Um... the U.S. *did* supply Iraq with chemical weapons, right?

Some wingnut is trying to tell me that the U.S. only supplied Iraq with intelligence. It has always been my understanding that the U.S. supplied Iraq with chemical weapons as well, or at least the materials to make them.

Who's right? And could you link me to some sources?

In fact it is believed that we supplied the Halabjah(sp?) coordinates.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1223-11.htm
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The victims of Saddam and his accomplices, Iranians as well as Iraqis, have a right to know: Who armed Iraq? Who built Saddam's arsenal of terror in the '80s? They also have a right to interrogate Rumsfeld, other U.S. officials, CIA agents, and U.S. arms merchants as suspects or witnesses. The executives of Alcoliac International of Maryland, that transported mustard gas precursors to Saddam; the Tennessee manufacturers that provided sarin-based chemicals; the heads of Dow chemical who sold toxins that cause death by asphyxiation; the heads of Bechtel that produced chemicals for Saddam in their Iraqi plant; the CIA agents that made covert arms deals and transported heinous cluster bombs to a known war criminal-all the participants in Iraq's machine of death should come before an international court and answer a single question: What did you know, and when did you know it? It is not just the buyers, it is suppliers of death who are accountable under the Nuremberg Conventions.

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In 1963 the CIA helped the Ba'athist Party overthrow General Abdel-Karim Kassem, who was gunned down with other leaders from a list supplied by the CIA. One of the conspirators was a young, ruthless insurgent named Saddam Hussein. After a purge and revolt, the Ba'athists took total control of Iraq, and Saddam Hussein took power in 1979. Together, the U.S. and its surrogate waged a brutal, illegal war against Iran for eight years. In violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (which outlaws chemical warfare) the Reagan-Bush Administration authorized the sale of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological stocks, including anthrax. Iraq was already was using chemical weapons-on an "almost daily basis," according to the Washington Post-when envoy Donald Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in 1983, an historic meeting that consolidated an active military partnership. The repression and brutality of Saddam's regime was not a secret when U.S. and Iraqi officials coordinated their military efforts. Not only did the U.S. supply planes, munitions and bombs, it supplied the satellite images that enabled Saddam to massacre thousands of Iranians. Twenty-four U.S. firms exported arms and material to Baghdad. France also sent 200 AMX medium tanks, mirage bombers, and Gazelle helicopter gunships.

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Someone else will probably provide something better , this was just the first thing I found.

but the US did provide samples of biological agents to Iraq in the 1980s. Business Week published photos of the documents here:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2002/nf20020920_3025.htm

"In a previously unreleased letter obtained by BusinessWeek, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention admitted that the CDC supplied Iraqi scientists with nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples in the 1980s, including the plague, West Nile, and dengue fever. The letter, written in 1995 by then-CDC director David Satcher, was in response to a congressional inquiry.

----snip

Still, some observers believe there should have been more prudence. "We were freely exchanging pathogenic materials with a country that we knew had an active biological warfare program," says James Tuite, a former Senate investigator who helped publicize Gulf War Syndrome. "The consequences should have been foreseen." but we

they're not as difficult as bio weapons, and there may have been no need for the US to provide the actual chemical. But we did actively assist Iraq's use of the weapons:

According to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to ``calibrate'' mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. Beginning in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with ``data from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photography … to assist Iraqi bombing raids''.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00158.htm

There also seems to be a book: The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq by Kenneth Timmerman

1. supplied precursor chemicals for CWMDs or

2. allowed the importation of such precursors.

At the time of their use by Saddam, the US did not criticize or censure.

There is NO QUESTION that US labs supplied some or all of Saddam's bioweapons cultures, they showed the RECEIPT from a US-based lab for them (anthrax, botulinum, etc.) on a TV program (Nova?).

.....results of Google search for US supplied chemical agents to Iraq.

This is posted already. Sorry.

How The US Armed Saddam Hussein With Chemical Weapons http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00158.htm

A 1994 US Senate report revealed that US companies were licenced by the commerce department to export a ``witch's brew'' of biological and chemical materials, including bacillus anthracis (which causes anthrax) and clostridium botulinum (the source of botulism). The American Type Culture Collection made 70 shipments of the anthrax bug and other pathogenic agents.

The report also noted that US exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare facilities and chemical warhead filling equipment. US firms supplied advanced and specialised computers, lasers, testing and analysing equipment. Among the better-known companies were Hewlett Packard, Unisys, Data General and Honeywell.

Saddam Hussein was, without question, the leader of a brutal dictatorship. As many as 300,000 Iraqis are believed to have been deliberately murdered by the regime in the "Anfal campaign" against the Kurds, and the assaults on the Marsh Arabs and southern Shi`a populations, which resulted in thousands of more dead. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ANFALINT.htm
http://www.hrw.org (Human Rights Watch)

Between 1977 and 1987, some 4,500-5,000 Kurdish villages were systematically destroyed, and the survivors were forced into concentration camps. http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/iraqtribunal.htm

Many of the atrocities took place at a time when the U.S. was actively supporting Hussein in a manufactured revolution against the Iranian government, whose leaders had humiliated Americans in the '70's hostage crisis.

Iraq used chemical weapons in 1983-1984, during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been reported that some 20,000 Iranians were killed by mustard gas, and the nerve agents tabun and sarin.

In 1988, Iraqi soldiers invaded Kurdistan and rounded up more than 100,000 Kurds and executed them. In March 1988, in the town of Halabja, more than 3,000 civilians died from chemical gas attacks by the Iraqi military.

Iraq has been rightly condemned by the U.S. and most of the international community for these and other deadly actions against its citizens and its neighbors. But Iraq did not operate against its enemies alone or without our knowledge, and in many instances, U.S. support.

Nightline, in Sept. 1991 reported that the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank, BNL, was able to funnel billions, some of it in U.S. credits, to Iraq's military. The U.S. apparently knew of the transfers and turned a blind eye. Nightline Show #2690 - Sept. 13, 1991

"Sophisticated military technology was illegally transferred from a major U.S. company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to South Africa and Chile and, from there, on to Iraq. The Iraqi-born designer of a chemical weapon plant in Libya set up shop in Florida, producing and then shipping to Iraq chemical weapon components. The CIA, the FBI and other federal agencies were made aware of the operation and did nothing to prevent it."

The report further states: "During the 1980s and into the '90s, senior officials of both the Reagan and Bush administrations encouraged the privatization of foreign policy, certainly toward Iran and Iraq. They made a mockery of the export control system; they found ways of encouraging foreign governments to do what our laws prohibited. They either knew or, if not, were guilty of the grossest incompetence, that U.S. companies were collaborating with foreign arms merchants in the illegal transfer of American technology that helped Saddam Hussein build his formidable arsenal."

It summarizes that, "Iraq, during much of the 1980's and into the '90s, was able acquire sophisticated U.S. technology, intelligence material, ingredients for chemical weapons, indeed, entire weapon-producing plants, with the knowledge, acquiescence and sometimes even the assistance of the U.S. government."

The New York Times reported in Aug. 2002 that during the Reagan administration, the U.S. military provided Saddam with critical intelligence that was used in Iraq's aggression against Iran, at a time when they were clearly using chemical and biological agents in their prosecution of that war. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/globalissue/usforeignpolicy/iraq1980scontent.html

The United States was an accomplice in the use of these materials at a time when President Reagan's top aides, including then- Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then national security adviser, were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurds in Halabja.

The classified support reportedly involved more than 60 military advisors from the Defense Intelligence Agency who provided detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.

A retired intelligence officer recalled that, in the military's view, "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern."

A 1994 Senate Banking Committee report (The Riegle Report--U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html), and a letter from the Centers for Disease Control in 1995 (http://www.businessweek.com:/print/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2002/nf20020920_3025.htm?db (A U.S. Gift to Iraq: Deadly Viruses- Business Week Online), revealed that the U.S. had shipped biological agents to Iraq at a time when Washington knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons to kill thousands of Iranian troops.

The reports showed that Iraq was allowed to purchase batches of anthrax, botulism, E. coli, West Nile fever, gas gangrene, dengue fever. The CDC was shipping germ cultures directly to the Iraqi weapons facility in al-Muthanna.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University has a collection of declassified government documents that detail U.S. support of Saddam's regime. This is the collection that contains a photograph of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, who apparently said nothing to Saddam about his nuclear weapons program or his use of chemical weapons. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/index.htm (The Saddam Hussein Scrapbook, National Security Archive George Washington University)

Me Book

I'll make it even easier for you; I just pulled it off the shelf--the ISBN number is: 0-553-09650-8.

The book actually was kind of a sleeper in commercial sales; I remember buying it off a clearance rack, but you should be able to find it at any good library. During each new iteration of idiotic US policy in Iraq, the book enjoys a bit of a comeback. It has some really fascinating stories about truly heroic people in law enforcement and intelligence who tried to do the right thing and often paid the price.

Even if intelligence was all the US provided, and this person's assertion is objectively 100% FALSE, that would be criminal enough. But (as other people state and document here), Iraq was provided key precursors for chemical weapons as well as what can only be described as biowarfare starter kits. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with chemistry (some of my professional training is in organic chem and biochem), many of the precursor agents--such as EMPTA and various organic phosphates--need a one-step reaction to become something truly horrible like VX. In fact, that's the principle behind "binary" weapons.

ALL these types of technology transfers require export control review. If you or I were to order any of these items, Federal agents would immediately pay us a visit, and rightly so. The supply houses are in fact required to notify law enforcement. These are clear, premeditated actions by people who knew what they were doing when they supplied a regime that probably had the best-educated citizens in the Mideast, and simply needed a bit of technology transfer to get up and running.

n/t

<snip>
During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq received the lion's share of American support because at the time Iran was regarded as the greater threat to U.S. interests. According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing death, were:

* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.


* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.


* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.


* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.


* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.


* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.

Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned 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."

The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment.

The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.

The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.

Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare. Among these suppliers were the following:

* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.


* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.


* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC


* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).

The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":

* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA


* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC


* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC


* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT


* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT


* Evapco, Taneytown, MD


* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH

Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol.

In 1994, a group of twenty-six veterans, suffering from what has come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome, filed a billion-dollar lawsuit in Houston against Fisher, Rhone-Poulenc, Bechtel Group, and Lummus Crest, as well as American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and six other firms, for helping Iraq to obtain or produce the compounds which the veterans blamed for their illnesses. By 1998, the number of plaintiffs has risen to more than 4,000 and the suit is still pending in Texas.

Edited to add link: http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html

Julie

to get around the increasing scrutiny of large shipments of precursors. Thiodiglycol is a sulfur analog of diethylene glycol (main ingredient in antifreeze) and is made from ethylene. Thiodiglycol is also a watched chemical because it is a mustard gas precursor.

Read the citations (and the book I mentioned)!