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MIDDLE EASTERN
CHESSBOARD: By: Paul Joseph Watson The purpose of this article is to ascertain how Iraq acquired its
arsenal of weapons that eventually led to it being declared as a ‘rogue
state’. I stress that some of these subjects have been exhaustively
documented elsewhere numerous times. The scope here is to provide a
thumbnail sketch, which includes the latest up to date
information. |
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In December of 2002, Iraq compiled a dossier to be sent to the United Nations detailing records of how their weapons program had developed and what steps they had taken to abandon it. Iraq merely listed the source of their weapons – from which companies they had acquired the weapons that now made them the target of an imminent U.S. invasion. The companies listed were largely either American or British, namely,
| Honeywell | Spectra Physics | MEED International |
| Leybold Vacuum Systems | Sperry Corp | Euromac Ltd-Uk |
| International Signal | Unisys | Finnigan-MAT-US |
| Inwako | Dupont | Alcolac International |
| Carl Zeiss | Cerberus | Electronic Associates |
| Bechtel | EZ Logic Data Systems | Canberra Industries |
| TI Coating | C. Plath-Nuclear | Consarc |
| Semetex | Walter Somers Ltd | Matrix Churchill Corp |
| Endshire Export Marketing | Sheffield Forgemasters | Terex Corp |
| Tech Development Group | Eastman Kodak | TMG Engineering |
| XYY Options, Inc | Axel Electronics Inc | Hewlett-Packard |
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Rockwell |
International Computer | Tektronix |
| Ali Ashour Daghir | International Military Svs | American Type Culture |
| International Computer |
Botulinum: Iraq admitted making 20,000 liters of botulinum toxin, a deadly poison produced by the Clostridium botulinum bacteria, and putting some of it into weapons. The American Type Culture Collection 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 center for Iraq's chemical weapons program and the site where Iraq restarted its dormant biological weapons program in 1985.
Gas Gangrene: 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.
These examples
are just a handful of the almost two dozen forms of viruses, retroviruses,
bacteria and fungi provided by the U.S. to Iraqi labs during the 80’s and
90’s.
The usual retort to the fact that the U.S. armed Iraq is, ‘oh but
they were our allies against the Iranians’ – just like Osama bin Laden was our
ally against the Soviets. Firstly there is no ‘us’ or ‘we’ – a government
that knowingly sends a country nerve gas to kill its own citizens as with the
Kurds cannot be said to be acting in our best wishes. Just think how many times
the line ‘but they killed their own people’ has been used to justify Gulf War
II. That’s not what these same war hawks said about it at the
time,
“Another veteran of the program said the Pentagon "wasn't so
horrified by Iraq's use of gas. It was just another way of killing people -
whether by bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."” [London Guardian]
Secondly, if it was all one big
accident and just a quirk of geopolitics at the time, then why don’t they admit
it? Why do the column inches never mention the fact that the latest bogeyman is
always a creation of those who want to ‘protect us’ from him. Donald Rumsfeld
and Colin Powell were eager to tell us how much of a threat Saddam is but when
questioned about who set up his weapons program they seemed to have an uncanny
knack of sudden amnesia. Powell dismissed the proven documentation as “dead
wrong” and ‘Mr. Aspartame’ Rumsfeld goes all foggy whenever the subject is
raised. Powell went before the U.N. Security Council on February 5th 2003 to
present evidence of the Iraqi weapons program and their links with Al-Qaeda.
This is a sick joke because Powell and the criminal administrations he has
worked for have direct links to arming and empowering both Al-Qaeda and Iraq,
while it’s common knowledge for anyone that can read that Iraq and Al-Qaeda are
and always have been sworn enemies.
Selling biological weapons to Hussein was only deemed ‘legal’ because the
State Department had lovingly removed Iraq from the list of terrorist sponsors
the previous year.
In recent interviews Rumsfeld lied by saying he
“cautioned” Saddam Hussein about the use of chemical weapons when the
declassified State Department minutes of the meeting state no such thing. The
mishap was covered up by Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman, who changed the story
by saying that the comments were made to Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz.
The Washington Post reported,
“According to a sworn court affidavit
prepared by Teicher (NSC official under Reagan) in 1995, the United States
"actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions
of dollars of credits, by providing 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." Teicher said in the affidavit that
former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply
Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave
attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.”
This military
support included more than 60 defense intelligence agency officers who secretly
provided information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles,
plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments. As Reagan’s national security
advisor, Colin Powell had intimate knowledge and influence over this
operation.
Powell played the role of being cautious against a second war on Iraq all
along until his ‘Adlai Stevenson moment’ U.N. presentation. This was subtle
manipulation to make people think, ‘oh even the dove now wants war, perhaps the
war is just’. From Grenada to Panama, whenever there’s a blatantly unjust war to
be waged, Powell’s always there to put a respectable sheen on it.
In July
of 1990, after years of building the Iraqi war machine, Secretary of State James
Baker (business partner of both the Bush’s and bin Laden’s) dispatched American
ambassador April Glaspie to Iraq where she told Saddam Hussein,
“We have
no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait.
Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction
.... that Kuwait is not associated with America.” [Christian Science Monitor]
This gave Hussein the
green light to invade and after a few invented stories about Iraqi soldiers
throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators, the West feverishly allied and war
was declared. 500,000 dead Iraqi civilians later and we enter the second and
final phase of what is, in President Herbert Walker Bush’s own
words,
“The opportunity to fulfill the long-held promise of a New World
Order.”
In 2003, the Bush administration is still arming Saddam Hussein
while it prepares to go to war with Iraq. The Export Administration Act, which
passed the Senate and looks set to pass the House, would weaken already casual
controls over the export of sophisticated computer technology. Both Clinton and
George W. Bush sold the technology to China, which is a key component in the
design of nuclear bombs.