Dupont? Creator of the stain master carpet? They only make chemical weapons????

Yes, I found the washington post source that your original source quotes extensively without citation. That washington post source is also, curiously, without much citation. Here's a really good one, read this report:

cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol08/81/81ali.pdf


The washington post article, btw, talks about insecticides and then draws this sinister conclusion from it.

 

...I didn't say DuPont made only chemical weapons...and if you knew enough Organic Chemistry, you'd know that your precious StainMaster is chemical more than anything else. DuPont is very dedicated to chemicals of all kinds...Nylon, Rayon, Napalm, Kevlar, Mylar...Agent Orange (and all the other color-coded defoliants of the VietNam era), various gasses that work on the central nervous system...etc.

The insecticide thing...I read that as the Iraqi using a metaphore. Any 'insects' (insert invading force here) that invaded Iraq would be killed using 'insecticide' (insert chemical warfare agent here). And the quote I threw out there from that article is this: "The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague." _WashPost
Is the plague an insecticide? Anthrax isn't, it's a pathogen not a chemical designed to kill bugs...why can't you just accept that BushSr was bedbuddies with Saddam? It's not a conspiracy...unless you're talking about the fact that this has been swept under the rug during our most recent Iraq war...that could be considered a conspiracy.

 

Here's a nice photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983. We supplied Iraq with arms becasue we wanted him to win the fight with Iran, the greater of two evels, much like we trained Osama bin Laden and his goons in hopes that they would beat the USSR in Afganistan. I didn't realize people even debated that anymore.

-Chris

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

 

Requoting the same piece of unsubstantiated press doesn't make the point more true. Now, I most readily admitted that the US sold weapons to Saddam. That's in my first post, and there's no dispute there. Rumsfeld is in pictures shaking Saddam's hand. My point, and the point you have yet to prove, is that the US DID NOT sell Saddam Chemical/Biological weapons. Read the scholarly article that I posted to you. That goes into good detail about the problems Iraq had in obtaining chemical and biological weapons during the 80's.

The problem with your argument as it stands is that you get a list of companies, a "dual role" claim on the chemicals that were transferred, and then conclude a transfer of chemical weapons. There is no civillian use for mustard gas. For all we know, ATCC was selling cultures that would be used to produce anti-biotics and various other medical chemicals in Iraq. (That's one of the main uses of cultures.)

And yes, I'm aware that my stainmaster is chemical in nature. So you did know that dupont made more than chemical weapons, but you claimed that dupont selling something to Iraq was by itself sinister anyway???

I think that last fact is telling. You can see the facts for what they are, but you choose only to read them in such a way that they support some pre-conceived idea about the situation. That is despite the fact that it doesn't make any sense strategically in this case. Iraq and Iran were BOTH receiving arms from the US at this period...why would the US be selling to Iran if it was that worried about Iran winning at the time? And, why do you think the US needed to sell chemical weapons to Iraq to get the job done?

It's one thing to accuse the government of supporting an evil dictator. That it did beyond a doubt. It sent money and conventional weapons to Saddam. That does not mean that the government is retarded, and sells WMD's to nations that it considered terrorist states just a few years before the alleged sale.

 

Yes, you posted as I was typing my last response. Is there a Sarin gas canister somewhere in that picture though?

And...remember that the US was selling arms to Iran at the same time. So it was NOT just a concern of stopping Iran. Unless you think Reagan and Bush were innocent of Iran-contra dealings, of course, but I'm not betting on that. If the US was supporting Iraq solely to get Iran beaten, and was so afraid of Iranian victory that it would sell chemical weapons, why was it selling arms to Iran at the same time???

 

But MVWRX is automatically assuming that chemical weapons and other WMDs are one and the same when they aren't.

 

I'm not assuming WMDs=Chem weapons. I AM assuming that anthrax and the bubonic plague are sinister. The fact that chem weapons were used in the Iraq-Iran war is clear; thinking about the world powers at the time, and knowing that DuPont sent SOMETHING to Iraq, don't you think it's reasonable to assume they sent some chem weapons? Same line of logic for the cell culture company and bio weapons. BTW, cell cultures are used in research to identify vaccines and cures for disease, but companies that create cell cultures almost never do such research. Vaccines are almost never alive anymore, they are either attenuated or dead. So if we were to send a vaccine to a country, it would be from a company that made drugs and the like, not from a cell culture company. If you want to debate biochem with me, that's fine, but it IS what I do for a living.

 

Uh, they weren't supposed to be, that's why there was an Iran Contra scandal.

People were convicted of purgery and misleading congress, remember?

or maybe you weren't old enough to be aware of what was going on, but Bush Sr and Reagan were up to their eyeballs in criminal doings back then, supporting Saddam was the "official" policy, selling weapons to Iran was explicitly forbidden by law.

Don't forget that as Chris pointed out; Saddam was put in power by a CIA backed coup in the first place.

And that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.

Practically all of this "terrorist" stuff we're dealing with is a result of what the folks in the intelligence racket call blow-back, you mess around with people long enough and they'll mess you back.

 

An afterthought: chemical weapons are perfect to sell to two opposing countries far away from us because they are efficient killers and their effects are short range and dissipate after a short time. But I never brought up motivation in the first place...we sold the weapons (biological, chemical, and conventional) to Iraq because it made American companies money. WMD's? Probably not in the strict definition of the term...but if they could get a hold of an ICBM from an ex-USSR state and put it together with the bugs and chemicals we sold them, that would be a WMD wouldn't it.

 

Fine, then you know how antibiotics are manufactured. Tell us, how are antibiotics manufactured?

Now, why on earth is the fact that dupont is sending something to Iraq indication that it is sending chemical weapons to Iraq??? Why is that reasonable? Considering that the US had just recently considered Iraq a terrorist nation, what makes you think it would have been reasonable for the government to let Dupont send weapons along with whatever other chemicals it sent? Are most chemical transactions internationally involving weapons?

Dupont sent something. Therefore it sent chemical weapons. That's the most I'm getting from you at this point.

Now considering the issue with Iran at the time....rethink that one and get back to me.

 

Well, you're supporting my point there and this is something MVWRX is ignoring for the moment. Yes, Iran was getting arms illegaly from the US. Now, if the US was so grossly concerned with Iranian victory that it was willing to throw caution into the wind and sell Chemical weapons to Iraq, then why did it sell weapons to Iran at the same time??? Do you see the contradiction there?

The US was happy with Iraq and Iran wearing each other out. I'm sure Washington made no serious effort to stop Saddam from employing the chemical weapons that he did illegally obtain. That is not, however, proof of the US selling chemical weapons to Iraq.

Now, I'm going to brush up my history of the pan arab baathist rebellions that brought Saddam's party to power...but are you sure of what you're saying there? CIA installed Saddam, that's a big claim. You might want to justify it yourself before I get into this.

 

[QUOTE=subaruguru]..... if the US was so grossly concerned with Iranian victory that it was willing to throw caution into the wind and sell Chemical weapons to Iraq, then why did it sell weapons to Iran at the same time??? Do you see the contradiction there?
[\QUOTE]

did you even read my reply?

I said: "selling weapons to Iran was explicitly forbidden by law."

The US DID NOT legally "sell weapons to Iran at the same time" !!!!

CRIMINAL elements within the administration DID, but that is clearly not the same as the US doing it.

The US DID "legally" and above board provide Saddam Hussein with components that his regime used to build chemical weapons, as part of our outward support of his effort in fighting Iran.


As for our involvement with his coming to power;

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=...0-070214-6557r

http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/f...s98/saddam.htm

http://www.unknownnews.net/saddam.html

pretty old news for anyone whos looked into it at all......

 

Wow...ok I'll spell out the logic.
First point: why would we sell chem and bio weapons to a country we think is terrorist? WHY WOULD WE SEND MONEY AND CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS TO A COUNTRY WE THINK IS TERRORIST? Both can be used against us, so your argument on that point is fairly weak
Second Point: My logic is NOT this: DuPont (or any other co. that makes military and civilian applications) sent Iraq somthing so it must be a weapon. My logic is this: Iraq had chemical weapons. They were the same chemical weapons that DuPont had openly manufactured at the time. Iraq was getting money and conventional weapons from the US and US companies. Iraq was spending a lot of money on war, almost none on vaccinating it's own people or ridding the desert of flies. When you look at that situation as a whole, the simplest answer is that DuPont sent chemical weapons to Iraq. And the simplest explanation is almost always correct (Occam’s razor). So logically speaking, how do you get off saying DuPont definatly did NOT send chemical weapons?

 

[QUOTE=psoper]hahah, top notch sources. I'm citing those in my next history term paper. Not.

Now, as for the illegal...yes, but the SAME executive arm that made the policy on Iraq made the policy on Iran! Congress had forbidden the sale of arms to Iran. But the very sampe people who make the foreign policy were the ones selling arms to Iran and Iraq at the same time. So why, if they were really worried about Iran? That's my question.

 

Dupont makes MANY MORE CHEMICALS than just those in chemical weapons. Stop pretending that dupont only gets involved where chemical weapons happen. The stuff that's in bombs comes from dupont too. Gunpowder comes from dupont. ALL KINDS of military equipment chemical in nature that is not chemical weapons material comes from dupont. So there's no logical link there at all.

I'm still waiting on your answer for antibiotics.

The dupont answer is not the simplest one, either. The simplest answer is that Iraq developed its own chemical weapons with help from the Soviets. Now, considering that, can you explain away your earlier comment that wmd's (which chemical weapons are legally) to Iraq was done to stop the Iranians? Why were we selling arms to Iran at the same time?

Occam's razor, if you took philosophy 101, is about the most over-used, misunderstood piece of logical hardware ever invented. You owe an apology to all your humanities teachers for that one. "Simplest is most true" has absolutely zero statistical or logical validity in politics and humanities. It's virtually worthless in that context. And you also don't know what it is, but that's besides the point.

I'm hoping in this next post that you'll answer some of my challenges, instead of just repeating yourself and pretending that all evidence means what you want it to mean.