Report: US Authorized Sales of Anthrax, Poisonous Chemicals to Iraq in the 1980's

Jerusalem Post Staff - The Jerusalem Post - December 30, 2002

J4JP Prefacing Note:

This is the kind of information that Jonathan Pollard tried desperately to get released to Israel through legal channels, as the US was committed to do. When he failed to have the information legally released, in fear for the Israeli lives that might be lost, Pollard himself warned Israel of Iraq's build up of unconventional weapons of war for use against Israel. Based on Pollard's warnings, Israel revamped its entire civil defense program and instituted the use of sealed rooms, gas masks and atropine injections. Now, in his 18th year of incarceration, Jonathan Pollard's warnings about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his bloodthirsty regime are coming to public light. On the brink of war in 2002, both Israel and the US today face an existential threat from Iraq, which the US was directly involved in creating.

Jerusalem Post - December 30, 2002

The Washington Post reports today that during the 1980s the US administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. [The full Washington Post article is on the US - Iraq Complicity Page.]

The supply of such deadly items came during a time when the US was supporting Iraq's protracted war against Iran, the newspaper writes. It bases the information on a review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers.

"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq, tells the newspaper. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."