re Re: Iraq & US threat to peace and security

[pynchondroid]

>\"pynchondroid\" wrote:
>> And let's put pressure on Bush and his war-profits
>> cronies NOT to create any more Saddam Husseins or
>> supply them with weapons of mass destruction or
help
>> them use those weapons against their own people, as
>> Reagan and Bush the First and Rumsfeld and Cheney
did
>> in the period leading up to the ongoing US Gulf
War.


At 12:12 PM -0400 10/26/02, somebody wrote:
>"their own people"? 

Perhaps because they -- some of the Kurds -- live
within Iraq's boundaries?  (Note as well that the US
has already agreed to step aside and let Turkey
oppress its Kurds, in exchange for their support for a
new Iraq invasion.)

>Why do we keep reading this phrase? 

"We" -- how many of you are there?  Speak for
yourself, please.


>It's more word play. 

To you, perhaps. It's life-and-death for the people
who are directly affected.

>
>http://www.gendercide.org/case_anfal.html

This adds some more perspective, on US aid to the
genocide; it's also been widely reported that the US
provided more specific strategic and tactical aid to
these specific attacks, and that it turned a blind eye
to same while trying to suck up to Hussein in the US
effort to reconfigure the Middle East more in keeping
with American needs:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1033423291456&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

U.S. helped launch Iraq's bioweapons program

CDC supplied the kinds of germs Iraq later used for
biological weapons

 WASHINGTON (AP) - Iraq's bioweapons program, which
U.S. President George W. Bush wants to eradicate, got
its start with help from Uncle Sam two decades ago,
according to government records getting new scrutiny
in light of the discussion of war against Iraq. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent
samples directly to several Iraqi sites that United
Nations weapons inspectors determined were part of
Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program, CDC and
congressional records from the early 1990s show. Iraq
had ordered the samples, claiming it needed them for
legitimate medical research. 

A look at U.S. shipments
of pathogens to Iraq 

Shipments from the United States to Iraq of the kinds
of pathogens later used in Iraq's biological weapons
programs, according to records from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, the Senate Banking
Committee and United Nations weapons inspectors: 
ANTHRAX - Iraq admitted making 8,300 litres of anthrax
spores and putting some of them into weapons. UN
inspectors said Iraq could have made three times as
much anthrax as it acknowledged, and could not verify
Iraq's claims to have destroyed all of its weaponized
anthrax. 
The American Type Culture Collection, a biological
samples repository in Manassas, Va., sent two
shipments of anthrax to Iraq in the 1980s. Three
anthrax strains were in a May 1986 shipment sent to
the University of Baghdad, which UN inspectors later
linked to Iraq's biological weapons program. A 1988
shipment from ATCC to Iraq also included four anthrax
strains. 
BOTULINUM - Iraq admitted making 20,000 litres of
botulinum toxin, a deadly poison produced by the
Clostridium botulinum bacteria, and putting some of it
into weapons. Five warheads filled with botulinum
toxin are missing. 
ATCC sent six strains of Clostridium botulinum to the
University of Baghdad in the May 1986 shipment. The
September 1988 ATCC shipment to Iraq also contained
one strain of Clostridium botulinum. 
In March 1986, the CDC sent samples of botulinum toxin
and botulinum toxoid (used to make a vaccine against
botulinum poisoning) directly to Iraq's al-Muthanna
complex, a centre for Iraq's chemical weapons program
and the site where Iraq restarted its dormant
biological weapons program in 1985. 
GAS GANGRENE - UN inspectors concluded Iraq could have
produced hundreds of litres of the germs that cause
gas gangrene, though Iraq admitted producing just a
fraction of that amount. Gas gangrene, caused by the
Clostridium perfringens bacteria, causes toxic gases
to form inside the body, killing tissues and causing
internal bleeding, lung and liver damage. 
ATCC sent three strains of Clostridium perfringens to
the University of Baghdad in the May 1986 shipment and
another three strains in the 1988 shipment. 
OTHER - The CDC sent bacteria samples to Iraq's Atomic
Energy Commission in 1985, 1987 and 1988. The
commission was involved in Saddam's attempts to build
a nuclear bomb and other weapons of mass destruction. 
The CDC also sent bacteria samples to the Sera and
Vaccine Institute in Amiriyah, Iraq in 1988. The
institute stored samples and did genetic engineering
research for Iraq's biological weapons programs, UN
inspectors found. 

The CDC and a biological sample company, the American
Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs
Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the
bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that
cause gas gangrene, the records show. Iraq also got
samples of other deadly pathogens, including the West
Nile virus. 

The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United
States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. They
were detailed in a 1994 Senate Banking Committee
report and a 1995 follow-up letter from the CDC to the
Senate. 

The exports were legal at the time and approved under
a program administered by the Commerce Department. 

"I don't think it would be accurate to say the United
States government deliberately provided seed stocks to
the Iraqis' biological weapons programs," said
Jonathan Tucker, a former United Nations biological
weapons inspector. 

"But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a
legitimate public health purpose, which I think was
naive to believe, even at the time." 

The disclosures put the United States in the
uncomfortable position of possibly having provided the
key ingredients of the weapons America is considering
waging war to destroy, said Senator Robert Byrd (D -
W.Va). Byrd entered the documents into the
Congressional Record this month. 

Byrd asked Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about the
germ transfers at a recent Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing. Byrd noted that Rumsfeld met Saddam
in 1983, when Rumsfeld was president Ronald Reagan's
Middle East envoy. 

"Are we, in fact, now facing the possibility of
reaping what we have sown?" Byrd asked Rumsfeld after
reading parts of a Newsweek article on the transfers.
 
[...] 


The CDC also sent samples of a strain of West Nile
virus to an Iraqi microbiologist at a university in
the southern city of Basra in 1985, the records show."







=====
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