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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zonder who wrote (1252)	12/30/2002 4:00:22 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15987

What medical research were US authorities thinking of, I wonder, when they shipped Bacillus Anthracis, Clostridium Botulinum, or VX nerve gas to Iraq. I've seen no evidence that either the US or Britain (or anyone else) shipped VX to Iraq. Britain shipped pralidoxine, which is an nerve gas antidote that apparently can be reverse engineered into VX, but that's all I've seen. Shipments of VX would have been illegal and the Dept of State would have been required to approve the export under the US Munitions act.. But again.. it involves Iraq weaponizing this material, not a sale of weapons. I can sell Iraq gasoline and styrofoam which they could turn into Napalm, but that doesn't mean I sold them Napalm.. Mustard gas can be readily made from household ingredients and pesticides. Same with Phosgene and many other chemical agents. So should we say that selling those items to Iraq represents supplying them with Chemical weapons?? Methinks that would be quite a stretch... However, there's no doubt that special interests had every reason to be permitted to sell ingredients that might be misused by a customer to create chemical weapons. This is no different that the interest that businesses have in being able to selling precursor chemicals to drug processing countries like Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador. Anthrax is a commonly occurring bacteria. Iraq could have just as readily traveled to Namibia where the bacteria infests various national parks (it's been responsible for killing off elephant herds there).. Botulim is something you can grow yourself if you leave food out to rot in a tin can.. And plastic surgeons use a highly diluted version of it in eliminating facial wrinkles.. Yet, both of these perfectly legitimate items can be turned into weapons if the customer decides to do so.. But this is not to legitimize the ineptitude and loopholes of US export regulations. However, this was before Iraq invaded Kuwait and had a binding UN resolution hovering over it's head. And it was before the massive nature of Saddam's WMD program was discovered. Hawk