How America armed Iraq

[TahitiNut]

UNDER the successive presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, the USA sold nuclear, chemical and biological weapons technology to Saddam Hussein.

<snip>

These included two batches of anthrax and two batches of botulism being sent to the Iraqi ministry of higher education on May 2, 1986; one batch each of salmonella and E.Coli sent to the Iraqi state company for drug industries on August 31, 1987.

Other shipments from the US went to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the department of biology at the University of Basra in November 1989; the department of microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the ministry of health in April 1985 and Officers’ City military complex in Baghdad in March and April 1986.

As well as anthrax and botulism, the USA also sent West Nile fever, brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. The shipments even went on after Saddam ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which some 5000 people died, in March 1988.

<snip>

Other items which were sent by the US to Iraq included chemical warfare agent precursors, chemical warfare agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment.

13 June 2004

[Mokito]

1. Finally!!!

This article comes 3 years (and more!) too damn late!

[still_one]

2. but do you think any of the coporate media here will report it?

[Mokito]

3. (sigh) No....no, I don't....

[TahitiNut]

4. "Ronnie & Saddam"

It was just before Christmas 1983 that Donald Rumsfeld, then US presidential envoy to Iraq, slipped quietly into Baghdad to come face to face with the man who would become one of America’s greatest enemies within two decades.

<snip>

While America was selling WMD to Iraq, Reagan was also telling Saddam to increase his brutal campaign against the Iranian fundamentalist regime, even while Iraqi poison gas was falling on Persian battlefields. The Reagan presidency made America complicit in Saddam’s war crimes.

<snip>

In 1982, as the Iran-Iraq war began to hot up, the USA quietly took Iraq off the State Department’s list of states that supported terrorism. This allowed money to start flowing from America into Saddam’s coffers.

<snip>

America was fully aware of Saddam’s war crimes. A November 1983 US memorandum from the bureau of politico-military affairs to the then secretary of state George Shultz, headed Iraqi Use Of Chemical Weapons, confirms that America knew that Saddam was using chemical weapons on an “almost daily basis”. Another State Department memo, also written in November 1983 – this time from the office of the assistant secretary for near Eastern and South Asian affairs – says the US should tell Saddam that America knows about the use of poison gas, as that would “avoid unpleasantly surprising Iraq through public positions we may have to take on this issue”. However, State Department documents also reveal that America decided to limit its “efforts against the Iraqi CW programme to close monitoring because of our strict neutrality”.

Other State Department cables sent around this time show that America knew Iraq used chemical weapons in October 1982 and in July and August 1983, “and more recently against Kurdish insurgents”. Reagan also knew by the end of 1983 that “with the essential assistance of foreign firms, Iraq has become able to deploy and use CW and probably has built up large reserves of CW for further use”.

<more>

[Zhade]

11. "strict neutrality"???

HAHAHAHAHA! That's the funniest fucking thing I've heard all day!

You can't be fucking neutral when you fucking sell fucking weapons to BOTH FUCKING SIDES, ASSHOLES!

Jesus!

[TahitiNut]

13. It's what Republicans call "good business"

... and what I call ghoulish war-profiteering and treason.

[evworldeditor]

5. Redacted Iraq Weapons Report

Do you think this is why the Bush White House redacted 8,000 of the original 11,800 pages of Iraq's 2003 report on its WMD programs?

http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_2_63/ai_98469794

[Barrett808]

6. Absolutely n/t

[TahitiNut]

9. Without a (reasonable) doubt, at least some of the redaction

... was for this reason. I doubt the variety of US complicity and corruption is limited to just this, however.

[daleo]

7. If Saddam receives a fair trial, this could all be entered into evidence

Therefore, he will never receive a fair trial. I suspect they will try him on some 'garden variety' murder, and execute him, forestalling any of the U.S. involvement in war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war. Any charges related to rape rooms and torture chambers will also come uncomfortably close to the BFEE, so those will be avoided.

So, I think they will pick some murder out of the grab bag that doesn't really have political overtones, charge him, convict him, and execute him, silencing him for good. But he may have documents stashed somewhere that would be released in that eventuality, giving him revenge on the BFEE from beyond the grave.

[Zhade]

12. THIS is how screwed up everything is...

...in that scenario, I'd CHEER for something HUSSEIN did.

All thanks to these traitors, I'd actually be happy for something Hussein did.

THAT'S how fucked up this whole situation is!

[young_at_heart]

8. How many Americans know of this?

It boggles the mind that Reagan has so many admirers.

[TahitiNut]

10. Half of the people in this country are below average.

In intelligence, or morals, or ethics, or sanity, or any other attribute that's normally distributed.

Confession: I voted for Reagan (first term) and Nixon (first term). I tend to believe that mistakes are an essential part of the learning process. (I'm becoming a genius.)