From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 17:56:26 MST
John Clark (January 8) agrees with Technotranscendence (December 30)
> "Technotranscendence" <neptune@mars.superlink.net>
>
> > the "administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush
> > authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both
> > military and civilian applications, including poisonous
> > chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax
> > and bubonic plague." If this is true
>
> It almost certainly is true.
>
> > then should not also the people behind these
> > transfers be punished for putting America in danger?
>
> In retrospect it turned out to be a very bad idea, but I don't know of any
> law that was violated.
"Bad idea"? I'll say. What were they thinking?? In
the first place, alliances have been shifting since
pre-history, so how could the experienced state
department and pentagon foreign policy experts of
the first Bush administration have failed to consider
that possibly Iraq would not be on "their side" one
day?
Also, BIOLOGICAL weapons? Didn't it occur to anyone
that these are a poor man's nukes? And that all advanced
nations are put at risk by this act?
Some key paragraphs from the URL supplied by Technotranscendence:
Opinions differ among Middle East experts and
former government officials about the pre-Iraqi
tilt, and whether Washington could have done
more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology
for building weapons of mass destruction.
"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have
got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack,
a former CIA military analyst and author of
"The Threatening Storm," which makes the
case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA]
analysts and I were warning at the time
that Hussein was a very nasty character. We
were constantly fighting the State Department."
"Fundamentally, the policy was justified,"
argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador
to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio
station in Prague. "We were concerned that
Iraq should not lose the war with Iran,
because that would have threatened Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope
was that Hussein's government would become
less repressive and more responsible."
Amazing.
What makes present-day Hussein different
from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle
East experts, is the mellowing of the
Iranian revolution and the August 1990
invasion of Kuwait that transformed the
Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from
awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition,
the United States itself has changed. As a
result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington, U.S.
policymakers take a much more alarmist
view of the threat posed by the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction.
Well, the biological weapons granted to Iraq included anthrax!
See the URL below that Dan gave originally for the full story,
but it would be nice if more had been said about the anthrax.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=print
Lee
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