Originally Posted by Manuel

Originally Posted by editec

He wants more people there, maybe he should go.

Originally Posted by JZcrayZ

Unlike the Bush/McCain senseless Iraq policy. Obama's sending more troops to Afghanistan is important for our Nat'l Security.

Originally Posted by JZcrayZ

Do the Taliban have WMD's?

Originally Posted by dilloduck

Do the Taliban have WMDs?

Originally Posted by Epsilon Delta

Uh, does it Iraq?

(I mean Iraq post-1991, not counting the ones the US supplied and authorized to be used againt Iran in the 1980s.)

Originally Posted by RetiredGySgt

Two bald faced lies. We never provided chemical weapons to Iraq and we were never in the loop on when they used them.

Now go ahead and trot out your list of legal chemicals that can be used for commerce that can also be used for chemical weapons. I guess we better not sell fertilizer to anyone, cause hey you can make a wmd with that too.

But let us see your supposed proof WE had any say on the use of weapons by Saddam Hussein.

Originally Posted by Congressional Record: September 20, 2002 (Senate) S8987-S8998

[Robert Byrd, quoting an article on Newsweek]But Saddam had to be rescued first. The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's ``human wave attacks'' threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of ``dual use'' equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for ``video surveillance applications''; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of ``bacteria/fungi/protozoa'' to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the

[Page: S8988]
Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. ``Who is going to say anything?'' he asks. ``The international community? F----k them!''
The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests.

[...]

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:


Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?


The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the RECORD, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

Originally Posted by JZcrayZ

Al-Qaeda/Taliban are the ones who attacked us in the first place. They're the ones who have declared "jihad" against us.