Liberal quote machine

[Tgace]

"Men often oppose a thing merely because they have no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike."-Alexander Hamilton

Nice Quote. Hamilton was a smart guy.

"Look, we have exhausted virtually all our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so? That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply militarily."

-Senator Tom Daschle in a news conference back on Feb. 11, 1998, when President Clinton was ratcheting up support on a possible attack on Iraq.

"I'm going to the White House this afternoon and I have a pretty good understanding, a pretty good idea what I'm going to hear. And I'm saddened, saddened that this President failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war, saddened that we have to give up one life because this President couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country. But we will work, and we will do all that we can to get through this crisis like we've gotten through so many."

-What Senator Daschle had to say as the war in Iraq began

Hmph?

 

[Tgace]

"Americans can't admit that you need courage to do such a thing. For that might be misunderstood. The key thing is that we in America are convinced that it was blind, mad fanatics who didn't know what they were doing. But what if those perpetrators were right and we were not? We have long ago lost the capability to take a calm look at the enormity of our enemy's position." -- Norman Mailer on 9/11

"Right" to fly planeloads of innocents into buildings?? That ones a classic!

 

[Makalakumu]

I am currently writing a 4500 word article on this stuff for The Northern Reader. I'll be happy to go more in depth when I'm finished, but for now...more of the typical liberal hyperbole and histrionics...

Terrorism is a political activity like rape is about sex.

That depends on the side you are on. The bottom line is that terrorists have a political agenda and this agenda was formulated in an escalating conflict that has pitted the US vs the Arab world for 40 years. This is what the current elected officials in our executive branch believe.

"Habib" heard wrong. Give me a list of those bombs, missiles and guns supplied by the US.

Sorry, Mac, wrong again. Here's a little google search that you didn't bother to do before you made this assertion...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-17,GGLD:en&q=US+Supplied+Iraq+with+Weapons

Check out this pic...

Guess what is happening here? Yep, more weapons. In fact, this is after Saddam started gassing people.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

How's that crow taste?

Same way i'm sure the Israelis feel whenever they find out European nations and international organizations have been providing aid and support to Palestinian terrorists who blow up Israeli school children.

This is most certainly a two way street as I alluded to above...

Access to oil and US involvement is far more complex than you allude to.

Actually, no it isn't. Our entire way of life depends on oil. 60% of the worlds oil is located in the middle east. Everywhere else the US gets oil out of the middle east is peaked. We get about 40% of our oil from the middle east as it stand. In ten years, this will rise to 60%. In ten more we're looking at 80%. Unless we change our lifestyles, war is the only answer to meet our current demands for oil.

http://www.peakoil.net/

If oil were a concern, we would not have embargoed Iranian oil since 1979, despite it's often cheap market price.

Who buys Iranian oil?

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Teror_92/2379_92.asp

New York, NY, March 9, 1995...The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today urged the Secretary of State and the Senate to support a bill that bans all U.S. commercial transactions with Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism. U.S. petroleum companies are currently among the biggest buyers of Iranian oil, and are pouring billions of dollars into Iran's economy.

It's not just oil that's important to us.

No oil in the middle east = No US war in the middle east.

Destroying the root of our enemy is the only cure for this problem.

The middle east benefits so much from US investment. Imagine if those investments were cut off and we started dumping huge amounts of resources into alternatives. I will wager that some of these governments would quickly deal with their terrorist problems in order to encourage further US investment...

We could send messages like, "you want us to buy your oil, stop people from flying airplanes into building."

We use our military to get rid of al-qaeda and let the Arabs sort out their priorities themselves.

 

[sgtmac_46]

I am currently writing a 4500 word article on this stuff for The Northern Reader. I'll be happy to go more in depth when I'm finished, but for now...more of the typical liberal hyperbole and histrionics...

That depends on the side you are on. The bottom line is that terrorists have a political agenda and this agenda was formulated in an escalating conflict that has pitted the US vs the Arab world for 40 years. This is what the current elected officials in our executive branch believe.

Sorry, Mac, wrong again. Here's a little google search that you didn't bother to do before you made this assertion...

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-

I'm not the one who is wrong. I gave you a list of the nations that supplied weapons to Iraq, and a break down of the amount of aid provided. You give me a picture of Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein's hand and a smoke and mirrors attempt to prove that tired old asinine assertion that we armed Iraq. What is missing is a list of WHAT we provided them, other than the assertion that what was provided was used in "Nuclear, Chemical, or Biological weapons". That's a pretty broad brush considering that most nuclear technology sold to countries, for example, involves civilian nuclear technology. Further, the IAEA, headed by Hans Blix (Yeah, the great hero of the left) not only endorses and sponsors civilian nuclear power research in countries like Iraq, but encourages countries to sell nuclear technology to them under the auspices of encourage peaceful nuclear energy. The problem you have is the above sight is playing fast and loose with the truth by lumping together dual use technology, such as centrifuges, test tubes, homogonization machines, etc, as being "weapons technology" when they are anything but. It's like calling a baseball bat an assault weapon. So, sorry, you lose. I give you facts, and figures, researched by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The SIPRI is far from a member of the right wing conspiracy. Their research just shows that the assertions made by your crowd are factually incorrect. This they say while decrying the world arms trade. So, sorry, you lose.

Check out this pic...

Guess what is happening here? Yep, more weapons. In fact, this is after Saddam started gassing people.

Wow. A representative of one nation shaking the hand of the leader of another?! The horror!!! This little picture that keeps circulating the web never ceases to make me laugh. It's bandied about as if it is proof of something other than Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam Husseins hand. He shook his hand so there MUST have been some kind of conspiracy?! lol. World leaders do that. I've got a couple pictures of a few UN respresentatives shaking his hand too. Does that prove anything? That's the problem with you folks, you think things like this picture prove anything. It's an emotional argument with no substance. I can't believe you actually think this is proof of ANYTHING?! pffft. Guilt by handshaking? lol.

The shear volume of references and reproductions of this photo tell me the intellectually bankrupt mentality of those who think it's actually some sort of argument of anything. It also shows the shear ignorance of the fact that world political leaders meet with each other, in person, and it's kind of diplomatic to...shake hands. Hell, I saw Bill Clinton walking and talking with Yasser Arafat, does that mean he was supporting terrorism? lol.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-01.htm

How's that crow taste?

As is typical with commondreams articles, this one is HUGE on supposition, exaggeration and hyperbole, and very light on facts. I would have hoped you would supply better evidence than this piece of biased tripe, which really doesn't say anything, but simply insinuates a lot. I'm surprised you didn't dust the old Sunday Herald article off.

Again, i'm waiting for a list of those weapon systems, not centrifuges and ice cream scoops.

And for all your bluster, do you know what the Commondreams article showed as PROOF that we armed Iraq?! Get this, 55 unarmed civilian helicopters. Wow. Astounding. He could have taken over Kuwait just using those babies alone. Civilian helicopters. Oh, they did insinuate that they could have possibly used them in gassing kurds later. Could have. Of course, they could have used prop-driven crop dusters for that matter. If it flew, they could have used it. Now that's proof we armed them for sure. Because they managed to attach a sprayer to a flying device, we are responsible for arming them?!

This doesn't taste like crow, it tastes like turkey or chicken....or maybe weasel, with just a hint of BS.

This is most certainly a two way street as I alluded to above...

No you didn't say it was a two way street, you said the Arabs hate us because we support Israel. I'm the one who pointed out it was a two way street.

Actually, no it isn't. Our entire way of life depends on oil. 60% of the worlds oil is located in the middle east. Everywhere else the US gets oil out of the middle east is peaked. We get about 40% of our oil from the middle east as it stand. In ten years, this will rise to 60%. In ten more we're looking at 80%. Unless we change our lifestyles, war is the only answer to meet our current demands for oil.

http://www.peakoil.net/


Who buys Iranian oil?

Not the US. You should read your sites before you post them. "Under current law, U.S. oil companies are permitted to buy Iranian oil and sell it anywhere in the world except in America." That was from your site. Your site only proved that multi-national companies headquartered in the US buy Iranian oil and sell it abroad, not in the US. The article was about sealing up that loophole to prevent certain companies from engaging in ANY business with Iran. Hardly what you purported.

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/Teror_92/2379_92.asp

No oil in the middle east = No US war in the middle east.

The middle east benefits so much from US investment. Imagine if those investments were cut off and we started dumping huge amounts of resources into alternatives. I will wager that some of these governments would quickly deal with their terrorist problems in order to encourage further US investment...

We could send messages like, "you want us to buy your oil, stop people from flying airplanes into building."

We use our military to get rid of al-qaeda and let the Arabs sort out their priorities themselves.

I never claimed that oil wasn't a part of the equation. I merely pointed out that it was complicated. For example, without oil, Middle Eastern regimes could not pursue WMD programs. In fact, without oil, many Middle Eastern countries would be more like Sub-Saharan Africa than they are right now.

The one and only thing I agree with in your whole past (i.e. the only thing you were right about) was that the US has a national security interest in developing alternative energy sources. Ceasation of oil sales from the Middle East would result in a stranglehold on world wide terrorism from lack of funds.

Your original assertion was that WE are the ones who armed Saddam Hussein with all those bombs, guns, rockets, missiles, planes, etc. I'm still waiting for any kind of proof that that is so. So far you've listed some civilian helicopters, some civilian technology and a picture of Saddam Hussein shaking Donald Rumsfelds hand.

I'll be waiting for something substantial.

 

[Makalakumu]

blah blah blah.

If you were actually interested in balancing your opinion with some reality, you'd actually read some of this stuff and think about the implications.

First, a simple google search will give you a whole slew of stuff that got sold to Iraq by US corporations and it is a heck of a lot more dangerous then a test tube...and that ain't hyperbole. Check it out for yourself before you start calling it smoke and mirrors.

Second, US corporations buy oil from Iran and sell it elsewhere...true. They spend billions in infrastructure and wholeheartedly support a country that supports terrorists who want to kill you and I. The bottom line is that certain people in the US are making money in Iran hand over fist. There is no real embargo. These corporations are making money by trading with the enemy! Some people call people who do that traitors.

Third, crow tastes like chicken eh?

I'll be waiting for something substantial.

Yeah, me too.

 

[sgtmac_46]

If you were actually interested in balancing your opinion with some reality, you'd actually read some of this stuff and think about the implications.

I did read it, but you apparently didn't. The most you've proven is that we sold civilian helicopters to Saddam. Scary.

First, a simple google search will give you a whole slew of stuff that got sold to Iraq by US corporations and it is a heck of a lot more dangerous then a test tube...and that ain't hyperbole. Check it out for yourself before you start calling it smoke and mirrors.

If it's so simple, then you won't mind making a list of those dangerous weapons systems for me, who sold them, and when, like i've been asking.

Second, US corporations buy oil from Iran and sell it elsewhere...true. They spend billions in infrastructure and wholeheartedly support a country that supports terrorists who want to kill you and I. The bottom line is that certain people in the US are making money in Iran hand over fist. There is no real embargo. These corporations are making money by trading with the enemy! Some people call people who do that traitors.

A law was passed to create an embargo. International companies found a loop hole, which needs to be closed. You failed to support your claim that this is somehow national policy, as the law is in place creating an embargo.

Third, crow tastes like chicken eh?

I've never personally eaten crow, i'll have to defer to your expert opinion.

Yeah, me too.

Well, when that something substantial comes to you, let me know.

 

[Tgace]

If corporations legally sold products to Iraq before (or around) a trade embargo...so what? I thought the assertation was that the government sold weapons to Iraq.

 

[sgtmac_46]

If corporations legally sold products to Iraq before there was a trade embargo...so what?

I've given North an itemized list of how many weapons were supplied to Iraq, and by whom, and yet North continues to believe this fantasy that the US was Iraq's big arms supplier. Now we'll be listing "dual use" ice cream scoops, test tubes, centrifuges, pumps, piping, medical equipment, pastuerization machines, etc, etc, etc, as "weapons" technology. If that's evidence of who armed Iraq, then Germany did (and Iran too).

What assistance we provided Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war was mainly satellite intelligence of Iranian troop movements. That's what we gave to Saddam, that's the assistance we provided. We didn't provide him weapons, we gave him a heads up when the Iranians were on the move.

So, in short, according to SIPRI, the US weapons sales to Iraq from 1974 to 1990 accounted for less than 1% (hardly making us the biggest arms dealer).

Further, the assertion that we sold them anthrax an other agents is a distortion of reality. What Iraq did was engage in fraud to purchase biological samples under the pretense of using those samples for medical research to fight anthrax, plague, and other communicable diseases so prevalent in the developing world. They filled false requests with the commerce commission, and were able to receive samples. This kind of medical research is carried out all around the world. Further, by 1988 Iraq had become a complete pariah and the US discovered that the commerce commission had been allowing this fraud, and put an end to it. Thus the Senate hearings referred to in the Sunday Heralds distorted report.

Further, the part that the US played, even inadvertantly, in Saddam's bio-weapons program was very small compared to Great Britain, France, Russia and, most especially, Germany, who helped Iraq build entire chemical and biological weapons factories.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.command-post.org/archives/002978.html

 

[Tgace]

Now thats LEFT!

 

[Makalakumu]

List of US Companies That Sold Weapons Technology to Iraq



Key: A - nuclear K - chemical B - biological R - rockets (missiles)

1. Honeywell (R,K) 2. Spektra Physics (K) 3. Semetex (R) 4. TI Coating (A,K) 5. UNISYS (A,K) 6. Sperry Corp. (R,K) 7. Tektronix (R,A) 8. Rockwell )(K) 9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A) 10. Finnigan-MAT-U.S. (A) 11. Hewlett Packard (A.R,K) 12. Dupont (A) 13. Eastman Kodak (R) 14. American Type Culture Collection (B) 15. Alcolac International (C) 16. Consarc (A) 17. Carl Zeis -US (K) 18. Cerberus (LTD) (A) 19. Electronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems 21. Bechtel (K) 22. EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc. (R) 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A) 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)

This list doesn't include governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that gave technology to Iraq, including the Pentagon, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, and the Centers for Disease Control.

Source: Die Tageszeitung (Berlin daily newspaper), who says it came from the original Iraqi report to the UN Security Council.

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.lizmichael.com/weapons.htm​

​

​

U.S. corporations involved:
​

A - nuclear
K - chemical
B - biological
R - rockets (missiles)
​

1) Honeywell (R,K)
2) Spektra Physics (K)
3) Semetex (R)
4) TI Coating (A,K)
5) UNISYS (A,K)
6) Sperry Corp. (R,K)
7) Tektronix (R,A)
8) Rockwell (K)
9) Leybold Vacuum Systems (A)
10) Finnigan-MAT-US (A)
11) Hewlett Packard (A.R,K)
12) Dupont (A)
13) Eastman Kodak (R)
14) American Type Culture Collection (B)
15) Alcolac International (C)
16) Consarc (A)
17) Carl Zeis -U.Ss (K)
18) Cerberus (LTD) (A)
19) Electronic Assiciates (R)
20) International Computer Systems
21) Bechtel (K)
22) EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc. (R)
23) Canberra Industries Inc. (A)
24) Axel Electronics Inc. (A)
​

Additionally to these 24 companies based in the US, are nearly 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises whose arms co-operation with Iraq seems to have been operated from the US. In addition, the US deparments of defense, energy, trade, and agriculture, as well as the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories at Lawrence Livermore. Los Alamos, and Sandia, are designated as suppliers for the Iraqi arms programs for A, B, and K-weapons as well as for rockets.
​

Iraq's 11,000-page report to the UN Security Council lists 150 foreign companies, including some from America, Britain, Germany and France, that supported Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programme, a German newspaper said. ​

​

​

​

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/03/119547.php

US Companies Sold Iraq
Billions Of NBC Weapons Materials
By William Blum
The Progressive Magazine
http://www.progressive.org
April 1998 Issue
3-26-2

(Note - This four year old article contains extremely relevant information for today...)

The United States almost went to war against Iraq in February because of Saddam Hussein's weapons program. In his State of the Union address, President Clinton castigated Hussein for "developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them."

"You cannot defy the will of the world," the President proclaimed. "You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again."

Most Americans listening to the President did not know that the United States supplied Iraq with much of the raw material for creating a chemical and biological warfare program. Nor did the media report that U.S. companies sold Iraq more than $1 billion worth of the components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse types of missiles, including the infamous Scud.

When Iraq engaged in chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s, barely a peep of moral outrage could be heard from Washington, as it kept supplying Saddam with the materials he needed to build weapons.

From 1980 to 1988, Iraq and Iran waged a terrible war against each other, a war that might not have begun if President Jimmy Carter had not given the Iraqis a green light to attack Iran, in response to repeated provocations. Throughout much of the war, the United States provided military aid and intelligence information to both sides, hoping that each would inflict severe damage on the other. Noam Chomsky suggests that this strategy is a way for America to keep control of its oil supply:

"It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price."

During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq received the lion's share of American support because at the time Iran was regarded as the greater threat to U.S. interests. According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing death, were:

* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.

* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.

* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.

* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.

* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.

* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.


Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment.

The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.

The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.

Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare. Among these suppliers were the following:

* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.

* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.

* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC

* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).


The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":

* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA

* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC

* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC

* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT

* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT

* Evapco, Taneytown, MD

* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH


Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol

In 1994, a group of twenty-six veterans, suffering from what has come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome, filed a billion-dollar lawsuit in Houston against Fisher, Rhone-Poulenc, Bechtel Group, and Lummus Crest, as well as American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and six other firms, for helping Iraq to obtain or produce the compounds which the veterans blamed for their illnesses. By 1998, the number of plaintiffs has risen to more than 4,000 and the suit is still pending in Texas.

A Pentagon study in 1994 dismissed links between chemical and biological weapons and Gulf War Syndrome. Newsday later disclosed, however, that the man who headed the study, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, was a director of ATCC. Moreover, at the time of ATCC's shipments to Iraq, which the Commerce Department approved, the firm's CEO was a member of the Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Committee, the paper found.

A larger number of American firms supplied Iraq with the specialized computers, lasers, testing and analyzing equipment, and other instruments and hardware vital to the manufacture of nuclear weapons, missiles, and delivery systems. Computers, in particular, play a key role in nuclear weapons development. Advanced computers make it feasible to avoid carrying out nuclear test explosions, thus preserving the program's secrecy. The 1992 Senate hearings implicated the following firms:

* Kennametal, Latrobe, PA

* Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA

* International Computer Systems, CA, SC, and TX

* Perkins-Elmer, Norwalk, CT

* BDM Corp., McLean, VA

* Leybold Vacuum Systems, Export, PA

* Spectra Physics, Mountain View, CA

* Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, PA

* Finnigan MAT, San Jose, CA

* Scientific Atlanta, Atlanta, GA

* Spectral Data Corp., Champaign, IL

* Tektronix, Wilsonville, OR

* Veeco Instruments, Inc., Plainview, NY

* Wiltron Company, Morgan Hill, CA

The House report also singled out: TI Coating, Inc., Axel Electronics, Data General Corp., Gerber Systems, Honeywell, Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Sackman Associates, Rockwell Collins International, Wild Magnavox Satellite Survey, Zeta Laboratories, Carl Schenck, EZ Logic Data, International Imaging Systems, Semetex Corp., and Thermo Jarrell Ash Corporation.

Some of the companies said later that they had no idea Iraq might ever put their products to military use. A spokesperson for Hewlett Packard said the company believed that the Iraqi recipient of its shipments, Saad 16, was an institution of higher learning. In fact, in 1990 The Wall Street Journal described Saad 16 as "a heavily fortified, state-of-the-art complex for aircraft construction, missile design, and, almost certainly, nuclear-weapons research."

Other corporations recognized the military potential of their goods but considered it the government's job to worry about it. "Every once in a while you kind of wonder when you sell something to a certain country," said Robert Finney, president of Electronic Associates, Inc., which supplied Saad 16 with a powerful computer that could be used for missile testing and development. "But it's not up to us to make foreign policy," Finney told The Wall Street Journal.

In 1982, the Reagan Administration took Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to receive high-tech items generally denied to those on the list. Conventional military sales began in December of that year. Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq," stated in 1991:

"From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted. . . . The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."

Subsequently, Representative John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, investigated the Department of Energy concerning an unheeded 1989 warning about Iraq's nuclear weapons program. In 1992, he accused the DOE of punishing employees who raised the alarm and rewarding those who didn't take it seriously. One DOE scientist, interviewed by Dingell's Energy and Commerce Committee, was especially conscientious about the mission of the nuclear non-proliferation program. For his efforts, he received very little cooperation, inadequate staff, and was finally forced to quit in frustration. "It was impossible to do a good job," said William Emel. His immediate manager, who tried to get the proliferation program fully staffed, was chastened by management and removed from his position. Emel was hounded by the DOE at his new job as well.

Another Senate committee, investigating "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait," heard testimony in 1992 that Commerce Department personnel "changed information on sixty-eight licenses; that references to military end uses were deleted and the designation 'military truck' was changed. This was done on licenses having a total value of over $1 billion." Testimony made clear that the White House was "involved" in "a deliberate effort . . . to alter these documents and mislead the Congress."

American foreign-policy makers maintained a cooperative relationship with U.S. corporate interests in the region. In 1985, Marshall Wiley, former U.S. ambassador to Oman, set up the Washington-based U.S.-Iraq Business Forum, which lobbied in Washington on behalf of Iraq to promote U.S. trade with that country. Speaking of the Forum's creation, Wiley later explained, "I went to the State Department and told them what I was planning to do, and they said, 'Fine. It sounds like a good idea.' It was our policy to increase exports to Iraq."

Though the government readily approved most sales to Iraq, officials at Defense and Commerce clashed over some of them (with the State Department and the White House backing Commerce). "If an item was in dispute, my attitude was if they were readily available from other markets, I didn't see why we should deprive American markets," explained Richard Murphy in 1990. Murphy was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs from 1983 to 1989.

As it turned out, Iraq did not use any chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces in the Gulf War. But American planes bombed chemical and biological weapons storage facilities with abandon, potentially dooming tens of thousands of American soldiers to lives of prolonged and permanent agony, and an unknown number of Iraqis to a similar fate. Among the symptoms reported by the affected soldiers are memory loss, scarred lungs, chronic fatigue, severe headache, raspy voice, and passing out. The Pentagon estimates that nearly 100,000 American soldiers were exposed to sarin gas alone.

After the war, White House and Defense Department officials tried their best to deny that Gulf War Syndrome had anything to do with the bombings. The suffering of soldiers was not their overriding concern. The top concerns of the Bush and Clinton Administrations were to protect perceived U.S. interests in the Middle East, and to ensure that American corporations still had healthy balance sheets. - William Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" (Common Courage Press, 1995).

 

[sgtmac_46]

List of US Companies That Sold Weapons Technology to Iraq



Key: A - nuclear K - chemical B - biological R - rockets (missiles)

1. Honeywell (R,K) 2. Spektra Physics (K) 3. Semetex (R) 4. TI Coating (A,K) 5. UNISYS (A,K) 6. Sperry Corp. (R,K) 7. Tektronix (R,A) 8. Rockwell )(K) 9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A) 10. Finnigan-MAT-U.S. (A) 11. Hewlett Packard (A.R,K) 12. Dupont (A) 13. Eastman Kodak (R) 14. American Type Culture Collection (B) 15. Alcolac International (C) 16. Consarc (A) 17. Carl Zeis -US (K) 18. Cerberus (LTD) (A) 19. Electronic Associates (R) 20. International Computer Systems 21. Bechtel (K) 22. EZ Logic Data Systems,Inc. (R) 23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A) 24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)

This list doesn't include governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that gave technology to Iraq, including the Pentagon, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, and the Centers for Disease Control.

Source: Die Tageszeitung (Berlin daily newspaper), who says it came from the original Iraqi report to the UN Security Council.

Nuclear what? Biological what? Chemical what? All your "evidence" is devoid of any context, no doubt because it seeks to hide the fact that it's really a mountain of distortion, under sheer weight of numbers. I'm still waiting for the name of those weapons we sold, and you give me laboratory equipment and machining tools.

 

[Makalakumu]

It was that kind of stuff that forced the US senate to pass a resolution banning all weapon sales to Iraq. This measure was killed by the White House and the arming of Iraq continued.

 

[sgtmac_46]

http://www.lizmichael.com/weapons.htm​

​

It's just a repeat of your first post.

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A52241-2002Dec29&notFound=true

 

[sgtmac_46]

It was that kind of stuff that forced the US senate to pass a resolution banning all weapon sales to Iraq. This measure was killed by the White House and the arming of Iraq continued.

With what weapons?

US Companies Sold Iraq
Billions Of NBC Weapons Materials
By William Blum
The Progressive Magazine
http://www.progressive.org
April 1998 Issue
3-26-2

(Note - This four year old article contains extremely relevant information for today...)

Yeah, i'm sure it is.

The United States almost went to war against Iraq in February because of Saddam Hussein's weapons program. In his State of the Union address, President Clinton castigated Hussein for "developing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them."

What WMD?

"You cannot defy the will of the world," the President proclaimed. "You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again."

Oh, that WMD.

Most Americans listening to the President did not know that the United States supplied Iraq with much of the raw material for creating a chemical and biological warfare program. Nor did the media report that U.S. companies sold Iraq more than $1 billion worth of the components needed to build nuclear weapons and diverse types of missiles, including the infamous Scud.

We sold them the Scud? HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Your article is really building it's credibility at this point.

When Iraq engaged in chemical and biological warfare in the 1980s, barely a peep of moral outrage could be heard from Washington, as it kept supplying Saddam with the materials he needed to build weapons.

Oh, that's an indictment, because we barely peeped we armed Saddam? lol. More credibility.

From 1980 to 1988, Iraq and Iran waged a terrible war against each other, a war that might not have begun if President Jimmy Carter had not given the Iraqis a green light to attack Iran, in response to repeated provocations. Throughout much of the war, the United States provided military aid and intelligence information to both sides, hoping that each would inflict severe damage on the other. Noam Chomsky suggests that this strategy is a way for America to keep control of its oil supply:

Yes, we provided intelligence information to both sides, I think I already covered this. As for Noam Chumpskies analysis, it's about as credible as the idea that we sold Scuds to Iraq.

"It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price."

This is apparently what passes for evidence with you folks, and why you have no credibility, you believe insinuation and hyperbole equal a rational argument. Chumpsky is just giving his opinions about the motives of others, and passing it off as fact. The fact that any of you folks take this old geezer as an authority on anything anymore is a wonder to me. (Now i've gone and done it, i've attacked the Chumpskyites God, i'll catch their wrath for that.)

During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq received the lion's share of American support because at the time Iran was regarded as the greater threat to U.S. interests. According to a 1994 Senate report, private American suppliers, licensed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, exported a witch's brew of biological and chemical materials to Iraq from 1985 through 1989. Among the biological materials, which often produce slow, agonizing death, were:

Iraq received the lions share of support? That doesn't really say how much support that is, relatively, just that they received more than Iran. That could equal just over very little and none. It's a lot like "You could gain as much as three to five inches" or as little as nothing. I do like the "Slow, agonizing death" for added effect. How much material? A box? A crate? A test tube?

* Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.

* Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.

* Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.

* Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.

* Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.

* Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.

Nice list, but it really doesn't have any context.

Also on the list: Escherichia coli (E. coli), genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA, and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents. "These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

I think I already covered where these items came from, and how they were precured. Further, the article seems to want to skim over who provided the "Lions share" of technical assistance in these matters, and it wasn't the US.

The report noted further that U.S. exports to Iraq included the precursors to chemical-warfare agents, plans for chemical and biological warfare production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment.

Really, what plans? As it was Germany that provided the technical assistance and practically built these facilities for Iraq, they really didn't need any plans they allegedly bought here.

The exports continued to at least November 28, 1989, despite evidence that Iraq was engaging in chemical and biological warfare against Iranians and Kurds since as early as 1984.

Again, what "exports". The distortions of this article continue.

The American company that provided the most biological materials to Iraq in the 1980s was American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia, which made seventy shipments of the anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents, according to a 1996 Newsday story.

American Type Culture sends specimens of these naturally occuring organisms all around the world for medical research. It was under the auspices of medical research that Iraq purchased these items.

Other American companies also provided Iraq with the chemical or biological compounds, or the facilities and equipment used to create the compounds for chemical and biological warfare. Among these suppliers were the following:

Are you aware of what "facilities" and "equipment" are used to create "compounds" for chemical and biological warfare? Chemical warfare "equipment" is identical to that used to make pesticides. Biological equipment consists of things like test tubes, centrifuges, and pastuerization machines.

* Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients, according to a 1989 story in The New York Times.

thiodiglycol is also used as an industrial solvent in textile dyeing, and is pretty common. The attempt to paint it as a "chemical weapon" is mroe smoke and mirrors.
http://www.chemicalland21.com/arokorhi/industrialchem/organic/THIODIGLYCOL.htm

* Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol, the Times reported.

Again,a listed above, far from being a "chemical weapon" thiodiglycol is a commonly used industrial solvent. Hardly a "smoking gun", except as evidence to the links these kooks will go to support the unsupportable argument that the "US armed Iraq".

* Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC

Did what? Sold some fertilizer. You can make bombs with fertilizer and diesil fuel....lol

* Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government, according to Representative Henry Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas, who quoted U.S. intelligence documents to this effect in a 1992 speech on the House floor).

I guess the last two sold products that didn't even warrant being named, probably because to name them would have reduced the effect as they are no doubt even more ambivalent than the industrial dye solvent listed earlier.

The following companies were also named as chemical and biological materials suppliers in the 1992 Senate hearings on "United States export policy toward Iraq prior to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait":

* Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA

* Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC

Out of business, produced air purifiers.

* Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC

http://www.pureaire.com/ They produce air purifiers.

* Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT

http://www.emersonprocess.com/fisher/products/tour/rotaryvalves.html
Posi Seal produces....you guessed it, rubber seals....

* Union Carbide, Danbury, CT

http://www.unioncarbide.com/

* Evapco, Taneytown, MD

Producer of cooling equipment. Saddam must have needed that Air conditioner of WMD. http://www.evapco.com/

* Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH

Producer of municipal sewage pumps. Wonder what weapon system they sold? Maybe Saddam was working on a sewage bomb.
http://www.gormanrupp.com/

What did these companies sell? If they were a truly incriminating smoking gun, the author would have listed them. Instead, we get them listed in one HUGE list, so as to appear to have the weight of numbers, yet devoid of context.

Additionally, several other companies were sued in connection with their activities providing Iraq with chemical or biological supplies: subsidiaries or branches of Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis; Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ; Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco; and Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol

Wow, a necessary ingredient for a common industrial dye solvent. News flash, thiodiglycol is not a chemical weapon.

In 1994, a group of twenty-six veterans, suffering from what has come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome, filed a billion-dollar lawsuit in Houston against Fisher, Rhone-Poulenc, Bechtel Group, and Lummus Crest, as well as American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and six other firms, for helping Iraq to obtain or produce the compounds which the veterans blamed for their illnesses. By 1998, the number of plaintiffs has risen to more than 4,000 and the suit is still pending in Texas.

What compounds? Again, devoid of context. The appearance of evidence, without the substance.

A Pentagon study in 1994 dismissed links between chemical and biological weapons and Gulf War Syndrome. Newsday later disclosed, however, that the man who headed the study, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, was a director of ATCC. Moreover, at the time of ATCC's shipments to Iraq, which the Commerce Department approved, the firm's CEO was a member of the Commerce Department's Technical Advisory Committee, the paper found.

Ok, so the proof that there IS a conspiracy, is that no conspiracy was found? More insinuation.

A larger number of American firms supplied Iraq with the specialized computers, lasers, testing and analyzing equipment, and other instruments and hardware vital to the manufacture of nuclear weapons, missiles, and delivery systems. Computers, in particular, play a key role in nuclear weapons development. Advanced computers make it feasible to avoid carrying out nuclear test explosions, thus preserving the program's secrecy. The 1992 Senate hearings implicated the following firms:

That hardware is also vital to a multitude of civilian industries as well. Imagine, an industrial nation needed computers, lasers, testing and analyizing equipment. Those can ONLY be used for nuclear weapons...pfffft.

* Kennametal, Latrobe, PA

* Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA

* International Computer Systems, CA, SC, and TX

* Perkins-Elmer, Norwalk, CT

* BDM Corp., McLean, VA

* Leybold Vacuum Systems, Export, PA

* Spectra Physics, Mountain View, CA

* Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, PA

* Finnigan MAT, San Jose, CA

* Scientific Atlanta, Atlanta, GA

* Spectral Data Corp., Champaign, IL

* Tektronix, Wilsonville, OR

* Veeco Instruments, Inc., Plainview, NY

* Wiltron Company, Morgan Hill, CA

The House report also singled out: TI Coating, Inc., Axel Electronics, Data General Corp., Gerber Systems, Honeywell, Inc., Digital Equipment Corp., Sackman Associates, Rockwell Collins International, Wild Magnavox Satellite Survey, Zeta Laboratories, Carl Schenck, EZ Logic Data, International Imaging Systems, Semetex Corp., and Thermo Jarrell Ash Corporation.

Some of the companies said later that they had no idea Iraq might ever put their products to military use. A spokesperson for Hewlett Packard said the company believed that the Iraqi recipient of its shipments, Saad 16, was an institution of higher learning. In fact, in 1990 The Wall Street Journal described Saad 16 as "a heavily fortified, state-of-the-art complex for aircraft construction, missile design, and, almost certainly, nuclear-weapons research."

Again, where is the context. Hewlett Packard made those computer sales when? Proof that Saad 16 was commonly known in 1990 of being a weapons production facility, does not prove that in 1986 it was.

Other corporations recognized the military potential of their goods but considered it the government's job to worry about it. "Every once in a while you kind of wonder when you sell something to a certain country," said Robert Finney, president of Electronic Associates, Inc., which supplied Saad 16 with a powerful computer that could be used for missile testing and development. "But it's not up to us to make foreign policy," Finney told The Wall Street Journal.

So computers are now considered arms sales? interesting. You seem to be broadening things to fit your collapsing theory.

In 1982, the Reagan Administration took Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to receive high-tech items generally denied to those on the list. Conventional military sales began in December of that year. Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq," stated in 1991:

"From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted. . . . The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."

$1.5 billion worth of biological agents? That figure is a flat out lie. As for high-tech equipment with military applications, that is a pretty broad area. A baseball bat has a military application.

 

[Makalakumu]

Oh, I thought you might need this...

http://www.crowbusters.com/recipes.htm

 

[Makalakumu]

With what weapons?

You know, the weapons that the US SENATE attempted to stop having US companies ship to Iraq...

You know, the original report contained some 11,000 pages. I'm sure we don't have enough bandwidth for that...