The West and his weapons
Fascinating little article in today's New York Times (registration required) by Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz of the Wisconsin Project, a research group in Washington that tracks weapons of mass destruction. Called The Poisons That Came From the West, it is backed up by a graphic showing the origins of what Iraq said it imported for its chemical weapon effort. Iraq gave the data to UN inspectors in the late 1990's, and reconfirmed it in its 12,000-page declaration in December last year. However, the statistical material remained confidential until recently. Milhollin and Motz note:
"The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use."
Milhollin and Kelly Motz also add:
"The absence of American firms from this picture does not mean that none supplied Mr. Hussein's mass-destruction weapons programs. American firms show up on lists of suppliers of anthrax strains to Iraq, and of advanced electronics for nuclear and missile sites."
Time for everyone involved to come clean, eh? Better to admit the involvement and accept that mistakes were made than to try to score moral points, and especially before uglier stuff comes to light.
