Just roll down. You will see:
(formatting is lost and links don't come through in pasting. I suggest you read it from the site)
Categories;
1 US complicity in the development of Iraq's illegal weapons programs.
a The U.S.
i Summary.
(A) According to congressional records from the early 1990s, the Reagan administration’s commerce department allowed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. companies exported chemical and biological agents to Iraq despite suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare. It was later discovered that these agents did indeed significantly contributed to the country’s weapons arsenal. [Sunday Herald 9/8/2002; The Times 12/31/02] Iraq was even provided with anthrax and bubonic plague viruses. [Washington Post 12/30/02]
ii Evidence.
(A) Summary.
(1) William Blum, a former employee of the State Department and author of the book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, revealed in an article first published in 1998 that “the furnishing of chemical and biological materials by the United States to Iraq . . . markedly enhanced Iraq's CBW capability.” [Yellow Times 8/20/2002]
(B) 1994 Senate Committee Reports. [May 25 report and October 7 report]
(1) According to the reports, the U.S. Department of Commerce approved the export of the following agents to Iraq.
(a) Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002; Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(b) Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin. It was sold to Iraq right up until 1992. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002; Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(c) Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002]
(d) Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002; Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(e) Clotsridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness, gas gangrene. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002; Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(f) Clostridium tetani, highly toxigenic. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002; Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(g) Also, Escherichia Coli (E.Coli); genetic materials; human and bacterial DNA. [Yellow Times 8/20/2002]
(h) VX nerve gas. [Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(i) Pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas which can also be reverse engineered to create actual nerve gas. This was sold to Iraq in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. [Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(2) Additional US exports to Iraq, according the reports.
(a) Examples.
(i) Chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings. [Newsday 12/13/02]
(ii) Chemical warfare filling equipment. [Newsday 12/13/02]
(iii) Missile fabrication equipment. [Newsday 12/13/02]
(iv) Missile system guidance equipment. [Newsday 12/13/02]
(b) Other.
(i) “Between 1985 and 1990 the US Commerce Department, for instance, licensed $1.5bn (£960m) of sales of technology which had military potential for Iraq.” [Scotsman 12/22/02]
(3) The Committee established a direct connection between what was sold by the U.S. to Iraq and what was removed by UN inspectors.
(a) Statments.
(i) In May 1994 the committee reported that the agents “were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction” and then four months later, in another report, it revealed “that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.” [Yellow Times 8/20/2002]
(ii) Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said, “UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.” He also explained that between January 1985 and August 1990, the “executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record.” [Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
(C) A 1995 letter from the Centers for Disease Control.
(1) Summary.
(a) Business Week reported, “In 1995, the Center for Disease Control & Prevention provided to then-Senator Donald Riegel (D-Mich.) a complete list of all biological materials -- including viruses, retroviruses, bacteria, and fungi -- that the CDC provided to Iraq from Oct. 1, 1984 through Oct. 13, 1993. Among the materials on the list are several types of dengue and sandfly fever virus, West Nile virus, and plague-infected mouse tissue smears. In his letter to Riegel, then-CDC Director David Satcher wrote: 'Most of the materials were non-infectious diagnostic reagents for detecting evidence of infections to mosquito-borne viruses’.” [Business Week 9/20/2002]
(2) Read the Letter
(3) Observations.
(a) James Tuite, a former Senate investigator.
(i) “We were freely exchanging pathogenic materials with a country that we knew had an active biological warfare program. The consequences should have been foreseen.” [cited in Business Week 9/20/2002]
(D) Observations.
(1) According to the reports, the shipments continued even after the gassing of the Kurds.
(a) The Sunday Herald, summarizing the reports, explained, “The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.” [Sunday Herald 9/8/2002]
iii The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s involvement in the export of agents to Iraq.
(A) Summary.
(1) According to congressional records from the early 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided several Iraqi sites with the biological agents Iraq used in its former illicit weapons programs. The agents that were exported were precursors of diseases such as anthrax, botulism, gangrene, and the West Nile virus. Iraq had claimed that the samples were to be used for legitimate medical research. [Associated Press 12/21/02].
(B) Shipments.
(1) “In 1986, the CDC sent samples of botulinum toxin and botulinum toxiod - used to make vaccines against botulinum toxin - directly to the Iraqi chemical and biological weapons complex at al-Muthanna … The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile virus to a microbiologist at a university in Basra in 1985, records show,” reported the Associated Press. [Associated Press 12/21/02]
2 US companies that helped build Iraq's weapons arsenal .
a Biological.
i American Type Culture Collection
(A) Several biological precursor agents for diseases like anthrax, gangrene, and the West Nile virus. [Associated Press 12/21/02]
b Chemical.[Die Tageszeitung 10/18/02; Zmag 10/29/02; Memory Hole; Democracy Now! 12/18/02]
i Alcolac International
(A) Thiodiglycol, the mustard gas precursor. [New York Times 12/21/02b]
ii Al Haddad
(A) 60 tons of a chemical that could be used to make sarin. [New York Times 12/21/02b]
c Nuclear. [Die Tageszeitung 10/18/02; Zmag 10/29/02; Memory Hole]
i TI Coating
ii UNISYS
iii Tektronix
iv Leybold Vacuum Systems
v Finnigan-MAT-US
vi Hewlett Packard
vii Dupont
viii Consarc
ix Cerberus (LTD)
x Canberra Industries Inc.
xi Axel Electronics Inc.
d Rocket Program.[Die Tageszeitung 10/18/02; Zmag 10/29/02; Memory Hole]
i Honeywell
ii TI Coating
iii UNISYS
iv Honeywell
v Semetex
vi Sperry Corp.
vii Tektronix
viii Hewlett Packard
ix Eastman Kodak
x Electronic Assiciates
xi EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc.
e Conventional weapons.[Die Tageszeitung 10/18/02; Zmag 10/29/02; Memory Hole]
i Honeywell
ii Spektra Physics
iii TI Coating
iv UNISYS
v Sperry Corp.
vi Rockwell
vii Hewlett Packard
viii Carl Zeis -U.Ss
ix Bechtel
f Other:
i “In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.” [Die Tageszeitung 10/17/02; Zmag 10/29/02; Memory Hole; Democracy Now! 12/18/02] |
