Sure.
Posted on 09/28/2002 7:43:05 PM PDT by Askel5
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Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan, while sitting as the fortieth president of the United States, sent us this article shortly after the tenth anniversary of Roe v. Wade; we printed it with pride in our Spring, 1983 issue, and reprint it now, after Roe's twentieth anniversary, just as proudly. The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade is a good time for us to pause and reflect. Our nationwide policy of abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy was neither voted for by our people nor enacted by our legislators— not a single state had such unrestricted abortion before the Supreme Court decreed it to be national policy in 1973. But the consequences of this judicial decision are now obvious: since 1973, more than 15 million unborn children have had their lives snuffed out by legalized abortions. That is over ten times the number of Americans lost in all our nation's wars. Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be." Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a "right" so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled. As an act of "raw judicial power" (to use Justice White's biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court's decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation. Abortion concerns not just the unborn child, it concerns every one of us. The English poet, John Donne, wrote: ". . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life— the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life. Wesaw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of "Baby Doe" in Bloomington because the child had Down's Syndrome. Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous mission of mercy, has said that "the greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children." Over the first two years of my Administration I have closely followed and assisted efforts in Congress to reverse the tide of abortion— efforts of Congressmen, Senators and citizens responding to an urgent moral crisis. Regrettably, I have also seen the massive efforts of those who, under the banner of "freedom of choice," have so far blocked every effort to reverse nationwide abortion-on-demand. Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 was not overturned in a day, or a year, or even a decade. At first, only a minority of Americans recognized and deplored the moral crisis brought about by denying the full humanity of our black brothers and sisters; but that minority persisted in their vision and finally prevailed. They did it by appealing to the hearts and minds of their countrymen, to the truth of human dignity under God. From their example, we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed. But the great majority of the American people have not yet made their voices heard, and we cannot expect them to—any more than the public voice arose against slavery—until the issue is clearly framed and presented. What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives—the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn. The case against abortion does not rest here, however, for medical practice confirms at every step the correctness of these moral sensibilities. Modern medicine treats the unborn child as a patient. Medical pioneers have made great breakthroughs in treating the unborn—for genetic problems, vitamin deficiencies, irregular heart rhythms, and other medical conditions. Who can forget George Will's moving account of the little boy who underwent brain surgery six times during the nine weeks before he was born? Who is the patient if not that tiny unborn human being who can feel pain when he or she is approached by doctors who come to kill rather than to cure? The real question today is not when human life begins, but, What is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law— the same right we have. What more dramatic confirmation could we have of the real issue than the Baby Doe case in Bloomington, Indiana? The death of that tiny infant tore at the hearts of all Americans because the child was undeniably a live human being—one lying helpless before the eyes of the doctors and the eyes of the nation. The real issue for the courts was not whether Baby Doe was a human being. The real issue was whether to protect the life of a human being who had Down's Syndrome, who would probably be mentally handicapped, but who needed a routine surgical procedure to unblock his esophagus and allow him to eat. A doctor testified to the presiding judge that, even with his physical problem corrected, Baby Doe would have a "non-existent" possibility for "a minimally adequate quality of life"—in other words, that retardation was the equivalent of a crime deserving the death penalty. The judge let Baby Doe starve and die, and the Indiana Supreme Court sanctioned his decision. Federal law does not allow federally-assisted hospitals to decide that Down's Syndrome infants are not worth treating, much less to decide to starve them to death. Accordingly, I have directed the Departments of Justice and HHS to apply civil rights regulations to protect handicapped newborns. All hospitals receiving federal funds must post notices which will clearly state that failure to feed handicapped babies is prohibited by federal law. The basic issue is whether to value and protect the lives of the handicapped, whether to recognize the sanctity of human life. This is the same basic issue that underlies the question of abortion. The 1981 Senate hearings on the beginning of human life brought out the basic issue more clearly than ever before. The many medical and scientific witnesses who testified disagreed on many things, but not on the scientific evidence that the unborn child is alive, is a distinct individual, or is a member of the human species. They did disagree over the value question, whether to give value to a human life at its early and most vulnerable stages of existence. Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value. Some have said that only those individuals with "consciousness of self" are human beings. One such writer has followed this deadly logic and concluded that "shocking as it may seem, a newly born infant is not a human being." A Nobel Prize winning scientist has suggested that if a handicapped child "were not declared fully human until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice." In other words, "quality control" to see if newly born human beings are up to snuff. Obviously, some influential people want to deny that every human life has intrinsic, sacred worth. They insist that a member of the human race must have certain qualities before they accord him or her status as a "human being." Events have borne out the editorial in a California medical journal which explained three years before Roe v. Wade that the social acceptance of abortion is a "defiance of the long-held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status." Every legislator, every doctor, and every citizen needs to recognize that the real issue is whether to affirm and protect the sanctity of all human life, or to embrace a social ethic where some human lives are valued and others are not. As a nation, we must choose between the sanctity of life ethic and the "quality of life" ethic. I have no trouble identifying the answer our nation has always given to this basic question, and the answer that I hope and pray it will give in the future. American was founded by men and women who shared a vision of the value of each and every individual. They stated this vision clearly from the very start in the Declaration of Independence, using words that every schoolboy and schoolgirl can recite: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We fought a terrible war to guarantee that one category of mankind— black people in America—could not be denied the inalienable rights with which their Creator endowed them. The great champion of the sanctity of all human life in that day, Abraham Lincoln, gave us his assessment of the Declaration's purpose. Speaking of the framers of that noble document, he said: This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on. . . They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. He warned also of the danger we would face if we closed our eyes to the value of life in any category of human beings: I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? When Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee the rights of life, liberty, and property to all human beings, he explained that all are "entitled to the protection of American law, because its divine spirit of equality declares that all men are created equal." He said the right guaranteed by the amendment would therefore apply to "any human being." Justice William Brennan, writing in another case decided only the year before Roe v. Wade, referred to our society as one that "strongly affirms the sanctity of life." Another William Brennan—not the Justice—has reminded us of the terrible consequences that can follow when a nation rejects the sanctity of life ethic: The cultural environment for a human holocaust is present whenever any society can be misled into defining individuals as less than human and therefore devoid of value and respect. As a nation today, we have not rejected the sanctity of human life. The American people have not had an opportunity to express their view on the sanctity of human life in the unborn. I am convinced that Americans do not want to play God with the value of human life. It is not for us to decide who is worthy to live and who is not. Even the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v. Wade did not explicitly reject the traditional American idea of intrinsic worth and value in all human life; it simply dodged this issue. The Congress has before it several measures that would enable our people to reaffirm the sanctity of human life, even the smallest and the youngest and the most defenseless. The Human Life Bill expressly recognizes the unborn as human beings and accordingly protects them as persons under our Constitution. This bill, first introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, provided the vehicle for the Senate hearings in 1981 which contributed so much to our understanding of the real issue of abortion. The Respect Human Life Act, just introduced in the 98th Congress, states in its first section that the policy of the United States is "to protect innocent life, both before and after birth." This bill, sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde and Senator Roger Jepsen, prohibits the federal government from performing abortions or assisting those who do so, except to save the life of the mother. It also addresses the pressing issue of infanticide which, as we have seen, flows inevitably from permissive abortion as another step in the denial of the inviolability of innocent human life. I have endorsed each of these measures, as well as the more difficult route of constitutional amendment, and I will give these initiatives my full support. Each of them, in different ways, attempts to reverse the tragic policy of abortion-on-demand imposed by the Supreme Court ten years ago. Each of them is a decisive way to affirm the sanctity of human life. We must all educate ourselves to the reality of the horrors taking place. Doctors today know that unborn children can feel a touch within the womb and that they respond to pain. But how many Americans are aware that abortion techniques are allowed today, in all 50 states, that burn the skin of a baby with a salt solution, in an agonizing death that can last for hours? Another example: two years ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a Sunday special supplement on "The Dreaded Complication." The "dreaded complication" referred to in the article—the complication feared by doctors who perform abortions—is the survival of the child despite all the painful attacks during the abortion procedure. Some unborn children do survive the late-term abortions the Supreme Court has made legal. Is there any question that these victims of abortion deserve our attention and protection? Is there any question that those who don't survive were living human beings before they were killed? Late-term abortions, especially when the baby survives, but is then killed by starvation, neglect, or suffocation, show once again the link between abortion and infanticide. The time to stop both is now. As my Administration acts to stop infanticide, we will be fully aware of the real issue that underlies the death of babies before and soon after birth. Our society has, fortunately, become sensitive to the rights and special needs of the handicapped, but I am shocked that physical or mental handicaps of newborns are still used to justify their extinction. This Administration has a Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, who has done perhaps more than any other American for handicapped children, by pioneering surgical techniques to help them, by speaking out on the value of their lives, and by working with them in the context of loving families. You will not find his former patients advocating the so-called "quality-of-life" ethic. I know that when the true issue of infanticide is placed before the American people, with all the facts openly aired, we will have no trouble deciding that a mentally or physically handicapped baby has the same intrinsic worth and right to life as the rest of us. As the New Jersey Supreme Court said two decades ago, in a decision upholding the sanctity of human life, "a child need not be perfect to have a worthwhile life." Whether we are talking about pain suffered by unborn children, or about late-term abortions, or about infanticide, we inevitably focus on the humanity of the unborn child. Each of these issues is a potential rallying point for the sanctity of life ethic. Once we as a nation rally around any one of these issues to affirm the sanctity of life, we will see the importance of affirming this principle across the board. Malcolm Muggeridge, the English writer, goes right to the heart of the matter: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other." The sanctity of innocent human life is a principle that Congress should proclaim at every opportunity. It is possible that the Supreme Court itself may overturn its abortion rulings. We need only recall that in Brown v. Board of Education the court reversed its own earlier "separate-but-equal" decision. I believe if the Supreme Court took another look at Roe v. Wade, and considered the real issue between the sanctity of life ethic and the quality of life ethic, it would change its mind once again. As we continue to work to overturn Roe v. Wade, we must also continue to lay the groundwork for a society in which abortion is not the accepted answer to unwanted pregnancy. Pro-life people have already taken heroic steps, often at great personal sacrifice, to provide for unwed mothers. I recently spoke about a young pregnant woman named Victoria, who said, "In this society we save whales, we save timber wolves and bald eagles and Coke bottles. Yet, everyone wanted me to throw away my baby." She has been helped by Save-a-Life, a group in Dallas, which provides a way for unwed mothers to preserve the human life within them when they might otherwise be tempted to resort to abortion. I think also of House of His Creation in Catesville, Pennsylvania, where a loving couple has taken in almost 200 young women in the past ten years. They have seen, as a fact of life, that the girls are not better off having abortions than saving their babies. I am also reminded of the remarkable Rossow family of Ellington, Connecticut, who have opened their hearts and their home to nine handicapped adopted and foster children. The Adolescent Family Life Program, adopted by Congress at the request of Senator Jeremiah Denton, has opened new opportunities for unwed mothers to give their children life. We should not rest until our entire society echoes the tone of John Powell in the dedication of his book, Abortion: The Silent Holocaust, a dedication to every woman carrying an unwanted child: "Please believe that you are not alone. There are many of us that truly love you, who want to stand at your side, and help in any way we can." And we can echo the always-practical woman of faith, Mother Teresa, when she says, "If you don't want the little child, that unborn child, give him to me." We have so many families in America seeking to adopt children that the slogan "every child a wanted child" is now the emptiest of all reasons to tolerate abortion. I have often said we need to join in prayer to bring protection to the unborn. Prayer and action are needed to uphold the sanctity of human life. I believe it will not be possible to accomplish our work, the work of saving lives, "without being a soul of prayer." The famous British Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, prayed with his small group of influential friends, the "Clapham Sect," for decades to see an end to slavery in the British empire. Wilberforce led that struggle in Parliament, unflaggingly, because he believed in the sanctity of human life. He saw the fulfillment of his impossible dream when Parliament outlawed slavery just before his death. Let his faith and perseverance be our guide. We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others, a value of which Malcolm Muggeridge says:. . . however low it flickers or fiercely burns, it is still a Divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives ever so humane and enlightened." Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My Administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.
Published by: The Human Life Foundation, Inc. |
...None of these people faced the dangers or knowledge that they were facing one-way flights like Lt. Kobyashi or the Kamikaze pilots knew they were taking....
You are wrong. And you are counting upon everyone here at this forum to be so infected by our general cultural implosion that we are unable to defend our American "fathers". But we are. However, theirs was not the nihilistic "one way trip" that is so admired by the sophisticated modern mind. They had a longing to live. And yet, they offered themselves up. I wonder if any of them thought: "Father take this cup from me."?
Here is a description of the "American way of self-sacrifice" in War and Remembrance:
".......Warren could not know---happily for him--what a sorry farce the whole American attack was degenerating into.
In the Japanese strike on Midway, one-hundred-eight aircraft from four carriers---fighters, dive-bombers, Type-97s---had joined up and flown out as a single attack group, performed their mission like clockwork, and returned in disciplined formation. But in this American strike each carrier had sent off its own planes at odd times. The slow torpedo squadrons had soon lost contact with the fighters and the dive-bombers. no American pilot knew what other squadrons than his own were doing, let alone where the Japanese were. Disorganization could go little further......
....Only one eccentric element--as it were, one wild card--remained in this all but played-out game; the three slow American torpedo squadrons. These were operating out of sight of each other, in a random and quite unplanned way. No torpron had any idea where another torpron was. The commanders of these weak and outmoded machines, three tough mavericks named Waldron, Lindsey, and Massey, were doing their own navigation. It was they who found the Japanese.
"Fifteen torpedo planes, bearing 130!"
Nagumo and his staff were not caught by surprise, though the absence---again!--of fighter escort must have astounded them. The bearing showed the planes were coming from the carrier Nagumo was closing to destroy. Fifteen planes, one squadron, naturally the Yank carrier would try to strike first. But the vice admiral, with an advantage, as he believed, of four to one ships and planes, was not worried. ....
...The fifteen aircraft sailing in against Nagumo were Torpedo Squadron Eight of the Hornet. Their leader, John Waldron, a fierce and iron-minded aviator, led his men in on their required straight slow runs---with what feelings one cannot record because he was among the first to die---through a thick anti-aircraft curtain of smoke and shrapnel, and a swarming onslaught of Zeroes. One after another, as they tried to spread out for an attack on both bows of the carriers, Waldron's planes caught fire, flew apart, splashed in the sea. Only a few lasted long enough to drop their torpedoes. Those who did accomplished nothing, for none hit. in a few minutes it was over. Another complete Japanese victory.
But even as the fifteenth plane burst into flames off the Akagi's bow and tumbled smoking into the blue water, a strident report from a screening vessel staggered everybody on the flag bridge.
"Fourteen torpedo planes approaching!"
Fourteen MORE? The dead, risen from the sea as in some frightful old legend, to fight on for their country in their wrecked planes? The Japanese mine is poetic, and such a thought could have flashed on Nagumo, but the reality was plain and frightening enough. American carriers each had but one torpedo squadron; this meant that at least one more carrier was coming at him. ...There might be four more carriers. Or seven. ...
Speed all preparations for immediate takeoff!"
The panicky order, abandoning cooridated attack, went out to the four carriers. The air raid bugles brayed, the thick black-puffing AA thumped out from the screen, the carriers broke formation to dodge the attackers, and the Zeroes, halting the slow climb to combat patrol attitude, dove at this new band of unescorted craft. These were Gene Lindsay's squadron from the Enterprise. The scarred, unwell commander had led them straight to the enemy while McCluskey groped westward. Ten planes went down. Lindsey's among them. Four evaded the slaughterers.....If any torpedo hit, it did not detonate.
Another big victory! But all steaming order was now gone from the Carrier Striking Force. Evasive maneuvering had pulled Hiryu almost out of sight to the north, and strung the Akagi, the Kagaand the Soryuin a line from west to east. The screening vessels were scattered from horizon to horizon, streaming smoke and cutting across each other's long-curved wakes. The sailors and officers were working away on the carrier flight deck with unabated zest. They had already cheered the flaming fall of dozens of bombers from Midway, and now two waves of Yank torpedo craft had been minced up by the Zeroes! The four flight decks were crammed with aircraft; none quite set for launch, but all fueled and bomb-loaded, and all in a vast tangle of fuel-lines, bombs and torpedoes, which the deck crews were cheerfully sweating to clear away, so the airmen could zoom off to the kill.
"Enemy torpedo planes, bearing 095!"
This third report after a short quiet interval. The Zeroes were heading up to the station whence they could repulse dive-bombers from on high, or knock down more low skimming torpedo planes, whichever would appear. The four carriers were turning into the wind to launch, but now they resumed twisting and dodging, while all eyes turned to the low-flying attackers, and to the combat patrol diving in a rush for more clay-pigeon shooting. Twelve torpedo planes were droning in from the Yorktown. These did have a few ecort fighters weaving desperately above them, but it made little difference. Ten were knocked down; two survived after dropping torpedos in vain. All three torpedo squadrons were wiped out, and the Nagumo Carrier Striking Force was untouched. The time was twenty minutes past ten.
At that very moment the almost unrecognisable voice of a staff officer uttered a scream which perhaps rang on in Nagumo's ears until he died two years later on the island of Saipan....
"HELL DIVERS!"
The two slanting lines stretching upwards into the high clouds, unopposed by a single fighter, dark blue planes were dropping on the flagship and on the Kaga. The Zeroes were all at water level, where they had knocked down so many torpedo planes and were looking for more. A more distant scream came from a lookout pointing eastward.
HELL DIVERS!
A second dotted line of dark blue aircraft was arrowing down towards the Soryu.
I was the perfect coordinated attack. It was timed almost to the second. It was a freak accident.
.....In a planned, coordinated attack, the dive-bombers were supposed to distract the enemy fighters so as to give the vulnerable torpedo planes their chance to come in. Instead the torpedo planes had pulled down the Zeroes and cleaned the air for the dive-bombers.
What was not luck, but the soul of the United States of America in action, was this willingness of the torpedo plane squadrons to go in against hopeless odds. Theirs was the extra ounce of martial weight that in a few decisive minutes tipped the balance of history.
Perhaps, kobyashi1942, if you ever feel like a bit of diversity you will choose a nom de guerre from one of these self-sacrificing--NOT suicide---American warriors.
Whatever we have become; however far we have fallen as a people; do not presume to bulldoze the graves of our dead in order to make your points--however accurate they may be concerning the undoubted ruthlessness of our ruling elite.....
Kamikaze pilot=Suicide bomber
Unfortunately, there isn't a comperable situation in the USAAF or the USN.
You're one disgusting individual, you know that?
I also can't believe that someone who posts with such atrocious grammar and spelling would claim to have once published a newspaper.
Sure.
everything tastes like chicken these days.
While Reagan's rhetoric may have signified a genuine decency in the man, its main effect was to put the Republican Party back in the game, NOT move the country away from its culture of human sacrifice.
The reallignment of certain portions of the population with the Republican Party--probably impossible without the Reagan persona-- has served the Party well. But, I think in the long run we can see that it has destroyed "conservatism". Maybe those twenty years since Reagan eloquently welcomed the poor, the tired, the meeeming tasses into the loving embrace of the Republican Party, could better have been spent forming a movement with teeth.
Also--and perhaps rudely on this thread that has already been torn to shreds once--did you see this article? It might be useful to examine the record of history in other areas. An interesting foreign policy for a man who so brilliantly spoke of abortion and the conscience of a nation. Perhaps feminists and their enablers will argue that abortion is just realpolitik by other means-----
Yahoo! News Mon, Sep 30, 2002
White House - AP Cabinet & State
U.S. Supplied Germs to Iraq in '80s
Mon Sep 30, 6:34 PM ET
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's bioweapons program that President Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago, according to government records getting new scrutiny in light of the discussion of war against Iraq.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that U.N. weapons inspectors determined were part of Saddam Hussein web 's biological weapons program, CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for legitimate medical research. The CDC and a biological sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West Nile virus .
The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the Senate. The exports were legal at the time and approved under a program administered by the Commerce Department ( news - web sites).
"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former U.N. biological weapons inspector.
"But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time."
The disclosures put the United States in the uncomfortable position of possibly having provided the key ingredients of the weapons America is considering waging war to destroy, said Sen. Robert Byrd , D-W.Va. Byrd entered the documents into the Congressional Record this month. Byrd asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about the germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan's Middle East envoy.
"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers.
"I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it," Rumsfeld said. He later said he would ask the Defense Department and other government agencies to search their records for evidence of the transfers.
Invoices included in the documents read like shopping lists for biological weapons programs. One 1986 shipment from the Virginia-based American Type Culture Collection included three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. Iraq later admitted to the United Nations that it had made weapons out of all three. The company sent the bacteria to the University of Baghdad, which U.N. inspectors concluded had been used as a front to acquire samples for Iraq's biological weapons
The CDC, meanwhile, sent shipments of germs to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and other agencies involved in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. It sent samples in 1986 of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxoid Ñ used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin Ñ directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna, the records show.
Botulinum toxin is the paralyzing poison that causes botulism. Having a vaccine to the toxin would be useful for anyone working with it, such as biological weapons researchers or soldiers who might be exposed to the deadly poison, Tucker said.
The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in the southern city of Basra in 1985, the records show.
BTTT
Do I miss that guy.
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