So now I've noticed . . .

[Serenades]

. . . that rightwing guys like Bill O'Reilly are starting to say the United States never helped to arm Iraq under Reagan. This is ridiculous. These guys are lying left and right about EVERYTHING. Does anyone have any links to "neutral" sources outlining this fact?

[madfloridian]

1. Share this BusinessWeek article with them. Let them refute it.

It includes the document from the CDC.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2002/nf20020920_3025.htm
SNIP..."A 1995 letter from the Centers for Disease Control lists all the biological materials sent to Saddam's scientists for 10 years
As the West Nile Virus spreads nationwide, some congressional leaders are asking whether the mosquito-borne illness could be linked to terrorism or to Iraq's bioweapons program. If so, a more troubling question may be whether Iraq's weapons efforts were unwittingly helped by U.S. scientists.

In a previously unreleased letter obtained by BusinessWeek, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention admitted that the CDC supplied Iraqi scientists with nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples in the 1980s, including the plague, West Nile, and dengue fever. The letter, written in 1995 by then-CDC director David Satcher, was in response to a congressional inquiry....."

MORE...""We were freely exchanging pathogenic materials with a country that we knew had an active biological warfare program," says James Tuite, a former Senate investigator who helped publicize Gulf War Syndrome. "The consequences should have been foreseen."

[RBHam]

2. O'Reilly is a liar...

Rumsfeld Visited Baghdad in 1984 to Reassure Iraqis,
Documents Show Trip Followed Criticism Of Chemical Arms' Use
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 19, 2003; Page A42
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13558-2003Dec18?language=printer
Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.

Rumsfeld, then President Ronald Reagan's special Middle East envoy, was urged to tell Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that the U.S. statement on chemical weapons, or CW, "was made strictly out of our strong opposition to the use of lethal and incapacitating CW, wherever it occurs," according to a cable to Rumsfeld from then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

The statement, the cable said, was not intended to imply a shift in policy, and the U.S. desire "to improve bilateral relations, at a pace of Iraq's choosing," remained "undiminished." "This message bears reinforcing during your discussions."

The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit National Security Archive, provide new, behind-the-scenes details of U.S. efforts to court Iraq as an ally even as it used chemical weapons in its war with Iran.

[DrBB]

3. And so is Rummy, obviously--thanks

...I'd missed that report. Caught out in another blatant lie, they go confidently spinning along.

Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita said yesterday that "the secretary said what he said, and I would go with that. He has a recollection of how that meeting went, and I can't imagine that some additional cable is going to change how he recalls the meeting."

Uh, gee, Larry, the issue is not what you would "go with" or whether Rummy is going to change his "recollection," but whether that "recollection" bears any relation to the truth. And the objective record says, well, nope, not hardly.

[SpiralHawk]

4. The truth is out there

But we are not going to get it from BushCo.


"I think the American people--I hope the American--I don't think, let me--I hope the American people trust me."
- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2002