The standard knee-jerk response from some has been: "but don't forget that we created/put him there in the first place.

Even if it was true, by what cruel tortuous chain of logic could this be seen to justify not liberating Iraq from this monstrous tyrant??

Let's look at some facts:

In the period 1980-1990 Iraq imported $28.9bn worth of weapons.

Of this, France supplied 19%.

The USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia supplied 57%, China 8%. The US does not appear in the list of other countries which supplied more than 2%.

Not only did France supply weapons, Chirac also allowed the construction of nuclear reactors in Iraq, supplied fissile material and trained over 600 Iraqi nuclear scientists.

How DARE you suggest that any country besides theUnited States (well, okay, you can mention Israel; undoubtedly they had something to do with it) bred, raised, trained, educated, armed, and equipped Saddam Hussein!

LA LA LA LA WE CAN"T HEAR YOU!

nonanarchist

heh heh...ignore THIS!

Burn the Heretic!!!

It will spoil our preparations for the Revolution. Is that before or after Christmas?

I'm wondering if I should bother buying presents if I could get them off the rich for free.

... but:

1. We supplied Iraq with chemical and biological agents;

2. Bush did not use the notion of Hussein being a tyrant to justify the invasion (since this would not justify it under international law), but instead invented "proof" that Iraq has ongoing WMD programs, that they were linked to terrorists, and that they posed an imminent threat to the US, none of which is supported by the evidence;

3. The lack of UN authorization or defense against a genuine attack means the invasion violated the UN Charter, which is part of both US and international law;

4. We have not "freed" these people, only occupied them and have begun to "liberate" their oil.

Much more could be said, but this should be sufficient.

WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! ...should be sufficient.

Iraq being given chemicals for wmds by the CIA or the Defense Department would not appear on any official list of imports or exports. Neither would such intangibles as giving him satelite information on the positioning of Iranian troops of the great efforts of the US Navy (costing US taxpayers millions of dollars) to give Hussein naval aid during the war with Iran. Nor would moral support, such as assurances that the US would never allow Iran to occupy Iraq if the war went badly.

The info provided in this article is well documented fact and been known for years. But leftists continue to deny, deny, deny. They've got very little to whine about without their we-dunnit routine, don't they...

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by missles fired from a US cruiser was almost certainly a deliberate mass murder and a warning to the Iranians that the US was not going to allow them to defeat Iraq - even though the Iranians were fighting a defensive war against an unprovoked invasion.

On several occasions US ships shelled and destroyed Iranian oil-drilling platforms, resulting in the murder of innocent Iranians and the loss of millions of dollars worth of equipment. This was raw aggression, not justifiable by anything outside the Hitler code of conduct.

Really? The same kind of lessons that it gave Iran when it was under the Shah? When it trained the Shah's vicious SAVAK gestapo force in torture techniques? Or when that smiling, sanctimonious born-again hypocrite Jimmy Carter brought the Shah on an official visit to Washington when the Shah's own people were in the middle of a revolution whose purpose was to overthrow the bastard?

1. Noam Chomsky also pointed out that Pol Pot wasn't in the wholesale murder business. So he's a litte short in the credibility department.

2. It seems some posts have been deleted...not moved to the "hidden comments" file, but deleted.

I wonder why...?

nonanarchist

So let's have a direct quote from Chompsky, with references ( being the doubting sort of person) to support the 'support Pol Pot' statements being attributed to Noam. Otherwise I will, as most others will, consider it BS. And don't bother to direct me to another Chompsky blog./craphole.

By the way, the US (during the administration of the saintly Jimmy Carter) vigorously defended the Pol Pot government's right to keep its UN seat on the grounds that the new government set up after the Vietnamese deposition of the mass murderer was illegitimate because it had been installed by invaders!!!! That would be both ironic and highly comic if it were not for the tragic deaths of milions that it brings to mind.

Spt, you write: "And don't bother to direct me to another Chompsky blog./craphole."

Well, I can't give you a reference then, because A. I don't (and never will) own any of Chomsky's toilet paper he calls books, and B. Chomsky's own site will never admit he lied supported a genocidal dictator, will it? other than Saddam, I mean.

So you're just going to go on in your little "Chomsky is a diety" world without being troubled by the truth.

Meyer: Is there NOTHING in history you can't blame on the US? How about the extinction of the dinosaurs? Too many SUVs, maybe? Chemical wepaons release from Fort Detrick?

As far as Jimmy Carter screwing up, you won't get any argument from me. The man has done far more good for the world by building houses than he did being President.

Forget asking Fido to back up his assertions...the fact that he posted it is proof enough that it is a lie....

...he is Republican....that is what Republican does....

Meyer you idiot -- quoting Noam Chomsky as if he were a credible witness. The guy's a fucking idiot (just like you Meyer).

Pure BS from another riechtard.

Batting .00 again dickman.

Fido: "Well, I can't give you a reference then, because A. I don't (and never will) own any of Chomsky's toilet paper he calls books, and B. Chomsky's own site will never admit he lied supported a genocidal dictator, will it? other than Saddam, I mean. "

This is a long winded doggie way of saying "I can't give you a refernce other than what I pulled out of my doggie ass".

...whadda fuckin' shitpile.....

...for providing us with our Minimum Daily Requirement of Stupid, Brainless Obscenity.

The funny thing is, you really consider that a valid form of debate, don't you?

What a moron.

nonanarchist

"1. We supplied Iraq with chemical and biological agents;

In as much as we gave Iraq precursors to Bio materials in the 1980's, this is how we know that Saddam obviously posessed WMD. However, these were only precursors and could have been used for any number of purposes. But, so what? Having given this bastard materials almost two decades ago, are we forced to just allow him to continue. THIS administration never aided him, contrary to the famous Rummy pic which you all love to trot out and get laughed at for.

2. Bush did not use the notion of Hussein being a tyrant to justify the invasion (since this would not justify it under international law), but instead invented "proof" that Iraq has ongoing WMD programs, that they were linked to terrorists, and that they posed an imminent threat to the US, none of which is supported by the evidence;

Links to terrorists are undeniable. Abu Nudal...Payments to Hamas are enough in and of themselves. Furthermore, Nidal has been linked to Atta. To believe that Saddam was willing and actively helping just about every Islamic group EXCEPT Al queda is delusional. But you know that. As for WMD, you yourself constantly blame America for giving them to him. Therefore, by your own logic he has them. Not to mention that simply fostering and supporting hordes of Islamic terrorists which is a given is a WMD in and of itself.

3. The lack of UN authorization or defense against a genuine attack means the invasion violated the UN Charter, which is part of both US and international law;

Oh well. Cry me a river. To the extent that "international law" and the laughable UN can help protect us against further barbaric islamic attacks is the extent to which we should care at all about what they hold important.



4. We have not "freed" these people, only occupied them and have begun to "liberate" their oil.

This is simply embarrassing. You sound like a fucking child. I'd grind you into the ground but there's nothing to even grab onto here. It's simply ridiculous. We're further away from that oil then before the war for all intents and purposes. But I'll tell you this. I for one say we should take ALL of the oil and distribute it freely and equally amongst ourselves. Spoils of war and all that.

At least that would mean something to someone, dickman.

Oh, that's right, we know why you spend all your time behind the keyboard instead of your sig other.

No one would be able to stand to be with her either.

What a waste of skin.

Meyer - I'm sorry

In an emotional moment I classified you with Noam Chomsky.

I'm sorry.

You're dumb but you're not that dumb.

Fido: "The funny thing is, you really consider that a valid form of debate, don't you?"



Are you kidding me...no way! Why would anyone debate a doggie? Fido deserves to be kicked with contempt, but not much else.

...don't you have some cars to chase or something?

Caducada: "I'd grind you into the ground but there's nothing to even grab onto here."

Ignorance and arrogance are SOOOOO attractive!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

....whadda spineless cunt.....

We don't even know if it was Saddam that they dug out. Something about a pathologicaly lying government....

Yeah...if da shrub said water was wet...I'd check before I agreed with him.....

I presume by Fido you refer to Noam Chomspky. He's the dumber one in this debate.

It looked like he was traped in there rather than hiding. And the reluctance to allow him to see a non- US controled court or venue.

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/6072/chomsky.html

Chomsky...was still busily working on an intellectual edifice designed to conceal the atrocities of the Communist liberators. This cover-up, in the words of David Hawk, former antiwar activist and later director of the Cambodia Documentation Commission, included "confident assertions that the reports of atrocities were exaggerated propaganda; letters of protest to human rights groups that sought to mobilize opinion against the atrocities ... [attacks on] the reliability of the refugee accounts and the honesty and credibility of the journalists and publications that gathered, reported and printed the terrible atrocities recounted by the refugees lucky enough to survive escape attempts from the Khmer Rouge."

The disinformation campaign had a significant impact. In Hawk's words, "The alacrity and persistence of Pol Pot's defenders diverted attention and refocused discussion from 'how should Khmer Rouge bloodlust best be exposed and protested' to 'whether or not the refugee accounts were exaggerated and were the accounts of largely politically motivated propaganda.'" Hawk believes that Chomsky's grotesque thesis had "a chilling effect on the mobilization of opinion against the Cambodian genocide."

Chomsky's goal in denying the atrocities was less to defend the Khmer Rouge than to prevent the gruesome facts of their genocide from deflecting guilt from the United States. Thus he tricked out his cover-up as an "analysis" of how the American media were "brainwashing" the public with concocted reports of Communist misdeeds in order to reconstruct the "imperial ideology" of the pre-Vietnam era.

In the Thirties, protected by the Stalinist monolith, Chomsky's argument might have remained convincing, at least for a while, as were the impassioned assertions of American progressives of that era that reports of a famine and genocide in the Ukraine were not only false but malicious. But there was no Stalinist Ministry of Truth to protect Chomsky when he was betrayed by Pol Pot, author of atrocities that were finally too horrible to be hidden and head of a revolution so mad that his North Vietnamese sponsors finally invaded and conquered Cambodia, adding another 350,000 deaths to the already enormous toll.

Chomsky was just completing his 160-page, footnoted assault on the Western media for fabricating the genocide that Hanoi was now ready to confirm. He responded not by throwing out the pages of his perverse text but by hedging its claims. "When the facts are in," Chomsky now speculated, "it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." Moreover, he added:

If a serious study of the impact of Western imperialism on Cambodian peasant life is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered that the violence lurking behind the Khmer smile ... is not a reflection of obscure traits in peasant culture and psychology, but is the direct and understandable response to the violence of the imperial system, and that its current manifestations are a no less direct and understandable response to the still more concentrated and extreme savagery of a U.S. assault that may in part have been designed to evoke this very response...



In other words, the Khmer Rouge were really innocent of the atrocities Chomsky was now forced to concede they might have committed. Why? Because the U.S. devil made them do it. Why would the U.S. make them commit such crimes? Chomsky had a ready answer: In order to discredit the socialist future. In making these arguments, Chomsky had discovered the Archimedean principle of the Leftist revival.



http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm

A peculiar irony is at the heart of this controversy: Noam Chomsky, the man who has spent years analyzing propaganda, is himself a propagandist. Whatever one thinks of Chomsky in general, whatever one thinks of his theories of media manipulation and the mechanisms of state power, Chomsky's work with regard to Cambodia has been marred by omissions, dubious statistics, and, in some cases, outright misrepresentations. On top of this, Chomsky continues to deny that he was wrong about Cambodia. He responds to criticisms by misrepresenting his own positions, misrepresenting his critics' positions, and describing his detractors as morally lower than "neo-Nazis and neo-Stalinists."(2) Consequently, his refusal to reconsider his words has led to continued misinterpretations of what really happened in Cambodia. Misconceptions, it seems, have a very long life.

...

The ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge had dire consequences for the Cambodian people. This, however, was not a matter of critical importance for Chomsky. His writings follow a consistent pattern: Chomsky excels at illuminating crimes... but only the crimes of the right villains.

The first evidence of this is apparent in December 1972, in Chomksy's introduction for Cambodia in the Southeast Asia War by Malcolm Caldwell and Lek Tan. In the introduction, Chomsky writes, quite rightly, "The misery and destruction for which Nixon and Kissinger bear direct responsibility are crimes that can never be forgotten." He then continues:

"By the impulse it has given to the revolutionary forces, this vicious attack may have also prepared the ground, as some observers believe, not only for national liberation but also for a new era of economic development and social justice."(5)

It is a rather drastic jump to move from remembering the crimes of Nixon and Kissinger, to suggesting that the Khmer Rouge would be "liberators" who would usher in "economic development and social justice." By 1972, there was already disturbing evidence of the brutality of the Cambodian communists, and only a naive romantic would have seen them as just and noble freedom fighters.

...

Chomsky and Herman begin painting their alternative picture in the book's Preface:

"The ferocious U.S. attack on Indochina left the countries [of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia] devastated, facing almost insuperable problems. The agricultural systems of these peasant societies were seriously damaged or destroyed... With the economies in ruins, the foreign aid that kept much of the population alive terminated, and the artificial colonial implantations no longer functioning, it was a condition of survival to turn (or return) the populations to productive work. The victors in Cambodia undertook drastic and often brutal measures to accomplish this task, simply forcing the urban population into the countryside where they were compelled to live the lives of poor peasants, now organized in a decentralized system of communes. At heavy cost, these measures appear to have overcome the dire and destructive consequences of the U.S. war by 1978."(34)

The reference to "brutal measures" suggests that Chomsky and Herman were beginning to back away from the stance in their Nation article, which had implied that Hildebrand and Porter's "very favorable picture" of the Khmer Rouge was more accurate than Barron and Paul's and Ponchaud's negative views. Nonetheless, Chomsky and Herman still seemed unaware -- or unwilling to admit -- that the regime had been an unmitigated disaster. Moreover, they seemed determined to deflect blame away from the Khmer Rouge. Thus, they imply that the Khmer Rouge were forced to implement these "drastic" measures in part because foreign aid had been terminated. They neglect to mention that the foreign aid was terminated by the Khmer Rouge. Francois Ponchaud pointed this out in Year Zero, noting that the Khmer Rouge even refused a transport plane which had been previously loaded with urgently needed medical supplies.(35)

There is similar sophistry in the claim that the urban population was "forced to live the lives of poor peasants." Peasants in years prior to the Khmer Rouge did not suffer the repression imposed upon the evacuees (the "new people") by Angkar. The population was not forced to live the lives of peasants: they were forced to live the lives of slaves.

The claim that the policies implemented by the Khmer Rouge managed to "overcome" the difficulties of the damaged economy is contradicted by the evidence. Khmer Rouge economic policies, if they can even be called that, were brutal, naive, inefficient, and often downright destructive.

...

Rather than expressing concerns about the fate of the Khmer people, Chomsky and Herman seem primarily concerned with the "abuse" directed at the Khmer Rouge regime:

"While all of the countries of Indochina have been subjected to endless denunciations in the West for their 'loathsome' qualities and unaccountable failure to find humane solutions to their problems, Cambodia was a particular target of abuse. In fact, it became virtually a matter of dogma in the West that the regime was the very incarnation of evil with no redeeming qualities, and that the handful of demonic creatures who had somehow taken over the country were systematically massacring and starving the population."

...



"Even before this book was translated it was sharply criticized by Mr Noam Chomsky and Mr Gareth Porter. These two 'experts' on Asia claim that I am mistakenly trying to convince people that Cambodia was drowned in a sea of blood after the departure of the last American diplomats. They say there have been no massacres, and they lay the blame for the tragedy of the Khmer people on the American bombings. They accuse me of being insufficiently critical in my approach to the refugee's accounts. For them, refugees are not a valid source...

"After an investigation of this kind, it is surprising to see that 'experts' who have spoken to few if any refugees should reject their very significant place in any study of modern Cambodia. These experts would rather base their arguments on reasoning: if something seems impossible to their personal logic, then it doesn't exist. Their only sources for evaluation are deliberately chosen official statements. Where is that critical approach which they accuse others of not having?"



***************

'Nuff said.

Chomsky's a liar and an unapologetic whitewasher of the Kmher Rouge.

nonanarchist

The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program.



USA >

1. Honeywell (Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

2. Spectra Physics (Conventional weapons.)

3. Semetex (Rocket program.)

4. TI Coating (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

5. Unisys (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

6. Sperry Corp. (Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

7. Tektronix (Rocket program., Nuclear weapon program.)

8. Rockwell (Conventional weapons.)

9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (Nuclear weapon program.)

10. Finnigan-MAT-US (Nuclear weapon program.)

11. Hewlett-Packard (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

12. Dupont (Nuclear weapon program.)

13. Eastman Kodak (Rocket program.)

14. American Type Culture Collection (Biological weapon program.)

15. Alcolac International (Chemical weapon program.)

16. Consarc (Nuclear weapon program.)

17. Carl Zeiss - U.S (Conventional weapons.)

18. Cerberus (LTD) (Nuclear weapon program.)

19. Electronic Associates (Rocket program.)

20. International Computer Systems (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

21. Bechtel (Conventional weapons.)

22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (Rocket program.)

23. Canberra Industries Inc. (Nuclear weapon program.)

24. Axel Electronics Inc. (Nuclear weapon program.)

"In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs (Nuclear weapon program., Biological weapon program., Chemical weapon program. & Rocket program.) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories."

China >

1. China Wanbao Engineering Company (Nuclear weapon program., Chemical weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

2. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (Conventional weapons.)

3. China State Missile Company (Rocket program.)

France >

1. Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Sciaky (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. Thomson CSF (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

4. Aerospatiale and Matra Espace (Rocket program.)

5. Cerbag (Nuclear weapon program.)

6. Protec SA (Chemical weapon program.)

7. Thales Group (Nuclear weapon program.)

8. Societé Général pour les Techniques Nouvelles (Nuclear weapon program.)

Great Britain >

1. Euromac Ltd-Uk (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. C. Plath-Nuclear (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. Endshire Export Marketing (Nuclear weapon program.)

4. International Computer Systems (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

5. MEED International (Nuclear weapon program., Chemical weapon program.)

6. Walter Somers Ltd. (Rocket program.)

7. International Computer Limited (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

8. Matrix Churchill Corp. (Nuclear weapon program.)

9. Ali Ashour Daghir (Nuclear weapon program.)

10. International Military Services (Rocket program.) (part of the UK Ministry of Defence)

11. Sheffield Forgemasters (Rocket program.)

12. Technology Development Group (Rocket program.)

13. International Signal and Control (Rocket program.)

14. Terex Corporation (Rocket program.)

15. Inwako (Nuclear weapon program.)

16. TMG Engineering (Conventional weapons.)

17. XYY Options, Inc (Nuclear weapon program.)

USSR/Russia >

1. Soviet State Missile Co. (Rocket program.)

2. Niikhism (Rocket program.)

3. Mars Rotor (Rocket program.)

4. Livinvest (Rocket program.)

5. Russia Aviatin Trading House (Conventional weapons.)

6. Amsar Trading (Conventional weapons.)

Japan >

1. Fanuc (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Hammamatsu Photonics KK (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. NEC (Nuclear weapon program.)

4. Osaka (Nuclear weapon program.)

5. Waida (Nuclear weapon program.)

The Netherlands >

1. Melchemie B.V. (Chemical weapon program.)

2. . KBS Holland B.V. (Chemical weapon program.)

3. Delft Instruments N.V. (Conventional weapons.)



Belgium >

1. Boehler Edelstahl (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. NU Kraft Mercantile Corporation (Chemical weapon program.)

3. OIP Instrubel (Conventional weapons.)

4. Phillips Petroleum (Chemical weapon program.)

5. Poudries Réunies Belge SA (Rocket program.)

6. Sebatra (Nuclear weapon program.)

7. Space Research Corp. (Rocket program.)

Spain >



1. Donabat (Rocket program.)

2. Treblam (Chemical weapon program.)

3. Zayer (Nuclear weapon program.)

Sweden >

1. ABB (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Saab-Scania (Rocket program.)



Nuclear weapon program. = 42

Biological weapon program. = 5

Chemical weapon program. = 12

Rocket program. = 28

Conventional weapons. = 21

Source: Die Tageszeitung, No. 6934, 19 Dec 2002, page 3. See the original in German.

IMPORTANT NOTE: BY LEGAL REASONS, the 80 German companies named in the dossier were not included in this list.



PLUS.

How £1bn was lost when Thatcher propped up Saddam

David Leigh and Rob Evans

Friday February 28, 2003

The Guardian

For more than a decade, yellowing paper files in a government store have hidden the story of the way £1bn of Whitehall money was thrown away in propping up Saddam Hussein's regime and doing favours for arms firms.

It took place when many in both the British and US administrations were covertly on President Saddam's side. But as yet another war against the Iraqi dictator looms, what may be the final skeleton in Britain's arms-to-Iraq cupboard has been uncovered.

Some information about the Thatcher government's duplicitous record in selling to Iraq emerged in the mammoth Scott inquiry of 1996. The judge found that although Conservative ministers had restricted major "sharp" arms sales to President Saddam, they had also connived at ways round Britain's supposed neutrality.

During Baghdad's prolonged and bloody invasion of Iran in the 1980s, the inquiry discovered, officials shredded documents after deliberately smuggling Chieftain tank hulls made by the then royal ordnance factories to Iraq via Jordan.

Ministers secretly "relaxed" official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools to build munitions factories. The judge discovered they had also abused lines of credit meant for civil development trade deals in Iraq, to include military sales.

But the identity of most of the firms was not published, and the amounts of insurance money they subsequently collected from the taxpayer remained a secret.

Now, the Export Credits Guarantee Department - an agency of the Department of Trade and Industry - has been reformed. It publishes lists of most of the firms who benefit from taxpayer-funded export insurance. And it has agreed to release to the Guardian details of the money lost by Mrs Thatcher's policies.

In the 80s the ECGD's "bold strategy" - as it was described in Whitehall files - of guaranteeing loans to the bankrupt Iraqi dictator was imposed on it by Mrs Thatcher herself, her foreign secretary Douglas Hurd and her trade and industry secretary Nicholas Ridley.



NOTE >JONATHAN MOYLE, on March 31st 1990, there was Jonathan Moyle, the editor of the magazine Defence Helicopter World. He was in in Chile investigating a story that a Chilean firm, Industrias Cardoen, planned to convert US civilian helicopters into gunships for sale to Iraq. It has been long rumoured that Mark Thatcher the son of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was involved in secret arms deals with Chile. Details of some of these allegations are contained in the Profits of War: Inside the Secret US-Israeli Arms Network by the former MOSSAD agent Ari Ben-Manashe (Sheridan Square Press, New York, 1992).At first, Moyle's family were told that he had died whilst masturbating and hanging inside a cupboard -smaller than he was - in a hotel room in Chile. He was found hanging by his shirt with a pillow case over his head. Nuclear weapon program. needle mark on his leg suggested he had been sedated according to a report in The Guardian on February 28th 1998. Nuclear weapon program. chambermaid claimed she saw blood on the bed, but the Chilean police said it was suicide. The British foreign office later claimed he had killed himself in some sort of "bizarre sex game" that went wrong. It later apologised to the family for spreading this allegation. In February 1998, a inquest in Exmouth, Devon concluded that he had been "unlawfully killed" by "person or persons unknown"< END NOTE

They in turn were strenuously lobbied by officials from Whitehall's arms sales department - the defence export sales organisation - who had close links with arms firms.

The Iraq guarantees were too risky to be a genuine commercial proposition. They were made under section two - a special ECGD provision allegedly in the "national interest".

The guarantees were supposed to cover only civil projects. But one firm Racal, which under the chairmanship of Sir Ernie Harrison regularly donated £75,000 a year to the Tories, was then provided with a secret "defence allocation" of £42m of special ECGD insurance, after getting a contract with Iraq in 1985.

ECGD documents show civil servants protested that a single company was getting virtually all the benefit from this secret allocation. But they were overruled.

Racal shipped sophisticated Jaguar V radios to President Saddam's army on credit. Frequency-hopping enabled them to defeat enemy jamming on the battlefield.

Racal was building a factory in Iraq when the Gulf war broke out. Subsequently, the ECGD had to write Racal's bankers an insurance cheque for £15.7m.

The Washington thinktank CSIS reported in 1998 that Iraq now possessed a factory making frequency-hopping radios at Sala-al-Din and al-Dawr, at its Sa'ad-13 complex.

In 1987 Marconi Command & Control got a bank loan of £10m, backed by a taxpayer guarantee to sell Amets - the Artillery Meteorological System - to the Iraqi army. Crucial for accurate artillery fire, Amets uses weather balloons linked to radar to measure wind speeds

But ECGD's secret "defence allocation" had been used up by then on Racal. So Ministry of Defence officials got the contract reclassified as civil. This murky deal led ECGD officials to protest privately that they had been misled by the MoD.

The ECGD ended up writing a cheque for £8.2m when Marconi failed to get its money.

Another contract in 1988 was also subject to manoeuvring. Tripod Engineering, backed by John Laing International, succeeded in getting its £18m deal classed as civil, even though it was for a fighter pilot training complex for the Iraqi air force. Tripod got assistance in its negotiations from an air vice-marshal, who shortly after retirement was paid by Tripod as a consultant, without seeking consent from the MoD as rules required. The Scott report found that his behaviour was "however unintentionally ... apt to give rise to ... suspicion".

The government ended up paying £2.9m compensation for the Tripod deal.

In the same year, Thorn-EMI got ECGD insurance for a contract to ship further supplies of Cymbeline mortar-locating radar to the Iraqi army and to train Iraqi officers. ECGD had to pay out almost £1m in compensation on the deal.

Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to President Saddam even after he executed an Observer journalist, Farzad Bazoft, in 1990, minuting privately that they did not want to damage British industry.

The firms who benefited from this tender concern have since cashed in their chips. The Midland Bank has been sold to the Hong Kong bank HSBC and Morgan Grenfell to the German Deutsche Bank. Racal and Thorn-EMI have both been sold to the French firm Thales, and Marconi sold to the giant BAE Systems.

Even if Britain now obtains reparations for President Saddam's £1bn loan defaults after a successful US-UK invasion, it will go nowhere near meeting the cost of the war to Britain. This has been estimated at £3bn-£5bn, depending on how much occupying and administering Britain has to do.

The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program.



USA >

1. Honeywell (Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

2. Spectra Physics (Conventional weapons.)

3. Semetex (Rocket program.)

4. TI Coating (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

5. Unisys (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

6. Sperry Corp. (Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

7. Tektronix (Rocket program., Nuclear weapon program.)

8. Rockwell (Conventional weapons.)

9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (Nuclear weapon program.)

10. Finnigan-MAT-US (Nuclear weapon program.)

11. Hewlett-Packard (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

12. Dupont (Nuclear weapon program.)

13. Eastman Kodak (Rocket program.)

14. American Type Culture Collection (Biological weapon program.)

15. Alcolac International (Chemical weapon program.)

16. Consarc (Nuclear weapon program.)

17. Carl Zeiss - U.S (Conventional weapons.)

18. Cerberus (LTD) (Nuclear weapon program.)

19. Electronic Associates (Rocket program.)

20. International Computer Systems (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

21. Bechtel (Conventional weapons.)

22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (Rocket program.)

23. Canberra Industries Inc. (Nuclear weapon program.)

24. Axel Electronics Inc. (Nuclear weapon program.)

"In addition to these 24 companies home-based in the USA are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US. Also designated as suppliers for Iraq's arms programs (Nuclear weapon program., Biological weapon program., Chemical weapon program. & Rocket program.) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories."

China >

1. China Wanbao Engineering Company (Nuclear weapon program., Chemical weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

2. Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd (Conventional weapons.)

3. China State Missile Company (Rocket program.)

France >

1. Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Sciaky (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. Thomson CSF (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

4. Aerospatiale and Matra Espace (Rocket program.)

5. Cerbag (Nuclear weapon program.)

6. Protec SA (Chemical weapon program.)

7. Thales Group (Nuclear weapon program.)

8. Societé Général pour les Techniques Nouvelles (Nuclear weapon program.)

Great Britain >

1. Euromac Ltd-Uk (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. C. Plath-Nuclear (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. Endshire Export Marketing (Nuclear weapon program.)

4. International Computer Systems (Nuclear weapon program., Rocket program., Conventional weapons.)

5. MEED International (Nuclear weapon program., Chemical weapon program.)

6. Walter Somers Ltd. (Rocket program.)

7. International Computer Limited (Nuclear weapon program., Conventional weapons.)

8. Matrix Churchill Corp. (Nuclear weapon program.)

9. Ali Ashour Daghir (Nuclear weapon program.)

10. International Military Services (Rocket program.) (part of the UK Ministry of Defence)

11. Sheffield Forgemasters (Rocket program.)

12. Technology Development Group (Rocket program.)

13. International Signal and Control (Rocket program.)

14. Terex Corporation (Rocket program.)

15. Inwako (Nuclear weapon program.)

16. TMG Engineering (Conventional weapons.)

17. XYY Options, Inc (Nuclear weapon program.)

USSR/Russia >

1. Soviet State Missile Co. (Rocket program.)

2. Niikhism (Rocket program.)

3. Mars Rotor (Rocket program.)

4. Livinvest (Rocket program.)

5. Russia Aviatin Trading House (Conventional weapons.)

6. Amsar Trading (Conventional weapons.)

Japan >

1. Fanuc (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Hammamatsu Photonics KK (Nuclear weapon program.)

3. NEC (Nuclear weapon program.)

4. Osaka (Nuclear weapon program.)

5. Waida (Nuclear weapon program.)

The Netherlands >

1. Melchemie B.V. (Chemical weapon program.)

2. . KBS Holland B.V. (Chemical weapon program.)

3. Delft Instruments N.V. (Conventional weapons.)



Belgium >

1. Boehler Edelstahl (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. NU Kraft Mercantile Corporation (Chemical weapon program.)

3. OIP Instrubel (Conventional weapons.)

4. Phillips Petroleum (Chemical weapon program.)

5. Poudries Réunies Belge SA (Rocket program.)

6. Sebatra (Nuclear weapon program.)

7. Space Research Corp. (Rocket program.)

Spain >



1. Donabat (Rocket program.)

2. Treblam (Chemical weapon program.)

3. Zayer (Nuclear weapon program.)

Sweden >

1. ABB (Nuclear weapon program.)

2. Saab-Scania (Rocket program.)



Nuclear weapon program. = 42

Biological weapon program. = 5

Chemical weapon program. = 12

Rocket program. = 28

Conventional weapons. = 21

Source: Die Tageszeitung, No. 6934, 19 Dec 2002, page 3. See the original in German.

IMPORTANT NOTE: BY LEGAL REASONS, the 80 German companies named in the dossier were not included in this list.



PLUS.

How £1bn was lost when Thatcher propped up Saddam

David Leigh and Rob Evans

Friday February 28, 2003

The Guardian

For more than a decade, yellowing paper files in a government store have hidden the story of the way £1bn of Whitehall money was thrown away in propping up Saddam Hussein's regime and doing favours for arms firms.

It took place when many in both the British and US administrations were covertly on President Saddam's side. But as yet another war against the Iraqi dictator looms, what may be the final skeleton in Britain's arms-to-Iraq cupboard has been uncovered.

Some information about the Thatcher government's duplicitous record in selling to Iraq emerged in the mammoth Scott inquiry of 1996. The judge found that although Conservative ministers had restricted major "sharp" arms sales to President Saddam, they had also connived at ways round Britain's supposed neutrality.

During Baghdad's prolonged and bloody invasion of Iran in the 1980s, the inquiry discovered, officials shredded documents after deliberately smuggling Chieftain tank hulls made by the then royal ordnance factories to Iraq via Jordan.

Ministers secretly "relaxed" official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools to build munitions factories. The judge discovered they had also abused lines of credit meant for civil development trade deals in Iraq, to include military sales.

But the identity of most of the firms was not published, and the amounts of insurance money they subsequently collected from the taxpayer remained a secret.

Now, the Export Credits Guarantee Department - an agency of the Department of Trade and Industry - has been reformed. It publishes lists of most of the firms who benefit from taxpayer-funded export insurance. And it has agreed to release to the Guardian details of the money lost by Mrs Thatcher's policies.

In the 80s the ECGD's "bold strategy" - as it was described in Whitehall files - of guaranteeing loans to the bankrupt Iraqi dictator was imposed on it by Mrs Thatcher herself, her foreign secretary Douglas Hurd and her trade and industry secretary Nicholas Ridley.



NOTE >JONATHAN MOYLE, on March 31st 1990, there was Jonathan Moyle, the editor of the magazine Defence Helicopter World. He was in in Chile investigating a story that a Chilean firm, Industrias Cardoen, planned to convert US civilian helicopters into gunships for sale to Iraq. It has been long rumoured that Mark Thatcher the son of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was involved in secret arms deals with Chile. Details of some of these allegations are contained in the Profits of War: Inside the Secret US-Israeli Arms Network by the former MOSSAD agent Ari Ben-Manashe (Sheridan Square Press, New York, 1992).At first, Moyle's family were told that he had died whilst masturbating and hanging inside a cupboard -smaller than he was - in a hotel room in Chile. He was found hanging by his shirt with a pillow case over his head. Nuclear weapon program. needle mark on his leg suggested he had been sedated according to a report in The Guardian on February 28th 1998. Nuclear weapon program. chambermaid claimed she saw blood on the bed, but the Chilean police said it was suicide. The British foreign office later claimed he had killed himself in some sort of "bizarre sex game" that went wrong. It later apologised to the family for spreading this allegation. In February 1998, a inquest in Exmouth, Devon concluded that he had been "unlawfully killed" by "person or persons unknown"< END NOTE

They in turn were strenuously lobbied by officials from Whitehall's arms sales department - the defence export sales organisation - who had close links with arms firms.

The Iraq guarantees were too risky to be a genuine commercial proposition. They were made under section two - a special ECGD provision allegedly in the "national interest".

The guarantees were supposed to cover only civil projects. But one firm Racal, which under the chairmanship of Sir Ernie Harrison regularly donated £75,000 a year to the Tories, was then provided with a secret "defence allocation" of £42m of special ECGD insurance, after getting a contract with Iraq in 1985.

ECGD documents show civil servants protested that a single company was getting virtually all the benefit from this secret allocation. But they were overruled.

Racal shipped sophisticated Jaguar V radios to President Saddam's army on credit. Frequency-hopping enabled them to defeat enemy jamming on the battlefield.

Racal was building a factory in Iraq when the Gulf war broke out. Subsequently, the ECGD had to write Racal's bankers an insurance cheque for £15.7m.

The Washington thinktank CSIS reported in 1998 that Iraq now possessed a factory making frequency-hopping radios at Sala-al-Din and al-Dawr, at its Sa'ad-13 complex.

In 1987 Marconi Command & Control got a bank loan of £10m, backed by a taxpayer guarantee to sell Amets - the Artillery Meteorological System - to the Iraqi army. Crucial for accurate artillery fire, Amets uses weather balloons linked to radar to measure wind speeds

But ECGD's secret "defence allocation" had been used up by then on Racal. So Ministry of Defence officials got the contract reclassified as civil. This murky deal led ECGD officials to protest privately that they had been misled by the MoD.

The ECGD ended up writing a cheque for £8.2m when Marconi failed to get its money.

Another contract in 1988 was also subject to manoeuvring. Tripod Engineering, backed by John Laing International, succeeded in getting its £18m deal classed as civil, even though it was for a fighter pilot training complex for the Iraqi air force. Tripod got assistance in its negotiations from an air vice-marshal, who shortly after retirement was paid by Tripod as a consultant, without seeking consent from the MoD as rules required. The Scott report found that his behaviour was "however unintentionally ... apt to give rise to ... suspicion".

The government ended up paying £2.9m compensation for the Tripod deal.

In the same year, Thorn-EMI got ECGD insurance for a contract to ship further supplies of Cymbeline mortar-locating radar to the Iraqi army and to train Iraqi officers. ECGD had to pay out almost £1m in compensation on the deal.

Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to President Saddam even after he executed an Observer journalist, Farzad Bazoft, in 1990, minuting privately that they did not want to damage British industry.

The firms who benefited from this tender concern have since cashed in their chips. The Midland Bank has been sold to the Hong Kong bank HSBC and Morgan Grenfell to the German Deutsche Bank. Racal and Thorn-EMI have both been sold to the French firm Thales, and Marconi sold to the giant BAE Systems.

Even if Britain now obtains reparations for President Saddam's £1bn loan defaults after a successful US-UK invasion, it will go nowhere near meeting the cost of the war to Britain. This has been estimated at £3bn-£5bn, depending on how much occupying and administering Britain has to do.

I said a quote, with references. Still pushing your crap, I see.

Still nothing supporting Pol Pot.

Fucking liar. Reference this, you lying asshole.

Yeah. Uh huh.

You just keep lighting candles in front of your St. Noam altar.

Meanwhile, I'll keep laughing at you.

Say, did you take obscenity lessons from Chicken Boy? He uses foul language when he's out of ideas, too.

It's "Chomsky".

Get it right, or you'll be excommunicated.

nonanarchist

You deserve profanity. Enjoy your dinner.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

....whadda spineless cunt.....

"

C'mon kpc...that's the best you can do?

Here' I've graced you and your klan with a trouncing so thorough that this thread has turned into gibberish and all you can come back with is this?

Seriously..do you really have any idea about what we're all supposedly talking about? And are you honestly older than 14 or 15?

...scorn and ridicule.

Don't even make the mistake of thinking you don't.

Silly me! You DON'T think!

That's why you like Gnome Chumpsky...he pats you on your little head and tells you not to worry, Uncle Gnomey will make it all better, he'll keep Big Bad Amerikkka away.

Caducada, what you basically said was "I'd grind you into the ground but I can't"

...you are one fucked up delusional bitch....but, hey...thanks for the laughs. Now get out there and lick some boots!

Kpc...read the post again.

Actually, nevermind...you'll just fuck it up again.

Let me dumb it down for you.

The last point (no.4 read it again) was so ridiculous that one can't even begin to argue it. Obviously, having soundly refuted the first three points, there was no doubt that point four would be any different but alas, it was actually too assinine to even consider.

Much like trying to argue with someone who believes that the earth is flat or that the moon landings were phony.

Now do you understand child?

Ohhhh....so what you really meant was; "I'd grind you into the ground but I can't, but I'll just pretend I did"



....thanks for clarifying...your delusional state that is....

Chicken Boy is stuck in his own parallel universe.

Oddly enough, he's known as "Chicken Boy" there, too.

Poor slob can't even get a break in his own made-up reality.