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Post subject:
 Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:31 AM
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| Augie wrote: | You have shown your bias, now show me your 
Augie
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You should be so lucky!
Diane |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:32 AM
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| Augie wrote: | Talking politics is futile and searves only to make you think that you know better than the person you are trying to convince otherwise. I have read your posts for months now. I have even joined in on a few topics. Bottom line: They have changed nothing. The only thing I have learned is how you all are set in your way. You have shown your bias, now show me your
Augie
P.S. Please let me know if I need to edit this post. |
This is the first and last time I will post to this thread. Good post Augie! |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:35 AM
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This account has been Permanently Banned
Joined: Oct 26, 2002
Posts: 3515
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| Nighthawk wrote: |
This is the first and last time I will post to this thread. Good post Augie! |
Ah, but you have been reading it... good entertainment is not without price... we shall now pass the hat... |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:40 AM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 439
Location: New York City
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| erifah wrote: | | *diane* wrote: | Erifah,
You forgot the anthrax samples we gave Iraq.
Diane |
I'm going to go through this anthrax sample business very patiently, Diane. I want to nip in the bud this "conventional wisdom"about Saddam's unconventional weapons program: Namely, it's all our fault.
America did, in an understandable strategic calculation, back Saddam in his war in the early 1980s with the Ayatollah's Iran, a regime that called the United States the "Great Satan," took hundreds of American hostages and practically invented contemporary Islamic terrorism.
But to leap from this fact to the notion that the United States aided the Iraqi bio-weapons program is a slander. It is a convenient lie that undercuts the case for war by making President Bush's anti-Saddam campaign seem a fickle bait-and-switch, and bolsters the sly anti-Americanism of so many doves on Iraq.
"I think it's absolute nonsense," Richard Spertzel, the former head of the United Nations' biological inspections team in Iraq, says of the bio-weapons charge. "To help the program implies doing something consciously. There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that the U.S. did anything to help the Iraqi biological-weapons or chemical-weapons program on a knowledgeable basis."
The American Type Culture Collection, a Manassas, Va.,-based nonprofit that makes biological cultures and products available for research purposes around the world, shipped anthrax strains to Iraq in the 1980s ? providing the basis for the charge that "we" gave Saddam anthrax.
But the culture collection isn't an arm of the U.S. government. Nor did it intend to give the material to Iraq for nefarious purposes. The transfers occurred at a time when anthrax was still primarily thought of as a veterinary disease.
"Anthrax is found in nature," explains Michael Moodie of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute. "People who want to do research for legitimate medical or other reasons have these strains."
Anthrax is caused by the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus anthracis and infects mostly cattle, sheep and the like, although humans can get it from infected animals.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is common in agricultural regions in South and Central America, Southern and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East ? including Iraq.
So it wasn't unusual for Iraq to gather strains of anthrax in the 1980s, as it did not just from the American Type Culture Collection, but also from the Paris-based Pasteur Institute.
One of the destinations for the strains was the University of Baghdad, which at the time, according to former inspector Spertzel, had a solid reputation.
It only seems scandalous that Iraq got anthrax from a U.S. source if today's attitude toward the disease is projected back 20 years. Anthrax began to secure its association with terror only with the revelation that the Soviet Union had a massive biological-weapons program and the discovery of the Iraqi program in 1995.
Iraq now maintains that its program used the anthrax strains from the United States, a way to score propaganda points by stamping its terror weapons "Made in the U.S.A." This, however, appears to be untrue.
"I found no hard indication that said that the U.S. strains were used in the program," says Terence Taylor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former weapons inspector. "And I'm not alone in that point of view."
All this aside ? what if the United States did knowingly advance Iraqi unconventional weapons programs in the 1980s? Would that make it OK for Iraq to have these weapons programs now?
Of course not.
By pointing out the U.S.-Iraq anthrax connection, doves aren't making a serious policy point so much as reinforcing their attitude to American power, which they consider always in the wrong ? wrong when it supposedly gives Saddam anthrax, and wrong when it prepares to take it away. |
Hmmm, I guess that it all depends on what you read and what you believe. Following is from Senate Report: "U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War" Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr.
"The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. Pursuant to the Act, Committee staff contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce and requested information on the export of biological materials during the years prior to the Gulf War. After receiving this information, we contacted a principal supplier of these materials to determine what, if any, materials were exported to Iraq which might have contributed to an offensive or defensive biological warfare program. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning "disease producing"), toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Records prior to 1985 were not available, according to the supplier. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. According to the Department of Defense's own Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, released in April 1992: "By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. It's advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world... The program probably began late in the 1970's and concentrated on the development of two agents, botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria... Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities in Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface-to-surface missiles."
Two things are interesting to me in this paragraph:
1) The note that the materials were exported "pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce". These licensing procedures were put under review in 1991 by the House Committee on Government Operations in 1991 due to big concerns over lack of vigilence and information sharing.
2) Information was available only from 1985 onward.
Still, there was a lot of evidence out there, even at that time of Sadam's use of chemical weapons and his intent to move onto biological weapons. The biological weapons being much less detectable.
If the U.S., as you seem to indicate, did not provide anthrax to Iraq with a malicious intent they (along with other countries) certainly did so (IMO) with "blinders" firmly in place.
Cheers,
June |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:41 AM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 288
Location: Quebec City
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This has been a very civilized discussion and I am positive it will continue, No need to panic,
Regards,
Barry |
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rag451 |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 03:34 PM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 352
Location: Texas
Status: Offline
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Oy.
Robert |
_________________
"Maybe we weren't meant for Paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through, struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute, we must march to the sound of drums."
-- Kirk to McCoy
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erifah |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 04:28 PM
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This account has been Permanently Banned
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 2110
Location: The Great State of Arizona
Status: Offline
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| Barry wrote: | This has been a very civilized discussion and I am positive it will continue, No need to panic,
Regards,
Barry |
This has been a very civilized discussion, hasn't it? Well, we can't let that continue!
Let's see... what sort of mean, foul, vile, uncalled-for and scurrilous insult can I throw at BongBorg?
Hmmmmmmmm.......
Ah! I know!
Bong, old boy, you sound like a retired Air Force man, and a Northerner, to boot.
That oughta do it!  |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 04:33 PM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 19345
Location: Somewhere right of center.
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| erifah wrote: | | Barry wrote: | This has been a very civilized discussion and I am positive it will continue, No need to panic,
Regards,
Barry |
This has been a very civilized discussion, hasn't it? Well, we can't let that continue!
Let's see... what sort of mean, foul, vile, uncalled-for and scurrilous insult can I throw at BongBorg?
Hmmmmmmmm.......
Ah! I know!
Bong, old boy, you sound like a retired Air Force man, and a Northerner, to boot.
That oughta do it! |
Hey!! I represent that remark. 
BTW check this story out. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2427045.stm
~Dave |
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erifah |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 04:56 PM
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This account has been Permanently Banned
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 2110
Location: The Great State of Arizona
Status: Offline
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A good article! (you Yankee flyboy, you!) |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 04:57 PM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 19345
Location: Somewhere right of center.
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| erifah wrote: |
A good article! (you Yankee flyboy, you!) |
  
~Dave |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 05:44 PM
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| Dave wrote: | | erifah wrote: |
A good article! (you Yankee flyboy, you!) |
~Dave |
I notice both of you are ignoring June's always excellent contribution to this type of discussion.
Diane |
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erifah |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 06:11 PM
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This account has been Permanently Banned
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 2110
Location: The Great State of Arizona
Status: Offline
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| *diane* wrote: |
I notice both of you are ignoring June's always excellent contribution to this type of discussion.
Diane |
I read it; what she wrote was not inconsistent with what I posted. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 06:14 PM
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| erifah wrote: | | *diane* wrote: |
I notice both of you are ignoring June's always excellent contribution to this type of discussion.
Diane |
I read it; what she wrote was not inconsistent with what I posted. |
*pause*
Interesting.
Diane |
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 06:16 PM
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Member
Joined: Oct 24, 2002
Posts: 19345
Location: Somewhere right of center.
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| erifah wrote: | | *diane* wrote: |
I notice both of you are ignoring June's always excellent contribution to this type of discussion.
Diane |
I read it; what she wrote was not inconsistent with what I posted. |
1) The note that the materials were exported "pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce". These licensing procedures were put under review in 1991 by the House Committee on Government Operations in 1991 due to big concerns over lack of vigilence and information sharing.
This was near the end of Bush 41's administration and the beginning of Clinton's. Someone dropped the ball, and it wasn't a Republican. (As usual) IMHO.
~Dave
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Post subject:
Posted: Nov 09, 2002 - 06:19 PM
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| Dave wrote: |
This was near the end of Bush 41's administration and the beginning of Clinton's. Someone dropped the ball, and it wasn't a Republican. (As usual) IMHO.
~Dave
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Dave,
That makes absolutely no sense (as usual). IMHO.
Diane |
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