Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Hmmm, if Georgeet's list is accurate, it looks like Iraq might just have had WMD's after all, or at least the technology to create them. Now just what were we warmongers worried about?
It looks like we were worried about what [weapons] "Iraq might just have had"....and we should definitely be worried about what [weapons other] Nations "just might have" to the tune of Billions [of dollars] that we [Americans] "just might have had" in the coffers (Bank).......
Last edited by walidm; 05-06-2008 at 04:54 PM..
Reason: how's that?
It looks like you were worried about what "Iraq might just have had"....and we should definitely be worried about what Nations "just might have" to the tune of Billions that we "just might have had" in the coffers.......
I'm honestly not getting your drift here man...sorry.
Hmmm, if Georgeet's list is accurate, it looks like Iraq might just have had WMD's after all, or at least the technology to create them. Now just what were we warmongers worried about?
Yes of course they had them, and of course they were destroyed - reason enough, warmonger?
1978-1990. Germany (FRG), sells Iraq (28) BK-117 Helicopters (intended for VIP transport and Search & Rescue); (20) Bo-105C Light helicopters.
1979-1989. Brazil sells Iraq (67) Astros-2 MRL’s; (350) EE-11 Urutu APCs; (280) EE-3 Jararaca Reconnaissance vehicles; (1,026) EE-9 Cascavel Armoured cars; (13) Astros AV-UCF Fire control radars for use with the MRLs.
Sure, Saddam bought from other countries too. Here’s some of what he bought from the US – which is what we should mostly be concerned about, right?
Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.
The Senate committee's reports on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.
One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.
The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programs.'
This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chemical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.
Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs.'
Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.
Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations destroyed most of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.
According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'.
Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.
Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.'
He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.
The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons program.
Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.
'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.'
While true the U.S. did not directly sell chemical weaponse to Iraq, we unfortunately turned a blind eye when they used chemicals against Iranians and Kurds back in the 1980s; we in fact influenced the U.N. not to actively condemn Iraq for such activity and downplayed their use to the global community, since we sided with Saddam and Iraq against Iran back in the day.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
