Lord knows there's got to be a better way.
- Edwin Starr, from the song War
War & Peace Iraq
French supplied nuclear fuel, Germany sold Iraq the means of producing chemical and bacteriological weapons and, after a visit by Donald Rumsfeld (now Secretary of Defence), America sold Hussein sophisticated Harpoon missiles. It is also alleged that America sent live viruses, including anthrax, to Iraqi military units.
Former CIA director Gordon Oehler explains how between 1987 and 1989 German companies sold Iraq all the material it needed for another nuclear plant capable of producing nuclear weapons. The program claims that the German government authorised the sale. Kenneth Timmerman, author of The Death Lobby, says that it was also German technology which enabled the creation of the toxic chemical gases Hussein dropped on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 people. Mirage fighter jets from France were used for the mission. Former Defence Minister Jean Pierre Chevenement says Halabja only took on importance in the 1990s. At the time no one said anything yet the Americans knew all about it.
· Halabja [SBS]
