Former Klansman vs. Rumsfeld

Sean Hannity mocked West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd as a "former Klansman" for grilling Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about shipments of biological agents to Iraq during the 1980s. Despite his youthful membership in the Klan, Byrd served as Democratic Senate Leader. But the Senator’s point about those shipments to Iraq is backed up by the evidence.

Rumsfeld responded, "I have never heard anything like what you've read, I have no knowledge of it whatsoever, and I doubt it." Later, he said, "Senator, I think it would be a shame to leave this committee and the people listening with the impression that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe that's the case." Part of that exchange was publicized by columnist Robert Novak, who said it appears that Rumsfeld "has not read the sole surviving copy of a May 25, 1994, Senate Banking Committee report." It said that in 1985, five years after the Iraq-Iran war started, and in the succeeding years, disease producing, poisonous and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq.

The reference to "sole surviving copy" must have been a joke because other copies exist. The Buffalo News found one, and noted that the biological cultures sent to Iraq included West Nile Virus, E. coli, anthrax and botulism. The Senate Banking Committee was then headed by Democratic Senator Donald Riegle. However, ranking Republican member Alfonse D’Amato endorsed the report.

As the Buffalo News reported, "The committee was trying to establish that thousands of service personnel were harmed by exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons during the Gulf War, particularly following a U.S. air attack on a munitions dump - a theory that the Defense Department and much of official Washington have always downplayed." A total of over 170,000 Gulf War veterans claim to be sick, or disabled, as a result of this service. That’s about one-third of all those who served.

The reference to West Nile Virus is significant in view of the fact that Senator Patrick J. Leahy has urged an investigation of whether the spread of the West Nile virus in this country is a result of biological terrorism. There have been reports that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been working with the virus as part of his bioweapons arsenal. Before 1999, the virus had never been recorded in this hemisphere. John Hughes, editor of the Deseret News, wrote an article suggesting that Iraq, with help from Castro’s Cuba, may have developed West Nile Virus as a weapon.

Senator Leahy is one of those targeted by a letter laced with anthrax, and some reports suggest that the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick was the original source of it. Senator Tom Daschle accepts that theory. But the Senate Report reveals that one shipment of anthrax provided to Iraq carried a reference to Ft. Detrick on it. That’s important because some people have said that that if the anthrax came from Ft. Detrick it could not have come from Iraq. Perhaps it came from both.

"Despite his youthful membership in the Klan, Byrd served as Democratic Senate Leader. "

Uh Huh, "youthful".

----------- (from http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbyrd.htm )--------

Robert Byrd was born in North Wilksboro on 20th November, 1917. His mother died the following year and he was brought up by his aunt and uncle in West Virginia. After attending local public schools he worked in a gas filling station, meat cutter and as a salesman. On the outbreak of the Second World War Byrd found work as a welder building ships in the construction yards of Baltimore and Maryland.

A strong opponent of African American civil rights Byrd was an advocate of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1946 Byrd announced that: "The Ku Klux Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth in West Virginia".

A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd became a member of the West Virginia senate in 1951. He was first elected to the Congress in 1958 and was re-elected in 1964, 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994 and 2000. After a period as a Democratic whip (1971-1977) Byrd was Majority Leader (1977-80 and 1987-88) and Minority Leader (1981-86) of the Senate.

Byrd was also chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee (1989 to 2001) and in 1989 was elected President of the Senate.

----------------------

You may be a liberal if you think Liberal Senator Robert Byrd was too "youthful" to know what he was doing as a Klan Wizard at 29, but a teenage girl is perfectly capable of making a decision on her own to have an abortion.

HighWheeler

Senate Banking Committee report... said that in 1985, five years after the Iraq-Iran war started, and in the succeeding years, disease producing, poisonous and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq.

A better researched article said the CDC provided medical samples of these diseases for medical research (diagnostics, physician training, etc.). There were no weapons grade materials provided, no manuals on how to create biological weapons, nor was US support provided to create weapons. If Dashole believes the report, then we can be certian that the information is flawed.

"A better researched article said the CDC provided medical samples of these diseases for medical research (diagnostics, physician training, etc.). There were no weapons grade materials provided, no manuals on how to create biological weapons, nor was US support provided to create weapons."

Providing cultures of anthrax for veterinary research is as far from biowarfare material as shipping scrap iron to the Japanese was from the Yamato.

To see Byrd and the Democrats attempt to make a political issue of this reveals their sordid partisanship.

Here's related stuff I came across that deals with Rumsfeld. I can't account for it, but here it is:

The AGWVA also found it very disturbing to learn that on December 19, 1983, the Middle Eastern envoy who carried a handwritten note from President Reagan to Saddam Hussein, to “resume our diplomatic relations with Iraq” was none other than our present Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

According to “U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships with Iraq”, 1980-August 2, 2000, (www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html), Nathaniel Hurd states:

“Iraq reportedly began using chemical weapons (CW) against Iranian troops in 1982, and significantly increased CW use in 1983… Shortly after removing Iraq from the terrorism sponsorship list, the Reagan administration approved the sale of 60 Hughes helicopters. Analysts recognized that “civilian” helicopters can be weaponized in a matter of hours and selling a civilian kit can be a way of giving military aid under the guise of civilian assistance.”

Mark Phythian, in his book Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine” (Northeastern University Press, 1997) stated:

“ …the Secretaries of Commerce and State (George Baldridge and George Shultz) lobbied the NSC (National Security Council) advisor into agreeing to the sale to Iraq of 10 Bell helicopters, officially for crop spraying. It is believed that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical attack on the Kurdish village Halabja, which killed 5000 people.”

In his own book Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State, George Shultz refers to a declassified CIA report which notes Iraq’s use of mustard gas in August 1983, giving further credence to the suggestion that the State Department and/or the National Security Council (NSC) was well aware of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons at this time. If the use of chemical weapons was known in August of 1983, and Donald Rumsfeld went to Iraq in December of 1983, he was on notice that this country was using and was going to continue to use weapons of mass destruction. Why, then, did the United States move to de-list Iraq from those considered to be terrorist nations?

On March 23, 1984, Iran accused Iraq of poisoning 600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve gas. Donald Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad on March 24, 1984. On that same day, the UPI wire service reported that a team of UN experts had concluded that:

“Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld held talks with foreign minister Tariq Aziz.”

From here: http://www.gulfwarvets.com/news11.htm

"Almost anything is probably better researched than a Reed Irvine report..."

Mine didn't refer to a Reed Irvine report.

Rumsfeld notwithstanding, there has never been any question that suppliers like American Culture Depository, under contract from the CDC, shipped anthrax cultures (among others) to Iraq in the eighties.

However, this was the kind of exchange conducted routinely with agricultural colleges and public health authorities in scores of nations.

Anybody that asserts "the U.S. provided Iraq with bioweapons" fails to recognize that a research sample is far removed from a production-run of weaponized spores. It is akin to claiming that "the U.S. provided Japan with the bombs they dropped on Pearl Harbor", simply because we sold the Japanese scrap iron.

Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on Iranian soldiers

It's widely believed that Iraq used CHEMICAL weapons. The article that you posted implies that the US supplied Iraq with the means and know-how to make BIOLOGICAL weapons. This is totally misleading and false.

The article does not seem to allege that the US helped Iraq with their creation of chemical weapons (only that US made choppers may have been used to deliver chemicals on the Kurds). Let's try not to confuse biological and chemical weapons, and let's also not confuse air transportation with arming Iraq with WMDs.

Mine didn't refer to a Reed Irvine report.

...Anybody that asserts "the U.S. provided Iraq with bioweapons" fails to recognize that a research sample is far removed from a production-run of weaponized spores. It is akin to claiming that "the U.S. provided Japan with the bombs they dropped on Pearl Harbor", simply because we sold the Japanese scrap iron.

I do understand and thank you for your sources. My point was validated when a small group of folks on this board debunked the point of Irvine's column in less than an hour.

Irvine put forward an equally incomplete and wrong facing article a few months back on BioPort, the DOD's Anthrax vaccine source. Besides simple info available from BioPort's website, many factual articles appeared in my local paper, the Lansing State Journal. He didn't bother to use any sources except the one questioning why Adm. Crowe, who supported Clinton after he retired from the JCS, had a stake in the sole supplier which benefited from the increased orders from the Clinton DOD. Plenty of sources exist describing the public bidding process by the State of Michigan for the labs. Other articles point out the heavy political battle over selling the labs, so acute it scared off all the major drug companies. Irvine ignored all of this quickly found material to come to an incomplete and error filled idea about Crowe's group that bought the Labs.

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