(*Editors Note | (1) Senator Robert
Byrd has torn the lid off some of the darkest and nastiest secrets of the
Reagan/Bush I years, and he did so standing in the well of the Senate. Consider
well what you read below, and understand: Our entanglements with Iraq, most
especially including the Gulf War, are nothing more than damage control. We
armed Saddam Hussein. We funded him. We gave him the worst horrors from
Pandora's Box. The legacy of Reagan/Bush has fully bloomed, and may God help us
all. -- wrp
;)
(2)
Also worthy of note is that the shipments did not cease until Bill Clinton
Replaced George Bush I, in October of 1993. -- ma)
Go
To Original
Will the U.S. Reap What it has Sown? Byrd Asks
By
Paul J. Nyden
West
Virginia Gazette
Friday, 27 September, 2002
Will
Saddam Hussein unleash botulinum toxin, perhaps nature's deadliest poison, and
other viruses and chemicals if the United States attacks Iraq?
Sen.
Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., posed this question to the Senate on Thursday, based on
documents obtained from different federal agencies.
"We
have a paper trail," Byrd said. "We not only know that Iraq has biological
weapons, we know the type, the strain, and the batch number of the germs that
may have been used to fashion those weapons. We know the dates they were shipped
and the addresses to which they were shipped.
"We
have in our hands the equivalent of a Betty Crocker cookbook of ingredients that
the U.S. allowed Iraq to obtain and that may well have been used to concoct
biological weapons."
Those
shipments included:
Between 1985 and 1988, the nonprofit American Type Culture Collection
made 11 shipments to Iraq that included a "witches' brew of pathogens,"
including anthrax, botulinum toxin and gangrene. All shipments were
government-approved.
Between January 1980 and October 1993, the federal Centers for Disease
Control shipped a variety of toxic specimens to Iraq, including West Nile virus
and Dengue fever.
The
U.S. Commerce Department and CDC provided lists of these shipments. "The Defense
Department ought to have the same lists, so that the decision-makers will know
exactly what types of biological agents American soldiers may face in the
field," Byrd said.
"At
last week's Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld said
he had no knowledge of any such shipments and doubted that they ever occurred.
He seemed to be affronted at the very idea that the United States would ever
countenance entering into such a deal with the devil.
"Secretary Rumsfeld should not shy away from this information. On the
contrary, he should seek it out," Byrd said.
In its
Sept. 23 edition, Newsweek magazine published an article discussing the viruses,
poisons and gases that the U.S. sent to Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s. At that
time, the U.S. regarded Iraq as a potential ally against Iran's Ayatollah
Khomeni.
Byrd
criticized Rumsfeld for failing to answer questions he asked last week about
these shipments to Iraq during an Armed Services Committee hearing.
"I
repeat today what I said to him then," Byrd said. "In the event of a war with
Iraq, might the United States be facing the possibility of reaping what it has
sown?"
Calls
to the White House press office on Thursday afternoon were referred to the
Department of Defense, where no one returned a call. One woman at the White
House asked, "How do you spell Byrd?"
Federal documents and a United Nations Security Council report document
a direct connection between periods when Iraq received toxins and viruses from
the U.S. and the periods when Iraq developed biological weapons.
Byrd
closed his speech by asking what the future holds.
"The
role that the U.S. may have played in helping Iraq to pursue biological warfare
in the 1980s should serve as a strong warning to the president that policy
decisions regarding Iraq today could have far reaching ramifications on the
Middle East and on the United States in the future.
"In
the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeni was America's sworn enemy, and the U.S.
government courted Saddam Hussein in an effort to undermine the Ayatollah and
Iran. Today, Saddam Hussein is America's biggest enemy, and the U.S. is said to
be making overtures to Iran."
The
Bush administration is also discussing whether to arm groups of ethnic
dissidents, such as the Kurds, in Iraq.
"Could
the U.S. be laying the groundwork for a brutal civil war in Iraq? Could this
proposed policy change precipitate a deadly border conflict between the Kurds
and Turkey?" Byrd asked.
He
again urged caution. "Decisions involving war and peace," he said, "should never
be rushed or muscled through in haste. Our founding fathers understood that, and
wisely vested in the Congress, not the president, the power to declare war."
Byrd
said Congress must consider Bush's requests for new war powers "carefully,
thoroughly, and on our own timetable ... and avoid the pressure to rush to
judgment on such an important matter."
(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.)
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