "We didn't supply that stuff to Saddam, Your Honor, we were home watching TV that night with Canada" probably wouldn't be persuasive!
The other stuff you posted I can accept, but in this paragraph lies the real thrust of the person's argument I'm contending with. I will be hard pressed to refute that the U.S. supplied materials including bacteria to Iraq. But the issue of contention, in my mind, is was it done for medical purposes or for some nefarious goal such as killing Iranians. Those of the tin-foal hat persuasion likely believe it was done to kill Iranians. I don't think so, but I'm surely going to have trouble "proving" it.
In the above paragraph, this issue is laid out. What is the publication source of the information in this paragraph?
If not for bio warfare, then for what? If it was intended for use against Iran, would that surprise you? Its a known fact we were providing Ben Laden with arms and support in his war with Russia. Typical of the U.S. governments laughably inept attempts to be World Policeman, I would say.
(ThatPoppinsWoman (article))
"By 1986, Iraq had proven itself better at the use of chemical weapons than any fighting force in the world," said a former senior U.S. diplomat involved in Iraq. By 1988, Iraq's use of gases had also repeatedly been documented by U.N. specialists. "It was all done with a wink and a nod," said a former U.S. intelligence official. "We knew exactly where this stuff was going, although we bent over backwards to look the other way." Washington knew Iraq was "dumping boatloads" of chemical weapons on Iranian positions, he added. "
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