[Peace] from England

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

www.sundayherald.com

How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them
 
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 rep orts 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, chem ical 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 des troyed most of Iraq's
wea pons 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 des troyed 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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