CNN Sources: 3 al Qaeda operatives took part in Benghazi attack

We didn't sell Saddam WMDs. We didn't sell him the MIG fighters in his air force. We didn't sell him the SCUD missiles he launched at Israel. We didn't sell him the Silkworm missiles he fired at our troops when W ordered him taken out. We didn't sell him the AK-47 rifles his armies used. We didn't sell him the RPGs his armies and later the insurgents used.

You really play loose with the truth.

You can read the Riegle Report for yourself. Not only does it find we did not sell WMDs to Saddam (that he used later), but that Saddam used chemical weapons against our troops with Gulf War Syndrome the result.


http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html

A Report of Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. and Ranking Member Alfonse M. D'Amato of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration
United States Senate, 103d Congress, 2d Session
May 25, 1994

Iraq was believed to have been manufacturing mustard gas at a production facility in Samarra since the early 1980s. It also began an extensive program to produce nerve agent precursor chemicals, taking advantage of its own natural resources. Phosphate mines/industries are at Akashat, Al Qaim, and Rutbah. The Iraqi Al Fallujah gas warfare complex was believed to be capable of producing up to 1,000 tons per month of Sarin, as well as the nerve agent VX. In addition, with the assistance of foreign firms, Iraq developed the capability to experiment with hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride, and lewisite. By the start of the Gulf War, Iraqi forces had developed chemical delivery capabilities for rifle grenades, 81mm mortars, 152mm, 130mm, and 122mm artillery rounds; bombs; 90mm air-to-ground rockets; 216 kilogram FROG and 555 kilogram SCUD warheads; and possibly land mines and cruise missiles.

On July 30, 1991, Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, director of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), charged with overseeing the elimination of Iraq's chemical and nuclear arsenals, told the Security Council that the U.N. inspectors had found chemical warheads armed with nerve gas. Mr. Ekeus claimed that some warheads found were already fitted onto the SCUD missiles.

Iraq's chemical warfare capability was known to the U.S. government before the war. A month before the war began, then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Webster estimated that Iraq possessed 1,000 tons of poisonous chemical agents, much of it capable of being loaded into two types of missiles: the FROG (Free Rocket Over Ground) and the SCUD B(SS-1). Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems lists warhead capabilities for the FROG-7 as high explosive (HE), chemical, or nuclear, and for the Iraqi versions of the SCUD as probably HE or chemical.

...

Committee staff has learned that Iraq may have acquired any one of a number of the Soviet binary novachok ("newcomer") series of chemical warfare agent compounds or information relevant to the development of those compounds. This series of chemical warfare agents reportedly contains both lethal and debilitating agents. According to a confidential Committee source, if the Iraqis had obtained samples of these compounds they could be easily analyzed and produced with readily available materials. Several of these compounds are described as agents that even in microdoses can have long lasting effects. These agents are described as inducing myosis, vomiting, memory loss, involuntary motions and internal organ dysfunction. Many of these materials are also described as having mutagenic effects. These materials are, according to the source, stored in the lipids (body fats) and have no known antidotes. In addition, according to the Committee source, the Soviets were believed to have conducted research in a number of dioxin-based chemical warfare agents, and on at least one agent that could be used to contaminate drinking water supplies. Committee staff is conducting further inquiries to determine if Iraq may have had access to any of these compounds.

...

The following is a detailed listing of biological materials, provided by the American Type Culture Collection, which were exported to agencies of the government of Iraq pursuant to the issueance of an export licensed by the U.S. Commerce Department:

(long list of biological agents)

The fears and the precautions taken prior to the Gulf War were not the product of excessive hysteria. Five United Nations reports have confirmed the use of chemical warfare agents in the Iran-Iraq War. Use of chemical weapons against both the Kurds and Shiite Moslems within Iraq is well documented. Press reports also document Iraqi readiness to use these weapons against Coalition forces during the Persian Gulf War.
In April 1993, two U.S. based human rights organizations confirmed that they had found residues of chemical weapons used by the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein against Kurdish village in northern Iraq in 1988. These groups, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, said they had used advanced analytical techniques to discover the presence of mustard gas and the nerve gas Sarin. Those chemical weapons reportedly were dropped by aircraft on August 25, 1988 and killed four people in the Kurdish village of Birjinni. Testimony from survivors of the Birjinni bombing, who said victims of the raids died writhing and coughing blood, led to accusations that Iraq had gassed its own citizens as part of a campaign against rebellious Kurds that killed tens of thousands. This was the first time that scientists had been able to prove the use of chemical weapons, and especially a nerve gas, through the analysis of environmental residue acquired years after such an attack occurred.

Soil samples were gathered from the 1988 bombing sites and then delivered to a British laboratory. Chemists at Porton Down found traces of mustard gas and Sarin. Dr. Graham Pearson, director of the British Chemical and Biological Defense Establishment, verified these results and confirmed the samples were taken from bomb craters near the northern Iraqi village of Birjinni in June 1992. The byproducts of the breakdown of these poisons are so specific that they provide a "unique fingerprint" in chemical analysis that points directly to a poison gas attack.

An earlier attack had been reported on March 17, 1988 on the village of Halabja. Amnesty International reported that chemical weapons were used in an attack by Iraq, in which "some 5,000 Kurds were killed within an hour." A U.N. team sent to investigate the attack found evidence of chemical weapons, although they did not rule on who carried out the attack on the town, which had been occupied by Iran since mid-March.

On September 26, 1993, Shiite rebels living in the southern Iraqi marshlands reported an early morning shelling attack by Iraqi forces. The eyewitnesses, who spoke with a New York Times reporter, mentioned that the shells landed with a thud "and not the usual explosion" sending up white clouds. The artillery attack was followed by a ground assault by Iraqi troops who were equipped with gas masks.

A Shiite rebel claimed that upon entering one of the Iraqi armored personnel carriers they found battle orders calling for a chemical attack. Rebel leaders provided a copy of the captured orders. Written in Arabic on the twenty-sixth of September, the orders, numbered 1-15, instructed the Iraqi soldiers to use chemical weapons to "retake the village" and that "each soldier must be instructed on how to respond during the chemical attack."

After the attack, some villagers returned for their belongings, but there was nothing left. They discovered that trees and plants had withered and yellowed. Furthermore, "the cats, the dogs, the birds and even the water snakes had died. But for some reason the victims had been removed by the troops. We saw no bodies."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program.[24] Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s.[25][26][27][28][29] As part of Project 922, German firms such as Karl Kobe helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.[30]

The United States exported support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war over $500 million worth of dual use exports to Iraq that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraq's nuclear program.[31] The non-profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples of anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism to Iraq up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. A number of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were used for vaccine development.[32] For example, the Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive anthrax strain for use as a biological weapon, according to Charles Duelfer.[33]

 

You consistently make up stuff or claim things are fact that are patently false.

Like we sold Iraq WMDs they used later.

And now you rant about Ted Koppel, the guy who wasted hours of his show reading the names of US soldiers killed in Iraq.

 

The Democrats went on a witch hunt and made that report. There was no company line. They simply could not come up with the kind of dirt you imagine and justify it.