NP? "War and death make for good business."

[Doug Millison]

" [...] Reagan, Bush, the Iraqi dictator, and American corporations have
worked together over the years. War and death make for good business.
[...] Former Reagan official and National Security Council staffer Howard
Teicher [...]  offered an affidavit in the Teledyne case, a legal sideshow
to a larger scandal known as "Iraqgate." [...] Teicher claims the United
States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis
with billions of dollars of credits, by providing US military intelligence
and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms
sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Reagan
also sent a secret message to Saddam, which then vice president Bush
delivered to Egyptian President Mubarak, and Mubarak passed on to Saddam,
"telling him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran."
Reagan CIA director Casey wanted to give Saddam cluster bombs, which "were
a perfect 'force multiplier' that would allow the Iraqis to defend against
the 'human waves' of Iranian attackers," explained the former NSC staffer.
He recorded Casey's comments in meeting minutes, which are now in the
Ronald Reagan presidential archives in Simi Valley, California.

In 1982, Reagan "legalized" direct military assistance to Iraq. This
resulted in more than a billion dollars in military related exports.
According to Kenneth R. Timmerman (author of The Death Lobby: How the West
Armed Iraq) the US government under Reagan and Bush sold Iraq 60 Hughes MD
500 "Defender" helicopters, eight Bell Textron AB 212 military helicopters
equipped for anti-submarine warfare, 48 Bell Textron 214 ST utility
helicopters (sold for "recreational" purposes), and US military infra-red
sensors and thermal imaging scanners (sold illegally to Iraq through a
Dutch company). After the Gulf War, the International Atomic Energy Agency
found the following US equipment in Iraq: spectrometers, oscilloscopes,
neutron initiators, high-speed switches for nuclear detonation, and other
tools used to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons. [...]

BNL--or Banca Nazionale del Lavoro--provided more than $5 billion in
unauthorized loans to Iraq, including $900 million guaranteed by the US
government. "About half of the money allegedly went to finance the purchase
of US farm products, including $900 million guaranteed by the Agriculture
Department's Commodity Credit Corp., but investigators said much of the
rest had helped fuel Iraq's military buildup," wrote George Lardner in the
Washington Post on 22 March 1992. [...]

While Bush Junior declares he "will not allow... a nation such as Iraq to
threaten our very future by developing weapons of mass destruction," the
administration of his father and Reagan, as the Gonzalez revelations
demonstrate, apparently didn't have the future of America in mind when they
allowed biological and chemical weapons--as well as massive amounts of
conventional military hardware--to be exported to Iraq. [...]

The US Department of Commerce licensed 70 biological exports to Iraq
between 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of
anthrax. The French newspaper Le Figaro, in an article published in 1998,
said researchers at the Rockville, Maryland lab of the American Type
Culture Collection confirmed sending anthrax samples via mail order to
Iraq. After the Gulf War, Iraq made several declarations to UN weapons
inspectors about how they had weaponized the anthrax sent to them by the
American corporation. In 1985, the US Centers of Disease Control sent
samples of an Israeli strain of West Nile virus to a microbiologist at the
Basra University in Iraq. In addition, Iraq received other "various toxins
and bacteria," including botulins and E. coli.

Corporations that have sold dual-use chemicals and biological samples to
Iraq for its weapons program include: Phillips Petroleum, Unilever,
Alcolac, Allied Signal, the American Type Culture Collection, and Teledyne.
Teledyne pled guilty to charges of criminal conspiracy, false statements,
and violations of the Export Administration Act and the Arms Export Control
Act for indirectly exporting 130 tons of zirconium to Iraq through Chilean
arms manufacturer Carlos Cardoen. The zirconium was intended for use in
cluster bombs. In defense, Teledyne argued during the trial that the CIA
had authorized the shipments. The Baltimore company Alcolac was convicted
of illegally selling thiodiglycol--a chemical precursor used in the
production of mustard gas--for use in Iraq's chemical warfare program.

When Murray Waas and Craig Unger published an article in The New Yorker
about the Reagan administration and Bush's involvement with Saddam
Hussein--a full three years before Howard Teicher's revelatory
affidavit--they were roundly condemned and mocked by the corporate media.
[...]

In general, the corporate media gave but cursory notice to the revelations.
"There's a good reason why we in the media are so partial to a nice, torrid
sex scandal," said Ted Koppel, as he opened a Nightline Iraqgate report in
1992. "It is, among other things, so easy to explain and so easy to
understand. Nothing at all, in other words, like allegations of a
government cover-up, which tend to be not at all easy to explain, and even
more difficult to understand." In short, according to Koppel and the
corporate media, the American people do not have the intelligence to judge
for themselves if their leaders are criminals. Obviously, Monica Lewinsky
is more important.

As Dubya the Junior and his coterie of chick hawks prepare to make war on a
Frankenstein Bush the Senior--at least in part--created, the revelations
exposed by Representative Henry B. Gonzalez and a handful of others need to
be revisited within the full context of public debate.

However, considering the handmaiden role of corporate media in the
dissemination of government propaganda--and its insistence upon offering
vacuous interviews by the likes of Paula Zahn--chances are the American
people will not be allowed to understand any time soon what the government
does in their name. [...] "


September 19, 2002
Bush Senior:
Hating Saddam, Selling Him Weapons
by Kurt Nimmo
http://www.counterpunch.org/




"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The
murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to
non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways.
It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It
provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be
taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more
prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just
ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while
they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of
markets."
Gravity's Rainbow p. 105