Ochi reason number one...

[Occhidiangela]

1. Hearing on Gulf War syndrome. Rep Pauls questions were, of course loaded, but some of them were, for Sept 2002, very timely. Glad he asked them if others had not the guts, they needed asking, even if some were based on flawed premises. He, failed to do a very thorough analysis, IMO, as politicians will do now and again. Comes with the badge, and the spin.

2. Department of Commerce regulated export licenses for sales of products with possible dual-use. That is the issue, not FMS sales of weapons, and not sales of chem or bio weapons.

Nice try on the use of 'gray area.'

Back in 1992, the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, which is the Committee which has Senate oversight for the Export Administration Act, held an inquiry into the United States export policy to Iraq prior to the Persian Gulf War. During that hearing it was learned that U.N. inspectors had identified many United States-manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and missile delivery system development programs.

This is an interesting bit, and I can only guess as to the various international commerce and balance of trade discussions that accompanied the licenses that Commerce issued, and the risk that the dual use materials might possibly be put to.

Do you stop selling gasoline to people in the fear that they will make Molotov cocktails and toss them at you, rather than put it into their cars? Depends on the customer, I suppose.

I will point out to you that pre August 2 1990, US still conducted commerce with Iraq, and that the chem and bio ARMS, as I stated, were not sold to Iraq, nor was Sarin gas sold to Iraq, nor was such stuff as Anthrax.

If you understand how chem weapons are made, you will understand that materials for such stuff as pesticide and fertilizer, legit agricultural products, can also, if processed in a certain manner, be made into other chemicals. That is what is meant by 'dual-use.' Read carefully what Under Secretary Dorn said.

'Materials that could contribute to' . . . got it?

Point: After the OKC bombing, and the large fertilizer and diesel bomb went off, some people were trying to regulate the sale of #$%&: that's right, regulating the sale of manure in one of the greatest agricultural countries in the world since some one 'could' make a bomb out of it. I am told that in Texas, now, if you buy more that a few hundred pounds of fertilizer now, your name is put on a list. Not sure if that is true.

Once again, the US did not sell or provide chemical weapons to Iraq, which is the BS charge that is being made, by both Grumpy and now your and by others who don't bother with facts and who know less than dirt about FMS cases. My statement on that stands, and your link, while great background, does nothing to challenge that. Thanks for it anyway, as it also showed that our Congress, with the Gulf War Syndrome as a catalyst, took steps to take even more stringent measures. Good for them. :)

So, once again, Iraq made the chem and bio materials, and others made the weapons that fired them. The U.S. did not. Case closed.

That materials that had possible dual-use were sold is a charge that can be laid at every country that traded with Iraq, to include the U.S. and as I read the testimony, a subsequent piece of legislation went into effect to stop even that. Export Controls Act. That strikes me as sound policy, one followed up by both Pres Clinton and Pres Bush via continued UN Sec Council Resolution support.

From Sec Def:

Now let me turn to the Defense Department's role in the export licensing process.  First, it should be noted that DoD is not a licensing agency. That responsibility falls on the Department of Commerce for dual-use items. The Department of Defense, however, reviews and provides recommendations on export license applications when they're referred to Defense, or to inter-agency groups in which Defense participates.  Records on the ultimate disposition of dual-use biological, chemical, nuclear, or missile technology-related licenses reside in the Commerce Department.

A bit later:

The Department has taken, and will continue to take, its responsibility here very seriously. For example, DoD made an important contribution in halting export of the Argentine Condor Program that was aiding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. And we spearheaded the effort to prevent Iraq from acquiring a more capable missile than the SCUD.

Defense also played a leading role in developing the President's Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative and most recently, the Comprehensive DoD Counterproliferation Initiative. The Department of Defense continues to consider proliferation as a significant military threat.  The growing ability to produce and use chemical weapons is a great concern to DoD. We fully support any measures that will prevent or control this proliferation, which includes strengthening the Export Administration Act.

It is important to remember that all exports made to Iraq in the 1980's were completely consistent with the laws in effect at that time, and Iraq was not considered a hostile country. Defense's role in reviewing exports was greatly expanded in 1991, and would be further expanded through measures you were considering in this Committee.

Now, weapons and arms: Check the artillery pieces and shells sold to Iraq, the tools to pump gas into the shells. The Weapons. Made where? Russia.

Do you understand the difference between selling arms, and manufacturing arms from materials sold? Such as, the scrap iron sold to Japan before WW II, some of which was most likely returned to us in bomb and torpedo form at Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Wake, and Corregidor? We did not sell the Japanese the weapons, we sold them the iron. They built the weapons themselves. They could have built container ships instead, or rice harvesters.

Which is the entire point of the UN sanctions in re Iraq. Given a choice not to, Saddam made the crap anyway. We did not sell him the arms, or the bio and chem agents. He made that stuff himself, even when he had agreed, under 1991 cease fire, not to.

And as for you nice Europeans. :)

The Iraqi program was developed gradually over the course of the 1980's. By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, it had become deeply entrenched, flexible, and well-orchestrated. Project managers for the weapons of mass destruction programs went directly to vetted European suppliers for the majority of their needs. Throughout the 1980's, German companies headed the list of preferred suppliers for machinery, technology, and chemical precursors. German construction companies usually won the contracts to build the CW facilities in Iraq. And Iraqi procurement agents were sophisticated in exploiting inconsistencies in local export control laws by targeting countries for substances and technologies that were not locally controlled.

In the pre-war years, the dual-use nature of many of these facilities made it easier for Iraq to claim that chemical precursors, for example, were intended for agricultural industries. European firms, arguing that the facilities in Iraq were for the production of insecticides, built the Samarra chemical plant, including six separate chemical weapons manufacturing lines, between 1983 0986.

European middlemen broke red chemical precursor deals for Iraq under the pretext that the materials were intended for pesticide plants. A Dutch firm purchased supplies from major chemical firms around the world, supplying the Chemical Importation and Distribution State Enterprise in Baghdad in the late 1970's, and in the 1980's supplying the Iraqi State Establishment for Pesticide Production -- cover names for the CW program. The middleman supplied dual-use chemical precursors including monochlorobenzene, ethyl alcohol, and thiodiglycol. When the Iraqis requested phosphorus oxychloride -- a nerve agent precursor banned for export under Dutch law without explicit permission -- the supplier balked and drew this request to the attention of Dutch authorities. Subsequent Dutch investigations found that two other Dutch firms were involved in brokering purchases of chemical precursors.

Iraq exploited businessmen and consortia willing to violate the export laws of their own countries. As has been indicated in press and television reports, The Consen Group -- a consortium of European missile engineers and businessmen established a network of front companies to cover its role as project director of an Argentine-Egyptian-Iraqi sponsored Condor II ballistic missile program.

Iraqi procurement officers, knowing full well the licensing thresholds, requested items that fell just under the denial thresholds -- but nonetheless would suffice. Prior to Desert Storm, U.S. regulations on the export of these technologies were drafted to meet U.S. technical specifications and standards. Technologies of a lower standard worked just as well, and permitted Iraq to obtain the goods and technology consistent with Commerce Department regulations.

Let me turn to the question of the involvement of U.S. firms in Iraq's proliferation programs. We were watching these programs very carefully, and it was clear that the major players assisting Saddam's effort were not American firms -- they were principally European. We saw little involvement of U.S. firms in Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

In discussing this issue, we should remember that, by law, the CIA, as a foreign intelligence agency, does not focus on U.S. persons, to include U.S. companies. By this definition, companies founded by foreign nationals and incorporated in the U.S. are treated as U.S. companies.

This is not to say that we did not occasionally come across information on a U.S. person that was collected incidentally to our foreign intelligence target overseas -- we did. But, when we did, and when there was a possibility of a violation of U.S. law, we were obligated to turn our information over to the Justice Department.

We provided what we called ``alert memos'' to the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Treasury, and to the FBI. These memos resulted whenever this incidentally-collected information indicated that U.S. firms had been targeted by foreign governments of concern, or were involved in possible violations of U.S. law. Between 1984 and 1990, CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research provided five memos covering Iraqi dealings with U.S. firms on purchases, discussions, or visits that appeared to be related to weapons of mass destruction programs.

Turning now to export controls, the Intelligence Community was asked by the Department of Commerce during the 1980's to review export license applications primarily when the licenses had significance to Intelligence Collection equities. And here the concern was not so much Iraq, but whether there was a possibility the equipment would be diverted to the Soviet Union or other Communist countries.

Prior to 1991, there were four instances in which the Department of Commerce sought information on Iraqi export license applications -- all dated in 1986. These applications involved computer technologies and image processors. For some of these, we reported no derogatory information on the end user. In one case, we referred Commerce to a classified intelligence report.

After evidence mounted in the mid-1980's about the use of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States began to put into effect unilateral controls on exports of chemical precursors to Iraq and other countries suspected of having chemical warfare programs. The U.S. and several other industrialized nations joined what is called the Australia Group to establish more uniform licensing controls for the export of several chemical weapons precursors. Since then, more nations have been brought into the Australia Group, and recently, controls have been added for chemical equipment, certain pathogens, and biological equipment.

Since the Gulf War, U.S. export controls on CW/BW have been considerably strengthened. Enforcement mechanisms involving several Federal agencies have been put into place. The scope of the regulations has also been broadened considerably. In 1991, export controls were tightened to require validated licenses for all dual-use equipment being exported to end users of proliferation concern. Intelligence information is often the basis for this determination. This catch-all provision has served as a model for other countries interested in joining the U.S. Government's non-proliferation efforts.

So, for those who want to point the finger at Washington, how about this:

When it was found that Saddam had put dual use technology to illicit use, the US took actions, and after 1991 Iraq War, suported the sanctions that were aimed at disbanding and stop that illicit use, CONSISTENT with the US POLICY of NON PROLIFERATION.

I consider that a responsible bit of non-prolieration, to find an error, and take steps to correct it. What galls me is that some European governments were not willing to correct the errors that they had contributed to.

Thanks again, ergates, for helping me make my point. :)