U.S. Companies Behind Iraq Weapons Program

By Mitchel Cohen, 23 December 2002

Seven years ago I contacted Congress Rep. D. Riegle of Michigan who had headed an investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq. He sent me a summary of the hearings, in which were listed some of the biological agents shipped by US corporations to Iraq, with George H.W. Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as Vice President under Ronald Reagan.

These included anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, and toxic varieties of E.Coli and Salmonella bacteria. I do not recall seeing West Nile Virus on that list, although some officials have recently inserted it there.

Now, the White House is using the excuse of the existence of these biological agents, which Bush SOLD TO IRAQ, to bomb the hell out of them, and to inoculate 500,000 US troops with experimental, genetically engineered anthrax and smallpox vaccines.

In addition, uniforms were soaked in Permethrin pesticide, and soldiers (as well as civilians on the ground) were subjected to aerosalized depleted uranium. All contributed to Gulf War Syndrome, which has affected tens of thousands of US veterans. I wrote about this in numerous green and leftist journals, including Synthesis/Regeneration, Fifth Estate, Green Politics, Z magazine, and elsewhere.

Now, Iraq releases its report to the UN, which the US literally stole and distributed heavily censored copies. Over 9,000 of the 12,000 pages in the report were deleted by the United States before distributing to non-Permanent members of the UN.

But did they really think they could keep such a report secret? Certainly, Iraq would have put the report onto computer disks, which could be made available via email DIRECTLY to anyone who wanted it. So why would the US go to such great lengths to censor it? Did they think no one would notice?

Well, someone has, and now a reporter from Germany has further documented the evidence of massive US collusion with Saddam Hussein in sending biological material as well as nuclear weapons materiel and assistance to Iraq. Please read the story below.

If the US officials are, like Bush, not really as stupid as they appear (obvious attempts at censorship), what game are they playing. Of course, the possibility is that they really ARE that stupid—and dangerous.

One note: Germany will be entering the Security Council with four other countries as part of the non-Permanent members contingent, on January 1 for the next two years. German companies feature heavily in the sale of chemical weapons to Iraq. The pressure will be on Germany to go along with US pressure to bomb. So it is interesting that this article first appeared in a leading German progressive daily newspaper, before it was featured Wednesday on Democracy Now.

A Democracy Now! exclusive: Top-secret Iraq Report Reveals U.S. Corporations, Gov't Agencies and Nuclear Labs Helped Illegally Arm Iraq

Hewlett Packard, Dupont, Honeywell and other major U.S. corporations, as well as governmental agencies including the Department of Defense and the nation's nuclear labs, all illegally helped Iraq to build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

On Wednesday, December 18, Geneva-based reporter Andreas Zumach broke the story on the US national listener-sponsored radio and television show Democracy Now! Zumach's Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung plans to soon publish a full list of companies and nations who have aided Iraq. The paper first reported on Tuesday that German and U.S. companies had extensive ties to Iraq but didn't list names.

Zumach obtained top-secret portions of Iraq's 12,000-page weapons declaration that the US had redacted from the version made available to the non-permanent members of the UN Security Council.

We have 24 major U.S. companies listed in the report who gave very substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but also to the missile and nuclear weapons program, Zumach said. Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies was outlawed in the 1970s.

The list of U.S. corporations listed in Iraq's report include Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell, Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry and TI Coating.

Zumach also said the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture quietly helped arm Iraq. U.S. government nuclear weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia trained traveling Iraqi nuclear scientists and gave non-fissile material for construction of a nuclear bomb.

There has never been this kind of comprehensive layout and listing like we have now in the Iraqi report to the Security Council so this is quite new and this is especially new for the U.S involvement which has been even more suppressed in the public domain and the U.S. population, Zumach said.

The names of companies were supposed to be top secret. Two weeks ago Iraq provided two copies of its full 12,000-page report, one to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva, and one to the United Nations in New York. Zumach said the U.S. broke an agreement of the Security Council and blackmailed Colombia, which at the time was presiding over the Council, to take possession of the UN's only copy. The U.S. then proceeded to make copies of the report for the other four permanent Security Council nations, Britain, France, Russia and China. Only yesterday did the remaining members of the Security Council receive their copies. By then, all references to foreign companies had been removed.

According to Zumach, only Germany had more business ties to Iraq than the U.S. As many as 80 German companies are also listed in Iraq's report. The paper reported that some German companies continued to do business with Iraq until last year.

Democracy Now! has published translations of Andreas Zumach's articles from Die Tageszeitung at http://www.democracynow.org/Zumach.htm

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