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| U.S. germs fuelled Iraqi bioweapons, records show Associated Press/Globe and Mail 10/01/02 Original Link: http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/PEstory/TGAM/20021001/UGERMN /International/international/internationalAfricaHeadline_temp/3/3/5/ The Iraqi bioweapons program that U.S. President George W. Bush wants to eradicate got its start with help from Washington two decades ago, according to U.S. government records that are receiving new scrutiny in light of the discussions about war against Iraq. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent samples directly to several Iraqi sites that United Nations weapons inspectors have since determined were part of President Saddam Hussein's biological-weapons program, according to CDC and congressional records from the early 1990s. Iraq had ordered the samples, saying it needed them for legitimate medical research. The CDC and a biological-sample company, the American Type Culture Collection, sent strains of all the germs Iraq used to make weapons, including anthrax, the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and the germs that cause gas gangrene, the congressional records show. The transfers came in the 1980s, when the United States supported Iraq in its war against Iran. The exports were legal under U.S. law at the time, and approved under a government-administered program. "I don't think it would be accurate to say the United States government deliberately provided seed stocks to the Iraqis' biological-weapons programs," said Jonathan Tucker, a former UN biological weapons inspector. "But they did deliver samples that Iraq said had a legitimate public-health purpose, which I think was naive to believe, even at the time." ------------------------------- PRISON PLANET.com |