Why still bring this up?

There is a story on Common Dream from Inter Press Service: Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defense.

Pelletiere says the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report following the Halabja gassing, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need- to-know basis. ”That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas,” he wrote in The New York Times.

There have been flat contradictions to his assertions.

From The New Yorker in March 2003, however, is an interesting quote:

Attempts by Congress in 1988 to impose sanctions on Iraq were stifled by the Reagan and Bush Administrations…

Why is that? Could it be (back to the Inter Press article):

Soon after the attack, the United States approved the export to Iraq of virus cultures and a billion-dollar contract to design and build a petrochemical plant the Iraqis planned to use to produce mustard gas.

For a list with some detail, visit Politrix.

And as for the UK, well:

The inquiry revealed details of the British government’s secret decision to supply Saddam with even more weapons-related equipment after the Halabja killings.

Former British foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe was found to have written that the end of the Iraq-Iran war could mean ”major opportunities for British industry” in military exports, but he wanted to keep that proposal quiet.

What a time warp we’re travelling here, eh. I still find it hard to be sympathetic to a government’s assertions that a dictator they helped to arm and supply with weapons capabilities had magically become, Good Golly, dangerous.

Remember this? Bush made a statement in September 7, 2002, asserting:

I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied — finally denied access, a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.

I’m sure the people would like to see this evidence now, please. Especially since they’ve had more than a year to find it.

• 6 Jul 2004