Uh oh...told you so!

[Tiger Al 0]

Remember, if anyone questions you about WMD's, al Qaeda/bin Laden/9-11 connections or nukes, you've always got a trump card with human rights violations!!! There's nothing they can say to that. What are they gonna say, we shouldn't stop Saddam from gassing people? Please, everyone knows the US don't play that, homey!!!

Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.

Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.

LINK

Uh...um...yeah...he gassed people...we...um...we need to...ahhh...bring him to...justice! Yeah, that's it!

[Tigermike 3,057]

Uh...um...yeah...he gassed people...we...um...we need to...ahhh...bring him to...justice! Yeah, that's it!

Bill Clinton & Janet Reno gassed people in Waco, TX. Would you like them brought to justice as well?

[Tiger Al 0]

Bill Clinton & Janet Reno gassed people in Waco, TX.  Would you like them brought to justice as well?

I don't know...are YOU saying that the gas Saddam used was TEAR GAS!!! :huh:

[Donutboy 0]

Bill Clinton & Janet Reno gassed people in Waco, TX.  Would you like them brought to justice as well?

I don't know...are YOU saying that the gas Saddam used was TEAR GAS!!! :huh:

Good one TA!! Of course, these conservatives think it was OK for David Koresch(sp?) and company to kill federal agents as long as they did it in the name of the Lord. They've been drinking the Koolaid for a LONG time.

[Tiger Al 0]

He was defending his right to possess illegal firearms and he did not have grenade launchers so you stop saying that!!! And so what if he did have multiple wives who he was having sex with even though they were children and you can't prove a thing anyway, so shut up!!!

[Tigermike 3,057]

I don't know...are YOU saying that the gas Saddam used was TEAR GAS!!! :huh:

Good one TA!! Of course, these conservatives think it was OK for David Koresch(sp?) and company to kill federal agents as long as they did it in the name of the Lord. They've been drinking the Koolaid for a LONG time.

That is probably the single most bogus and asinine statement you have ever made. And you have made many.

FYI there is a great deal of information supporting the fact that the ATF agents

shot first in that ordeal. There is even more concrete evidence that the democrat storm troopers should never have conducted the raid to begin with. If the Clinton Administration had only wanted to arrest David Koresh they could have done that at Wal-Mart. They wanted a big splash for the anti gun crowd, plain & simple.

The former prosecutor who warned last year of a possible cover-up of federal actions in the Branch Davidian siege has been told he is being targeted for prosecution by Waco special counsel John C. Danforth.

http://www.waco93.com/dallasmorningnews08_31_00.htm

Agents believed that "maternal instincts would take over," forcing women from the building in the face of lethal doses of CS gas;

Here is a whole page of links for you.

http://www.waco93.com/press.htm

[MDM4AU 336]

Has anyone noticed how much flack Christians take on this board by some on the left yet they are the one's that are "open-minded?"

Just curious?

[Tiger Al 0]

What flak??? Wasn't Koresh telling his people that the showdown was expected and that it was, in effect, the beginning of Armageddon?

[Tigermike 3,057]

What flak??? Wasn't Koresh telling his people that the showdown was expected and that it was, in effect, the beginning of Armageddon?

Is that a Federal offense?

He was defending his right to possess illegal firearms and he did not have grenade launchers so you stop saying that!!! 

The Branch Davidian's had been selling guns at gun shows all over the southwest for years. If they were illegal, why were they not stopped sooner? Why were they allowed to sell at gun shows?

And so what if he did have multiple wives who he was having sex with even though they were children and you can't prove a thing anyway, so shut up!!!

Again is this a federal offense? You seem to be saying sex is a Federal offense, Bill Clinton should be at the top of the 10 Most Wanted List.

There has been much proven about those murders by the liberals, so you shut up!

[MDM4AU 336]

What flak??? Wasn't Koresh telling his people that the showdown was expected and that it was, in effect, the beginning of Armageddon?

Forget it. I am having a bit of trouble putting into words what I am trying to say here. It had less to do with you and Waco and more to do with the back handed responses (and even some blatant) to conservatives and being Christians by some of the "Open-mided Left" on this board. I just feel like some on the left are "selectively tolerant." If that makes sense.

[Tigermike 3,057]

New York Press

12-8-99

vol 12 no 49

But I have to say, now, that the single most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen is the 1997 documentary Waco: The Rules of Engagement, in which families are burned alive not by Russian bombs or Nazi crematoria but as a result of actions instigated by U.S. law enforcement officials. Waco documents a homegrown holocaust, one for which redress and rectification are still outstanding. 

http://www.waco93.com/newyorkpress.htm

From the start, the raid appears to have been an ill-conceived publicity stunt for the DEA to get a juicy bust (why else would reporters have been invited out to it the night before?) - one that went distinctly awry.

http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.p...03&reviewer=258

Military gas on civilians.

Last week, a fax which originated with the Department of Justice came to me.

The fax was in three pages. The first was a copy of handwritten notes which

had apparently been written by a paralegal who assisted in the Davidian trial

preparation. The notes were of an interview of an FBI agent which was

probably conducted in 1993. The notes reflect that the agent said that

he fired ferret rounds and a "military gas round." ....

http://www.waco93.com/civlib.html

[Ranger12 46]

Bill Clinton & Janet Reno gassed people in Waco, TX.  Would you like them brought to justice as well?

I don't know...are YOU saying that the gas Saddam used was TEAR GAS!!! :huh:

Good one TA!! Of course, these conservatives think it was OK for David Koresch(sp?) and company to kill federal agents as long as they did it in the name of the Lord. They've been drinking the Koolaid for a LONG time.

Donutboy, you just showed how stupid you really are with that statement! You pissed me off by saying that. Where did you ever hear that conservatives supported what Koresh did? That has got to rate as your most idiotic statement ever made, and you have made quite a few. TA, again, your posts lose credibility when Donut-idiot backs you up.

As far as these "documents" go, where are they at? Where can I read them? Am is supposed to go by what some article says?

[Tiger Al 0]

QUOTE (Tiger Al @ Dec 20 2003, 10:36 AM)

What flak??? Wasn't Koresh telling his people that the showdown was expected and that it was, in effect, the beginning of Armageddon? 

Is that a Federal offense?

I was answering MDM's question. He thought the Christians were being persecuted.

QUOTE 

He was defending his right to possess illegal firearms and he did not have grenade launchers so you stop saying that!!! 

The Branch Davidian's had been selling guns at gun shows all over the southwest for years. If they were illegal, why were they not stopped sooner? Why were they allowed to sell at gun shows?

Well, He didn't have a license to manufacture or sell firearms. He didn't have a license to possess automatic weapons. He didn't have a license to possess silencers or hand grenades. I think that's all illegal. Killing four ATF agents, while possibly thrilling, is still illegal.

QUOTE 

And so what if he did have multiple wives who he was having sex with even though they were children and you can't prove a thing anyway, so shut up!!! 

Again is this a federal offense? You seem to be saying sex is a Federal offense, Bill Clinton should be at the top of the 10 Most Wanted List.

There has been much proven about those murders by the liberals, so you shut up!

Yes. Sex with underage children IS a Federal offense, even in Texas!!!

Bottom line: You idolize David Koresh and submit his name for martyrdom if you like. To me, he's a great example of good religion gone bad and is in the same category as Jim Jones.

[Ranger12 46]

TA, I can assure you that 99% of conservative Christians do not support in anyway what Koresh did. The man claimed to be Christ himself and if somebody did support him, I suggest the read The Bible a little more closely. Koresh was a mad and evil man. There is nothing Biblical that supports anything he did. I actually wanted us to go in and get him, but I was deeply saddened by the outcome. Those children were only following what their parents were telling them to do and they deserved better then the outcome. Like I said, I agreed with getting him, but I do have to question the tactics.

[AUloggerhead 2,255]

Remember, if anyone questions you about WMD's, al Qaeda/bin Laden/9-11 connections or nukes, you've always got a trump card with human rights violations!!! There's nothing they can say to that. What are they gonna say, we shouldn't stop Saddam from gassing people? Please, everyone knows the US don't play that, homey!!!

Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.

Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.

LINK

Uh...um...yeah...he gassed people...we...um...we need to...ahhh...bring him to...justice! Yeah, that's it!

Back to the original topic of this thread. Everyone has heard of the phrase, "politics makes strange bedfellows." In the international sense, international poilitics makes even stranger bedfellows.

Al, the article in your link clearly discusses what the Reagan administration was trying to do at the time -- use Iraq as a bulwark against the threat posed by the Islamic fundamentalists running Iran. It also discloses that other Middle Eastern countries (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait) were just as concerned with that same Iranian threat. Hence, the reason for their financial & diplomatic support they poured into Iraq at the time.

I see lots of similarities of the international politics of the 1980's to that of the 1940's with the Allies' embracement of the Soviet Union as an ally against Nazi Germany -- despite the USSR's past horrible human rights abuses with the Ukranian famine, the mass show trials/executions/exile to Siberia, occupation of Eastern Poland & the Baltic countries -- in cahoots with the Nazi invasion of Poland at the time no less, the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign Finland (even though they got their heads handed back to them by the Finns.) The sudden change in treating the USSR as a gallant ally prompted Winston Churchill to explain the turnabout where he would make a pact with the Devil to defeat Hitler's Germany.

Politics makes strange bedfellows, indeed.

[Ranger12 46]

Well said Loggerhead. Somethings are "necessary evils" to bring about peace. War is one of the those necessary evils and sometimes your allies are not the guys you would rather not have, but sometimes you have to do what it takes to eliminate the bigger threat at the time.

[Tiger Al 0]

I don't disagree with either one of you for the most part. Don't you see the absolute hypocrisy in this, though. When Saddam served the US' purpose, we were more than happy to look the other way and keep quiet about his social attrocities. Once his value to us was spent, then suddenly we decide that he is a monster. Our complicity, while it didn't make him, certainly didn't do anything to stop him. The final touch of irony in this is that the very man, Donald Rumsfeld, who was sent to give Saddam an approving wink and a nod while he was killing people with chemical weapons is the same one who now stands at the helm of the military machine charged with bringing him down for those very crimes. Donald Rumsfeld points the finger of guilt at Saddam, buy he's got three more pointing right back at him. Ultimately, they'll both get what they deserve.

[AUloggerhead 2,255]

From the article you linked:

... Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents. 

Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz. 

The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions." ...

The US is opposed to the use of CW, wherever it occurs. Says so right there that the US publicly denounced Iraq's use of CW in its war with Iran. The US also wanted to improve diplomatic relations with Iraq AT THE TIME because they were actively fighting a war with the country in the region the US considered the bigger threat.

International politics being what they are, I'm sorry for you that they can't all be hypocrisy-free, especially when it comes to US actions. Just so we know you aren't strictly an America-basher, how about treating us to some articles on the arms & chemicals sold to Iraq from Russia, Germany & those paragons of international virtue, the French?

[Tiger Al 0]

It's pretty common knowledge (I think) that Iraq also used MIG airplanes from the USSR, Exocet missiles and Mirage airplanes from France and Silkworm missiles from China.

The thing is, I'm not a citizen of those countries and I don't have a voice in how they do business. How they behave does not reflect on me.

Although Iraq was considered a terrorist state and had done nothing to change that fact, Reagan had them removed from the list so US companies could legally sell Iraq all the ingredients to make chemical and bio agents. We knew this and gave them our tacit approval.

If you continue reading the article it says that, while the US didn't condone the use of CW in its' statement, that wasn't intended to imply a shift in policy. In other words, "We'll publicly denounce your using CW, but we're not going to stop helping you when you do use them."

[AUloggerhead 2,255]

... In other words, "We'll publicly denounce your using CW, but we're not going to stop helping you when you do use them." ...

I think this is just you projecting what you want to believe.

Funny, but I don't get that same implication from the text of the message that Rumsfeld delivered. It said the US is committed to "improving bilateral relations." If you want to imply some other meaning behind that statement, how about this one: "The US is committed to improving bilateral relations (between our two nations seeing as how you are currently at war with the country we consider the No. 1 threat to stability in the Middle East.)"

I don't see anything in there that says the US will continue to support Iraq no matter what, even if he decides to use CW again. Your America-bashing is showing again, Al.

[Tiger Al 0]

I think this is just you projecting what you want to believe.

I think I'm projecting what the evidence and history have shown.

Funny, but I don't get that same implication from the text of the message that Rumsfeld delivered. It said the US is committed to "improving bilateral relations." If you want to imply some other meaning behind that statement, how about this one: "The US is committed to improving bilateral relations (between our two nations seeing as how you are currently at war with the country we consider the No. 1 threat to stability in the Middle East.)"

Your implied meaning stops too short. It should read: "The US is committed to improving bilateral relations (between our two nations seeing as how you are currently at war with the country we consider the No. 1 threat to stability in the Middle East.) We will do anything we can to help you. If you need more or better weapons you'll get them. But, as a member of the Geneva Convention since Sept. 8, 1931 you cannot use chemical or biological weapons and still expect us, as a fellow member, to be able to support you."

We can quibble over whether the US had good reasons or not for supporting Iraq in the eighties. It doesn't change the fact that we supported them. But, the present-day administration condemns them for using chemical weapons back then and has given that as a reason to go to war when the administration twenty years ago chose look the other way and pursue diplomatic relations with them. We should've been outraged twenty years ago.

Your America-bashing is showing again, Al.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm just not blindly nationalistic.

[Tigermike 3,057]

Uh...um...yeah...he gassed people...  

This is what you said that started this thread, I merely pointed out that Bill Clinton & Janet Reno had as well.

I was answering MDM's question. He thought the Christians were being persecuted.

I guess you are saying they are not?

   He was defending his right to possess illegal firearms and he did not have grenade launchers so you stop saying that!!!     

The attack came because the government alleged the Davidian’s owed $200 in unpaid federal excise taxes. Because the tax involved a gun, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) claimed jurisdiction rather than the IRS. In order to collect the tax, the ATF had obtained a warrant allowing them to arrest David Koresh and search the premises.

Paul Fatta, a Branch Davidian, held a Class III dealer's license. That meant that he could legally own, sell, and buy, any type of gun.

The National Firearms Act

Ownership of machine guns in the United States is legal, but the owner must pay a federal tax and file a registration form with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. [31] The BATF's legal reason for the Branch Davidian investigation was to see if the Davidians were manufacturing machine guns illegally. If, on the other hand, Koresh had simply bought machine guns that were made before 1986, rather than allegedly manufacturing them, and if Koresh had paid the proper tax of $200 per gun and filed the appropriate paperwork, he would have been in full compliance with the law. In other words, the legal cause for the BATF investigation was not machine guns per se, but ownership or manufacturing of machine guns without registration and taxation. The seventy- six person BATF Mount Carmel raid was, ultimately, a tax collection case.

  

Well, He didn't have a license to manufacture or sell firearms. He didn't have a license to possess automatic weapons. He didn't have a license to possess silencers or hand grenades. I think that's all illegal. Killing four ATF agents, while possibly thrilling, is still illegal. 

There were NO silencers found there.

The Sheriff's department investigated the allegations of illegal guns and these claims were found to be baseless. The investigations were peaceful. There were no problems.

Branch Davidian table at gun shows) had federal machine gun licenses.

  

Killing four ATF agents, while possibly thrilling, is still illegal.  

I don't think killing anyone is thrilling, not even the women and children that Bill Clinton & Janet Reno had gassed and burned.

None of the survivors we found guilty of murder of the four federal agents who also died.

Also for your information:

BATF Chief of Intelligence David Troy told the press that "in the first two minutes, 16 agents were injured and four were killed." It is certainly possible that in those first minutes terrified agents firing wildly from the ground and from helicopters injured and killed some of their own. During the trial a defense attorney asserted agents firing from the undercover house could also have killed or wounded some agents.

http://oldster.future.easyspace.com/Waco06.html

  

And so what if he did have multiple wives who he was having sex with even though they were children and you can't prove a thing anyway, so shut up!!!    

The allegations of child molestation were investigated in the intervening two years, twice, by Texas welfare department authorities and found to be baseless! SO YOU SHUT UP!

   Yes. Sex with underage children IS a Federal offense, even in Texas!!!  

The allegations of child molestation were investigated in the intervening two years, twice, by Texas welfare department authorities and found to be baseless.

Bottom line: You idolize David Koresh and submit his name for martyrdom if you like. To me, he's a great example of good religion gone bad and is in the same category as Jim Jones.

Don't twist things around I don't idolize him or any man. Personally I think he was crazy and probably the people who followed him were as well. Also I'd be the last one to defend the religious beliefs of the Branch Davidians, but I do support their right to practice what ever twisted dogma they pleased as long as they didn't try to impose their beliefs on others. What they were doing to themselves was no one's business but their own.

Calling a religion a "cult" and putting out false information across the media about "child molesting" and "weapons caches" is exactly the same technique that was used by the Nazis to portray the Jews as filthy, disgusting people, so they could be killed.

But in this country, we are supposed to have freedom of religion.

If Thomas Jefferson was correct, that governments are instituted for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of individual members of society, then a government acting within its moral purview would never have had cause to be at Mount Carmel on February 28, 1993. Why? Because no one’s rights were being violated by anyone at the Branch Davidian complex, and to interfere absent any such violations would be the antithesis of “wise and frugal government”.

[DKW 86 7,447]

The FBI swore they didnt use incendiary devices. That was until about 6 months after the fire and we see video tape of it and the tank operator finally told the truth.

FBI said they didnt fire a shot at the compound. The video showed where two agents had crept around to the back and were repeatedly using automatic fire to keep the people from leaving the cafeteria. Yes, while the building was burning furioisly, two FBI-BATF agents were furiously shooting them so they could not leave the building. Just another Clinton Adm lie.

The fire department was called and was held at the check point. They let the fire burn out and offered no help to the people, the women and children inside the compound.

David Koresh was about to finish the writing the seven whatevers and was about to come out. They were being starved, etc and it would eventually work. Koresh's attorney had already negotiated his imminent surrender. They wanted some really good video on the evening news. Surrender is not good video.

We used terror tactics against the BDs. Specifically aimed at the children. We murdered a rabbit and taped recorded the sounds as we strangled it. We would play this audio at ridiculous levels into the compound in a naked attempt to terrorize the kids.

I am ashamed and disgusted by the actions of the US govt in this raid.

Terrorizing children? Where the hell is that in the Constitution?

[aucorner 0]

This topic is useless, IMO...............times change, people change.....the global landscape changes. We hated Iran more than Iraq back then, so what......Last time I checked this world we live in was about survival of the fittest.

[AUloggerhead 2,255]

Aucorner,

I'd say the topic has been hijacked by the Waco/Branch-Davidian event, but it's not entirely useless. TigerAl and others had stated before that the US govt supplied Iraq with either chemical weapons (CW) components or ingredients which Iraq used in its war with Iran. They base this on a single meeting (& photograph) with Don Rumsfeld in the early 1980s. Before I would accept such a reckless charge I would like to see some hard evidence and to date, I haven't seen anything except wild accusations from primarily America-bashers backed by flimsy circumstantial links.

All indications point to either Iraq had been developing CW on their own since the early 70s (the technology to do so is relatively unsophisticated) or they were supplied by the former USSR with CW, in addition to all the other conventional arms (fighter jets, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, artillery, munitions, etc.) Other sources of chemicals and industrial equipment came from European countries (especially Germany, France & Belgium) or Japan. Stockholm International Peace Research Institue -- Chem Weapons May 1984

...

Indigenous or external sources of supply?

With the exceptions, maybe, of the last two of these different categories of putative Iraqi agent, sources of supply might as well be indigenous as external to Iraq, given the technology implied. Involvement of the last three categories would, in some circles, implicate the USSR as supplier, for the reason that the USSR is said, on evidence that has yet to be solidly substantiated but which has nonetheless attracted some firm believers, to have weaponized all three of them in recent years. For its part, the USSR has expressly denied supplying Iraq with toxic weapons. Reports of Soviet supply attributed to US and other intelligence sources have nonetheless recurred. The earliest predate reports of Iraqi use of chemical weapons in the Gulf War.

Official Iranian commentaries, too, have pointed to the USSR as a supplier of the Iraqi weapons. These sources have also accused Brazil, France and, most conspicuously, Britain of supplying the weapons. No basis for any of these Iranian accusations has been disclosed. France, alongside Czechoslovakia and both Germanies, is reportedly also rumoured, among "foreign military and diplomatic sources" in Baghdad, to have supplied Iraq with chemical precursors needed for an indigenous production effort. Unofficial published sources have cited Egypt as a possible supplier of actual chemical weapons. In the mid-1960s, when Iraq was alleged to be using chemical weapons against insurgent Kurdish forces, Swiss and German sources of supply were reported in the Western press.

Production capability in Iraq

Increasingly persuasive evidence is now emerging in published sources that, whether Iraq has or has not been receiving chemical weapons from abroad, it has been acquiring a development and production capability for them of its own. An official Iranian commentry dates the beginning of this effort back to 1976, claiming that information to that effect had been provided to Iran by West German intelligence officials. Unidentified US intelligence sources have been quoted as saying that Iraq began making mustard gas in the early 1970s. Such sources have been quoted as believing that Iraq is now attempting to produce sarin nerve gas. Associated with this belief is the assessment, it was reported in the US press at the end of March, that, while Iraq has already been using nerve gas in the Gulf war, this has been on an experimental scale using stocks accumulated during the development programme; supplies of nerve gas from large-scale production facilities were expected--the reporting continued--to be available within a matter of months, even weeks. Further, the press has reported US government sources as having identified three, possibly five, chemical-agent production sites in Iraq. The locations that have been specified in the press are Samawa, Ramadi, Samarra and Akashat. The last of these has, however, been toured by foreign correspondents, including a British journalist who has reported finding only contra-indicative evidence of a nerve gas plant being there.

Also from this report:

Export controls

On 30 March, the US government announced the imposition of 'foreign policy controls' on the export to the Gulf-War belligerents of five chemicals that could be used in the production of mustard and nerve gases. US officials told the press that this had been done in response to an unexpected volume of recent orders from Iraq for those chemicals. They also said that Japan, FR Germany and other unspecified European countries had been exporting the chemicals to Iraq. The British government took action similar to that of Washington on 12 April, adding three more chemicals to the control list (see table). Since then, other European governments have also announced embargoes of varying scope, and on 15 May the Foreign Ministers of the European Community agreed in principle on a common and complementary policy. There are Western press reports of suspicions in Western diplomatic circles in the Middle East that the USSR is shipping intermediates to Iraq through Jordan.   ...

Also, a prominent Frenchman today (Jaques Chirac) was unusually cozy with SH in the early '70s and signed an agreement for France to supply technology & build 2 nuclear reactors in Iraq. A completely unnecessary but definately odious part of that agreement was that there would be no Jewish labor involved in either the building of the reactors or in the technology transfer.

I know it's fashionable in left-wing looney circles to always bash America first but please, ... whatever America did 20-30 years ago pales in comparison to the other international players in this game.