- Newsweek Cover:
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- 'How We Helped Create Saddam' -- U.S. Supplied Iraq With
Equipment and Materials In 1980s, Including Bacteria That Can Be Used To
Make Biological Weapons Administration's Worry: Saddam Could Unleash Bio
Weapons On U.S. Troops, Hand Out Bio Weapons To Terrorists
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- NEW YORK (PRNewswire via COMTEX) -- During the 1980s,
when Iraq was at war with Iran, the United States decided to help Iraq
and began supplying Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with supplies and military
hardware, including shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to
the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), Newsweek reports in the current
issue. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used
to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The Reagan administration
began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use"
equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential
Commerce Department export control documents obtained by Newsweek, the
shopping list included a computerized data base for Saddam's Interior Ministry
(presumably, to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to
transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance
applications" chemical analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy
Commission (IAEC); and, most unsettling, the numerous shipments of the
bacteria, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas and Middle East
Regional Editor Christopher Dickey in the September 23 cover story, "How
We Helped Create Saddam," (on newsstands Monday, September 16).
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- The U.S. almost certainly knew from its own satellite
imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops.
When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail
of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration
first blamed Iran, before acknowledging that the culprits were Saddam's
own forces, Newsweek reports. There was only token official protest at
the time. Saddam's men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured
by the Kurds, records Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as "Ali
Chemical"), talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds.
"Who is going to say anything?" he asks. "The international
community? F--- them!"
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- As the Bush administration prepares to oust Saddam, one
way or another, senior administration officials are very worried that Saddam
will try to use his WMD arsenal. Saddam could try blackmail, threatening
to unleash small pox or some other grotesque virus in an American city
if U.S. forces invaded.
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- Or, like a cornered dog, he could lash out in a final
spasm of violence, raining chemical weapons down on U.S. troops, handing
out his bio weapons to terrorists. "That's the single biggest worry
in all this," a senior administration official tells Newsweek. "We
are spending a lot of time on this," said another top official.
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- It is unclear what kind of justice would follow Saddam's
fall. The Bush administration is determined not to "overthrow one
strongman only to install another," a senior administration official
tells Newsweek. This official says that the president has made clear that
he wants to press for democratic institutions, government accountability,
and the rule of law in post-Saddam Iraq. But no one really knows how that
can be achieved. Bush's advisers are counting on the Iraqis themselves
to resist a return to despotism. "People subject to horrible tyranny
have strong antibodies to anyone who wants to put them back under tyranny,"
says a senior administration official. But as another official acknowledged,
"a substantial American commitment" to Iraq is inevitable, Newsweek
reports.
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- Read Newsweek's news releases at <http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com>http://www.Newsweek.MSNBC.com.
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- SOURCE Newsweek
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- Copyright © 2002, PR Newswire, all rights reserved.
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