Chemical Weapons, the US and Iraq: What's Missing

It was page one of the New York Times Sunday (August 18), picked up extensively by the international media, a featured story on America On Line. "Officers Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas," shouted the headline. Senior military officers revealed that the Reagan administration had provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance in waging decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The assistance was given at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraq had already employed chemical weapons and would likely continue to do so.

This of course raises obvious questions about the current Bush administration's near-frenzied demonization of Saddam Hussein, particularly for his alleged chemical and biological weapons (CBW) threat. Readers can be forgiven if they think this is a revelation of some sort. It isn't.

The story may add a new detail or two about the precise nature of US tactical assistance to the Iraqis, but the basic story has long been known. Strangely, the Times story leaves out the most significant part -- the furnishing of chemical and biological materials by the United States to Iraq which markedly enhanced Iraq's CBW capability.

...At the risk of sounding like I'm blowing my own horn, I must point out that I wrote a story on this very subject in 1998, which was published in several "alternative" magazines, distributed widely on the Internet to this day, and won a Project Censored award in 1999. As far as I know, the American mainstream media has never covered this story, and if the Times article is any guide, the censorship will continue...

Read on: Bill Blum, "Chemical Weapons, the US and Iraq: What the New York Times Left Out."

Also on this topic, recall Chris Floyd's contribution from a few months back:

Whatever the facts, the charge that Hussein "gassed his own people" has been the bloody shirt repeatedly waved by George W. Bush in his frantic bid to build support for an invasion of Iraq. Such an action, we are told, puts a nation beyond the pale of civilization and sends it hurtling into the abyss of ultimate evil. Any state that would "gas its own people" is, we're told, a rogue state, a terrorist state.

What then to make of the revelations last week that the United States "gassed its own people" during the Vietnam War? The Defense Department has admitted that the Pentagon sprayed more than 4,000 U.S. sailors with various substances, including the deadly nerve gas sarin and a gruesome biological toxin, in a four-year operation (1964-68) called Project SHAD, the New York Times reports.

Ah, the ironies...