Henri Naths wrote:
Hakan,
I would like to give a humble option here,
( Hakan wrote;...Criminal, established by the fact that we now
know that Iraq were no WMD threat to US. )
We took out Hitler for the same reason, Him and Suddam Hussein
were weapons of mass destruction.
H.
Judging from past posts, I think Hakan and many others here are a
little sceptical about claims that the US "took out" Hitler.
As for Saddam, as is very well known and widely established beyond
any possibility of doubt or controversy...
http://www.progressive.org/0901/anth0498.html
The Progressive magazine
April 1998 Issue
Anthrax for Export
U.S. companies sold Iraq the ingredients for a witch's brew
by William Blum
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).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hakan Falk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: 31 March, 2005 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Re: The Energy Crunch To Come
Bob,
You were right and I am wrong and I am glad that I did get
a very good explanation on how Hubbert could be so right.
It also explains why president Carter was so genuinely
worried, when he developed his energy plan. He had the
foresight to realize that Hubbert was right.
It also explains why we see the surge in the genuine hate
of Americans. It is the cost of aggressive and egoistic foreign
policies, that resulted in about 10 more years of artificially
low oil prices.
All of this, ending up in an almost criminal behavior by the
Bush administration. I say almost, because I do not want
to be too "crude". The legal aspect of being criminal, is very
clearly established, Criminal, established by the fact that we
now know that Iraq were no WMD threat to US. By laying
the responsibility at the feet of faulty "US intelligence
community", the Bush administration is trying deliberately
to avoid their legal responsibility. A kind of reversed side
of the well known argument "it was not my fault, I was
ordered to do it". LOL
All of this supported by the America people, in a reelection
of president Bush. I hear the false argument that only 48%
voted him in office. This argument is poor mathematics, I
cannot get to this result, when Bush won with a more than
3 million of the populous American vote. It was the first
election of Bush, that he did not have a populous majority
and he was put in office by the Courts.
Hakan