How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them
"However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical,
biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view
of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq,
says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now."
sundayherald.com
By Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot
THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to
develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction.
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which
oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive
administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including
anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until
March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria
sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium
perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show
that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992,
after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create
nerve gas.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related
Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the
date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May
2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax
-- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of
the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism
poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for
Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq
Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the
University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad
University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a
military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
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.
The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the
government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the
development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.'
This assistance, according to the report, 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'.
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.'
Riegle added 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'.
It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to
make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming
days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that
the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these
weapons of mass destruction.
However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical,
biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of
the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the
United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and doubts
that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.
According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
were destroyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or
destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'.
Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W
Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam
Hussein is a threat to America.
Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons
emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen
none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have
definitive proof.'
He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the
verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the
radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western
surveillance.
The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count
Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying
about Iraq's weapons programme.
Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they
were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that
they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late
in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.
'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing
chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are
indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace
of any resumed activity at all.'
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