If three senators questioning the veracity of statements made by our president in the capital of a nation we stand on the brink of war with can raise howls of protest, what then would one call providing this same regime the raw materials necessary to produce the very weapons we claim they threaten America with to begin with? High treason.

Yet this is exactly what our government engaged in from 1980 to 1989, when in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War (in which Iraq aggressively attacked Iran), the United States approved literally hundreds of dual-use exports to Iraq which could be easily used in the creation of both chemical and nuclear weapons. According to the 1992 Senate Report, “United States Export Policy Toward Iraq prior to Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait,” From 1985 to the 1991 invasion of Kuwait alone the Commerce Department authorized at least 220 export licenses to “Iraqi military forces, weapons complexes, and enterprises identified by the Central Intelligence Agency as diverting technology to weapons programs.” Even more shocking than this is the fact that the government also authorized the sale of numerous biological materials in undiluted form to Iraq which later became Iraq’s clandestine biological weapons program.

In fact, according to the 1994 Senate Report, “U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War” (also known as the Riegle Report), “From 1985, if not earlier, a veritable witch’s brew of biological materials were exported to Iraq by private American suppliers pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Amongst these materials, which often produce slow, agonizing deaths, were: Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.” The report also listed a source of botulinum toxin, Histoplasma Capsulatam, Burcella Melitensis, Clotsridium Perfringens, and Clostridium tetani.

“Also, Escherichia coli (E. coli); genetic materials; human and bacterial DNA. Dozens of other pathogenic biological agents were shipped to Iraq during the 1980s.” Later on in this report, it was also noted that ” … The same microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program.” It was also noted that “these biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction.”

Perhaps even more unsettling were the nature of dual-use exports sent to Iraq, many of them later recovered in Iraqi nuclear weapons establishments, which according to the 1992 report included “precision scientific instruments, electron-beam welders to make uranium enrichment centrifuges, high-precision machine tools to make bomb cores, sophisticated numerical controllers and high-power computers, neutron initiators and high-speed switches for nuclear detonation, vacuum pumps for centrifuge and calutron enrichment units, and rare lubricants to make the centrifuges work.” More shocking is the Commerce Department’s approval of a purchase of an IRIS Super 380 computer for Iraq, classified as “a respectable supercomputer which would have been denied for export to China or the Soviet Union.”

Yet the State Department was well aware of the implications of all of these exports, noting in a 1990 memo, “an initial review of 73 cases in which licenses were granted by the Department of Commerce (DOC) or DOC/DOD from 1986 to 1989 shows that licenses were granted for equipment with dual or not clearly stated uses for export to probably proliferation-related end-uses in Iraq.”

Noted Rep. Henry B. Gonzales during the 1992 Senate hearings, “U.N. inspectors have identified dozens of U.S. firms, some who have received U.S. export licenses, that supplied Iraq with equipment used in missile programs and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.”

Indeed, about the only thing the government didn’t do for Iraq at this time was actually build the weapons themselves.

Rep. Gonzales went on further to point out, “Whether this policy was pursued as a result of incompetence of complete complicity, one thing is clear: There is overwhelming evidence to show that the policy enhanced Iraq’s military capability.” The 1994 report concurs with this finding, observing, “This myopic approach to the non-proliferation of these materials and technologies to the Soviet Union ultimately resulted in the acquisition of unconventional weapons and missile-system technologies by several ‘pariah nations’ with aggressive military agendas.”

Naturally, former Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (in true neo-conservative fashion) calls the allegations, “a vicious lie spun by liberals.” Keep in mind, of course, this man was convicted of perjury and later pardoned by Bush the Elder. If anything, Mr. Weinberger, along with his counterparts in the Department of Commerce, should be brought back before the Senate as we now must debate going to war with a regime that we knowingly supplied with the weapons they now threaten us with and perhaps even be put on trial for endangering America through what appears to be either a gross malfeasance of duty or outright treason.

If Mr. Bush wishes to call attention to the humanitarian disaster that is Iraq, perhaps then he should consider first going after the culprits who enabled a regime that had already proved itself to be a ruthless and aggressive dictatorship to add even more dangerous weapons to its growing arsenal, culprits within our own government who authorized the transfer of the very agents that allowed the humanitarian crisis to play out in the first place.

After all, if we’re going after the threats to our nation’s security, perhaps the greatest threat of all comes from officials within our own government exercising a short-sighted foreign policy of supporting despots and bloodthirsty tyrants, only to have those same madmen turn against us. Just remember — Saddam was one of those people.

Steve Skutnik

is a graduate student in nuclear physics from Ames.