Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., posed this question to the Senate on Thursday, based on documents obtained from different federal agencies.
"We have a paper trail," Byrd said. "We not only know that Iraq has biological weapons, we know the type, the strain, and the batch number of the germs that may have been used to fashion those weapons. We know the dates they were shipped and the addresses to which they were shipped."
"We have in our hands the equivalent of a Betty Crocker cookbook of ingredients that the U.S. allowed Iraq to obtain and that may well have been used to concoct biological weapons."
Those shipments included:
Between 1985 and 1988, the nonprofit American Type Culture Collection made 11 shipments to Iraq that included a "witches' brew of pathogens," including anthrax, botulinum toxin and gangrene. All shipments were government-approved.
Between January 1980 and October 1993, the federal Centers for Disease Control shipped a variety of toxic specimens to Iraq, including West Nile virus and Dengue fever.
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"At last week's Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld said he had no knowledge of any such shipments and doubted that they ever occurred. He seemed to be affronted at the very idea that the United States would ever countenance entering into such a deal with the devil.
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In its Sept. 23 edition, Newsweek magazine published an article discussing the viruses, poisons and gases that the U.S. sent to Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s. At that time, the U.S. regarded Iraq as a potential ally gainst Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni.
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"I repeat today what I said to him then," Byrd said. "In the event of a war with Iraq, might the United States be facing the possibility of reaping what it has sown?"
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Federal documents and a United Nations Security Council report document a direct connection between periods when Iraq received toxins and viruses from the U.S. and the periods when Iraq developed biological weapons.
Byrd closed his speech by asking what the future holds.
"The role that the U.S. may have played in helping Iraq to pursue biological warfare in the 1980s should serve as a strong warning to the president that policy decisions regarding Iraq today could have far reaching ramifications on the Middle East and on the United States in the future.
"In the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeni was America's sworn enemy, and the U.S. government courted Saddam Hussein in an effort to undermine the Ayatollah and Iran. Today, Saddam Hussein is America's biggest enemy, and the U.S. is said to be making overtures to Iran."
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"Could the U.S. be laying the groundwork for a brutal civil war in Iraq? Could this proposed policy change precipitate a deadly border conflict between the Kurds and Turkey?" Byrd asked.
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