From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair. That’s the vision of reality.

Anthrax for Export | William Blum | April 1998 issue of The Progressive magazine

It’s a dated article, of course, but it caught my eye because of the list of American companies. The US supplied Iraq with materials for creating chemical, biological, and nuclear warface programs from 1985-89 because we saw Iran as the greater evil. Bio-chemical warfare was used against Iranians and Kurds (at the least).

In 1982, the Reagan Administration took Iraq off its list of countries alleged to sponsor terrorism, making it eligible to receive high-tech items generally denied to those on the list.

Biological agents sold to Iraq from the US:
Bacillus Anthracis, cause of anthrax.
Clostridium Botulinum, a source of botulinum toxin.
Histoplasma Capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking lungs, brain, spinal cord, and heart.
Brucella Melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs.
Clostridium Perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness.
Clostridium tetani, a highly toxigenic substance.
Escherichia coli (E. coli)
genetic materials
human and bacterial DNA
…and dozens of other pathogenic biological agents.

"These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction," the Senate report stated. "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program."

So WHO sold em ? United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein. The following firms are implicated:

Bechtel Group, Inc., San Francisco
(Sound familiar? It should)

American Type Culture Collection of Maryland and Virginia. 70 shipments of anthrax-causing germ and other pathogenic agents
Alcolac International, a Baltimore chemical manufacturer already linked to the illegal shipment of chemicals to Iran, shipped large quantities of thiodiglycol (used to make mustard gas) as well as other chemical and biological ingredients
Nu Kraft Mercantile Corp. of Brooklyn (affiliated with the United Steel and Strip Corporation) also supplied Iraq with huge amounts of thiodiglycol
Celery Corp., Charlotte, NC
Matrix-Churchill Corp., Cleveland, OH (regarded as a front for the Iraqi government)
Mouse Master, Lilburn, GA
Sullaire Corp., Charlotte, NC
Pure Aire, Charlotte, NC
Posi Seal, Inc., N. Stonington, CT
Union Carbide, Danbury, CT
Evapco, Taneytown, MD
Gorman-Rupp, Mansfield, OH
Fisher Controls International, Inc., St. Louis
Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., Princeton, NJ
Lummus Crest, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, which built one chemical plant in Iraq and, before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, was building an ethylene facility. Ethylene is a necessary ingredient for thiodiglycol.

Representative Samuel Gejdenson, Democrat of Connecticut, chairman of a House subcommittee investigating "United States Exports of Sensitive Technology to Iraq," stated in 1991:

"From 1985 to 1990, the United States Government approved 771 licenses for the export to Iraq of $1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech equipment with military application. [Only thirty-nine applications were rejected.] The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted. . . . The Administration has never acknowledged that it took this course of action, nor has it explained why it did so. In reviewing documents and press accounts, and interviewing knowledgeable sources, it becomes clear that United States export-control policy was directed by U.S. foreign policy as formulated by the State Department, and it was U.S. foreign policy to assist the regime of Saddam Hussein."

As it turned out, Iraq did not use any chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces in the Gulf War. But American planes bombed chemical and biological weapons storage facilities with abandon, potentially dooming tens of thousands of American soldiers to lives of prolonged and permanent agony, and an unknown number of Iraqis to a similar fate. The Pentagon estimates that nearly 100,000 American soldiers were exposed to sarin gas alone.

"After the war, White House and Defense Department officials tried their best to deny that Gulf War Syndrome had anything to do with the bombings. The suffering of soldiers was not their overriding concern. The top concerns of the Bush and Clinton Administrations were to protect perceived U.S. interests in the Middle East, and to ensure that American corporations still had healthy balance sheets."

In any case, the America Vision of Hope as explicated by the President last night has its own countervision – read the book by the same guy that published this article. You might get a better sense of what our vision has been:

William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage Press, 1995)

A quote from the book:
"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It’s not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It’s that they just don’t care … the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren’t happening to them or people close to them … then they just don’t care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."