Maybe they are just being preemptive.  When and if the touted WMD's are found, there is a strong bet that a lot, if not most, of the technology used is German or French.  I can't recall the exact stories, but several Fr and German firms were busted for selling illegal/ embargoed tech to the Iraqis.(jus tryin to get back near the original post)

Rrrrright.

Key

A = nuclear weapon program
B = biological weapon program
C = chemical weapon program
R = rocket program
K = conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, and building of military plants



USA

1. Honeywell (R, K)

2. Spectra 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 Zeiss - U.S (K)

18. Cerberus (LTD) (A)

19. Electronic Associates (R)

20. International Computer Systems (A, R, K)

21. Bechtel (K)

22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R)

23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A)

24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)

"In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs (A, B, C & R) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories."

France

1. Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (A)

2. Sciaky (A)

3. Thomson CSF (A, K)

4. Aerospatiale and Matra Espace (R)

5. Cerbag (A)

6. Protec SA (C)

7. Thales Group (A)

8. Societé Général pour les Techniques Nouvelles (A)



Great Britain

1. Euromac Ltd-Uk (A)

2. C. Plath-Nuclear (A)

3. Endshire Export Marketing (A)

4. International Computer Systems (A, R, K)

5. MEED International (A, C)

6. Walter Somers Ltd. (R)

7. International Computer Limited (A, K)

8. Matrix Churchill Corp. (A)

9. Ali Ashour Daghir (A)

10. International Military Services (R) (part of the UK Ministry of Defence)

11. Sheffield Forgemasters (R)

12. Technology Development Group (R)

13. International Signal and Control (R)

14. Terex Corporation (R)

15. Inwako (A)

16. TMG Engineering (K)

17. XYY Options, Inc (A)

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction.

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 Snr, 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.

Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's rep orts 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 shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

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 programmes.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chem ical 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 licences 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 programmes.'

Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.

It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations des troyed most of Iraq's wea pons 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 des troyed 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 programme.

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.'

I stand (or sit) corrected.

my dad met my mom during his tour of duty in germany.. making me half german.  Lived there 6 years... great place, but damn.. this is hard to just shrug off.

Whatever, bring our boys home.. lets make these walls HIGH!

Anything that will help Germany speed its way to self-imposed irrelevance (both economic and militarily) is a good thing.   Let Poland (a more worthy ally) benefit from the economic gains of having our bases there.