Crucial US-Iraq history unearthed

US supplied biological weapons materials to Saddam's Iraq during the 1980s in contravention of international law

President Bush: We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren't required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.

October 7, 2002
Cincinnati Museum Center
Cincinnati, Ohio

Iraqgate is the forgotten scandal of the 1980s and early 1990s. Long before President Bush shamelessly told lies like those cited above, there was a time when with covert US support, Iraq did develop and possess a number of very lethal agents. They only were able to do so with US help.

These agents were destroyed in the early 1990s. This fact was known to US intelligence while Bush was lying in 2002 and 2003. The CIA had access to documents concerning debriefing of Hussein Kamel, the trusted defector to whom Bush referred in that same Cincinnati speech. Kamel, Bush failed to mention, told UN interrogators on August 22, 1995 that "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed"

Deep Blade Journal is now pleased to post an extremely important 21-page white paper that provides, in the words of UK-based campaigner and author Geoffrey Holland, ``Evidence of the export from the US to Iraq of the very biological materials that were later claimed –- due to Iraq’s possession of them -– to be the reason for the invasion of Iraq by the US and Britain in 2003''.

In an extraordinary finding, Holland traces the source of a virulent anthrax strain sent to Iraq as part of a May 1986 shipment to a dead cow from South Oxfordshire in the UK.

Geoffrey Holland has done a great service in providing this amazing document. It contains many active links that go straight to original source material. To save and redistribute the file yourself, please right-click the link below and choose ``Save as...'', or ``Save link as'', depending on your browser.

United States exports of biological materials to Iraq: Compromising the credibility of international law
by Geoffrey Holland (pdf format, 463kb download)

ABSTRACT
This paper argues that the United States breached the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) by supplying warfare-related biological materials to Iraq during the 1980s, at a time when that nation was at war with its neighbour, Iran. It is further argued that the United Kingdom has an obligation, not least due to its published policy on the issue, to formally report this breach to the United Nations Security Council. The case is made that if the UK, as a State Party to the BTWC, will not report this matter, then the Convention is not the legally binding international instrument it is claimed to be, thus compromising the credibility of international law. It may come as some surprise to the reader to learn – and as far as the author is aware this information has not previously been made public – that the anthrax threat from Iraq, a repeatedly cited reason for the 2003 invasion of that country, actually originated from a dead cow in South Oxfordshire.