American Gulf War Veterans Association
Joyce Riley vonKleist, RN, BSN spokesperson
P.O.Box 85, Versailles, Missouri 65084

(573) 378-6049 voice, (573) 378-5998 fax

www.gulfwarvets.com, [email protected]  

For Immediate Release:

September 10, 2002

Contact Person: Gary Treece

 
U.S. SUPPLIES, CALIBRATES AND ENDORSES USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ

 As the Bush administration works to gain world support to conduct a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, new disturbing information has surfaced with regard to U.S. involvement in the development of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons program.

 The pre-emptive strike is based upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney’s beliefs that there must be an invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein:

1.      possesses weapons of mass destruction and the potential for nuclear weapons,

2.      used these weapons on his own people (Kurds) and the Iranians,

3.      has a history of lying to the world.

 According to information obtained by the AGWVA, there is irrefutable evidence to show that the Unites States government provided and encouraged Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States Department of Commerce and The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) provided at least 80 shipments of biological agents that were not attenuated (or weakened) and were capable of reproduction. These shipments included such virulent agents as Anthrax, West Nile Virus and Clostridium botulinum (S.R.103-900, May 25, 1994, pg. 264).

 The AGWVA also found it very disturbing to learn that on December 19, 1983, the Middle Eastern envoy who carried a handwritten note from President Reagan to Saddam Hussein,  to “resume our diplomatic relations with Iraq” was none other than our present Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

 According to “U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq”, 1980-August 2, 2000, (www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html), Nathaniel Hurd states:

 “Iraq reportedly began using chemical weapons (CW) against Iranian troops in 1982, and significantly increased CW use in 1983… Shortly after removing Iraq from the terrorism sponsorship list, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters. Analysts recognized that “civilian” helicopters can be weaponized in a matter of hours and selling a civilian kit can be a way of giving military aid under the guise of civilian assistance.”

 Mark Phythian, in his book Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine” (Northeastern University Press, 1997) stated:

 “ …the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC (National Security Council) advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters, officially for crop spraying. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village Halabja, which killed 5000 people.”

 In his own book Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State, George Shultz refers to a declassified CIA report which notes Iraq’s use of mustard gas in August 1983, giving further credence to the suggestion that the State Department and/or the National Security Council (NSC) was well aware of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons at this time. If the use of chemical weapons was known in August of 1983, and Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq in December of 1983, he was on notice that this country was using and was going to continue to use weapons of mass destruction.  Why, then, did the United States move to de-list Iraq from those considered to be terrorist nations?

 On March 23, 1984, Iran accused Iraq of poisoning 600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve gas. Donald Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad on March 24, 1984. On that same day, the UPI wire service reported that a team of UN experts had concluded that:

 “Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld held talks with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.”

 Probably the most critical piece of information is that according to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, the CIA began to secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used to “calibrate” mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.

 It is public record that the U.S. not only armed Iraq from 1983 thru August 1, 1990, but that they also provided the money to Iraq to purchase the weapons via the Atlanta branch of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), George Bush, Sr., and the Export-Import Bank. Iraq received $5 Billion dollars funneled through the Commercial Credit Corporation ostensibly for food credits. It is also public information that at least $2 Billion dollars from the defaulted loan was repaid by the U.S. citizen taxpayers.

 Joyce Riley, spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association has for seven years been shining the light of accountability on the Department of Defense for having armed our “enemy” with weapons of mass destruction, exposing our military to these weapons and then denying not only their culpability but the very existence of the mystery diseases. She often quotes Senator Donald Riegle (D-MI) who stated in Senate Report 103-900, “Our troops are not just sick, they are dying.”

 Riley, a former Captain in the United States Air Force Reserve and Flight Nurse states: “If it wasn’t bad enough to watch our troops become ill from our own weapons… the Department of Defense labeled our sick men and women as “mental cases.” These proud men and women have been abandoned, are now sick and must fight the battle alone. These needless illnesses and deaths now lie at the feet of the Pentagon and Veterans’ Administration Hospitals.”

This is what happens when the U.S. gets involved in "foreign entanglements".  Give it a decade or so and the "new afghan" govt will be enemy #1 with the U.S. again.

B.S.[:K]

If you bite the hand that feeds you, expect to get your ass kicked. If you bit it again expect to be put to sleep.

THAT'S WHY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay.

Also true of the Russians, the Chinese and others.

Should we just launch all the nukes now?

Why war? Because Saddam is a doo-doo head!

Doesn't surprise me in the least.  We fucked up, we helped make Saddam what he is today, and now we gotta deal with our mess.

This is tin hat stuff, right up there with the theory that Bush 41 crossed the ocean by SR-71 blackbird to cut a deal for the Iran hostages.[%|]

WE created the machine that created Usama - to kill some godless Soviets for us.

Then we pulled the rug out from under that machine.

Foreign entanglements may well be our undoing.

How does one "calibrate" the use of a WMD by another country?

Sounds like BULLSHIT to me!

I call bullshit.  We probably did aid Iraq with the war against Iran, but there's no way we'd supply them with chemical or biological agents.  And the "West Nile Virus" thing has too much of a "ripped from today's headlines" feel.  West Nile would make a lousy weapon.  You rely on mosquitos to deliver it, and it only kills the aged, infirm, and the very young.  

I rate this one [:K][:K][:K][:K]four trolls.

if, and it's a big if, we did make this "mistake", it ain't nothing that a couple of well placed nuclear weapons can't fix.....

[:D]

We helped Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, but I call B.S. on giving them biological agents. Just WAY to out there.

Av.

[size=5][red]SHENANIGAN!![/red][/size=5]

You know, as I watched a DVD on Sep 11 today, I was first overcome with the same gut-wrenching grief I felt that first day, when I saw sons who'd lost their fathers, paretns who'd lost their children, wives who'd lost their husbands.
Then I felt a rage at the people who planned and executed this.
But after that, I felt the same thing I did shortly after 9-11: a resolve that we shouldn't wait so long to deal with threats again.
Brett is symptiomatic of two types of people rolled into one:
First, the kind that refuses to accept that there are governments out there that hate us and would kill us if they could, and refuses to accept that refusing to deal with these governments NOW will lead to more attacks.
And second, the black-helicopter conspiracy kook that blames all evil in the world on the US government.
Frankly Brett, I can't decide which you make me more: angry or just sick.
You're a fool if you believe the shit you posted, Brett.  Just another fool.

[:K][:K][:K][:K][:K]

How many posts does this guy have?  Can someone lock his account, its obvious what he's doing here.

I don't blame Beekeeper from locking this thread before.  Its a load of poppycock.

Here's the main problem as I see it.  The USA is the last remaining super power on thi s planet....right?  As such I believe it is time we start the USA Empire and start expanding our boarders.  We can start with the mid-east.  Possibly an alliance with Russia.  The US would take everything west of Iraq and Russia would take everything east.  After that we should focus on Mexico and Canada. I figure Canada would take less then a week, Mexico 3 days if we hit during their siesta.

Just an idea. [50]  [flag]

Sgtar15

A good book; [url]http://www.francona.com/[/url]

Excerpt from the book...
 
 
 
Safwan, Iraq—March 17, 1991...

 "The three Iraqi officers were already seated when I escorted the Central Command chief of staff into the tent.  The air was hot and oppressive—it would get hotter when tempers on both sides flared later during the meeting.  The meeting had been requested by the Iraqis to discuss their declaration that they intended to move their fighter aircraft from dispersal and secondary fields back to their main bases.  The Iraqi delegation consisted of two general officers and their interpreter—a familiar face I had not seen for well over two years—Major Majid Al-Hilawi of the Iraqi armed forces Directorate of Military Intelligence.  To say I was stunned to see him would be an understatement—he seemed equally shocked.  I was relieved to see that he had survived the war, since I knew that the Iraqi military intelligence headquarters compound had been bombed and severely damaged during the air war.  In fact, I knew that the specific wing of the building that housed his office, where I had often sat with him, had been virtually destroyed.  Today we were sitting on opposite sides of the negotiating table, now enemies.  In an earlier chapter in Iraqi-U.S. relations, we were colleagues.  Actually, more than colleagues—we were friends."
Ally to Adversary – An Eyewitness Account of Iraq’s Fall From Grace tells the story of U.S. policy toward Iraq from the final year of the Iran-Iraq War through the end of the Persian Gulf War as seen through the eyes of a military officer intimately involved in the execution of that policy.  [red]In the late 1980’s, the U.S. Department of Defense entered a cooperative relationship with the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.[/red] Rick Francona was one of the officers tasked with going to Baghdad to work with the Iraqi armed forces.  During the course of his duties, he was exposed to senior Iraqi military officers and operations.  This unique insight into Iraqi military operations, including the use of missile and chemical weapons, was to shape his key role in the U.S.-led Desert Storm coalition fighting Iraq three years later.

A fluent Arabic speaker with extensive experience in the Middle East, Francona was selected to serve as General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf’s interpreter.  In Ally to Adversary, he relates his experiences in dealing with the Saudis and other members of the coalition, culminating in the ceasefire talks with the Iraqis.  It was at a dusty airfield in U.S.-occupied southern Iraq where he came face-to-face with his past dealings with the same Iraqi officers he had worked with three years earlier.  While Desert Storm was for many a war against a faceless enemy, for Rick Francona it was a war against friends and former colleagues.

Link; [url]http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/bw/program.htm[/url]

So, lib86, this means that you believe West Nile Virus is a bioweapon?

Yeah Kev, you tell em!

WNV is just a virus, so are all the other "bio weapons".  It's what you do with them that counts.  

Maybe you ought to pull your head out of your ass.

Well, no.  Not all bioweapons are virii and not all virii are bioweapons.  The question is, is the WNV in the US because it was introduced as a bioweapon?
The answer is, of course, no.



Maybe you ought to define to whom you're speaking so we know whose head and whose ass (assuming they belong to the same person).

.... so should we just become an isolationist nation again?  As in we wait for "them" (who ever them will be) to get so big and powerfull and to hit us (again)?

"The world is full a-holes and occasionally some of them need wiped!"-M-Brickley aka. Fireguy3

Yes, Sounds good to me.




No, Go get them right now and dont ever stop.

I smell sh!t![:K]

AFTER it was known that Saddam possesed and used Chemical weapons...

I really hadn't thought of west nile as a bio weapon....Here's some old news..[url]http://www.iraqwatch.org/suppliers/studycommerce.htm[/url]

Like Big Bear says, its old news.

You may question the timing, but to question the validity is to make yourself look silly.

"Calling BS" makes you a Big Stupid.

I have MORE bad news for you. Our gov't SLAUGHTERED 59,000 of our best and brightest in a war they never intended to win. Its called the VietNam War. You may have heard of it.

Americas the greatest nation the world has ever known. It STILL is.

But don't be so naieve as to think that certain US political figures are incapable of evil, or at least HORRIBLY bad judgment.

And don't be so naieve to think the chickens won't come home to roost.

Wow, [b]Liberty86[/b], I never knew you cared about Saddam so damn much!

Jeepers, now I understand why you would hate to see the US take out Saddam!

There was a time when Saddam Hussein was doing exactly what the United States wanted him to do with respect to Iran.

There was also a time when Osama Bin Laden was doing exactly what the United States wanted him to do in Afghanistan.

Guess what? They both stabbed us in the back!

Stop the presses!

[b]Loyalties sometime change, get over it![/b]

Col. Washington, a loyal officer in the King's Service, during the French and Indian Wars in the 1750s, became General Washington, the head of the Continental Army, during the American Revolution, in the 1770-80s.

I wonder what King George III thought about that development?

Eric The(Honest)Hun[>]:)]

[size=5][red]SHENANIGANS!! SHENANIGANS!![/size=5][/red]

West Nile, despite it's name, had in recent years been most prevalent in the former republics of the old Soviet Union and had made its way into Eastern Europe the year before it appeared on our shores, in the Czech Republic.

The Name West Nile was given to the viral strain where it was first identified years ago.

West nile probably hitched a ride over here on a Starlifter returning from Bosnia.

I say we give the Ruskies Afganistan with a great big bow on it (dropping a hint that for Christmas we'd reeeeaaalllly like VietNam).
I don't think Canada would take long and Mexico proper would capitulate in 48 hours, however all the able bodied Mexican "combatants" have already infiltrated the US.

Then you didn't read Brett's original post.

Thanks Bear, I been looking for this all morning.... Fresh Crow anyone???

[url]http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/medsearch/FocusAreas/riegle_report/staff_report/staff_report_s01.htm[/url]

Seems to me, it was mentioned in a passing reference. The main point of the post being that the US helped Iraq gain access to chem/bio precursors. I think the point has been made that it's true...

Theres a larger issue here than a few pharmaceuticals in the hands of someone with permanent rectal itch.

We USE AND ABUSE Saddam to kill some Iraqis, then we TURN ON HIM. Surprise!!!!! He hates America.

We USE AND ABUSE Usama to kill some Soviets, then we TURN ON HIM. SURPRISE!!!!!!! He hates America.

Insanity is using the same methods, and expecting different results.

You and others miss my points entirely. We should not be meddling in sovereign countries. How long will it be before we have to go in after whoever WE replace Saddam with turns on us??

More;


Since most of this stuff was exported to Iraq AFTER Saddam had used Chem weapons against the kurds, do you really think there was doubt as to what these items would be used for??
Remember the adage of communist dialectics; First create the problem...then supply the solution.