Room for a View > Briefs
Top-Secret Iraq Weapons Report
Reveals US Helped Arm Iraq
by Lorna Tychostup
Source: Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org)

Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell and other major us corporations, as well as governmental agencies including the Department of Defense and the nation’s nuclear labs, all illegally helped Iraq to build its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

On Wednesday, December 18, Geneva-based reporter Andreas Zumach broke this story in an interview on the us national listener-sponsored radio and television show “Democracy Now!”

According to Zumach, he obtained top-secret portions of Iraq’s 12,000-page weapons declaration that the us had redacted from the version made available to the non-permanent members of the un Security Council. His Berlin-based paper Die Tageszeitung plans to publish a full list of companies and nations who have aided Iraq.

“We have 24 major us companies listed in the report who gave very substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but also to the missile and nuclear weapons program,” Zumach said. “Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies was outlawed in the 1970s.”

The list of US corporations named in Iraq’s report includes Rockwell, Tectronics, Bechtel, International Computer Systems, Unisys, Sperry, and TI Coating, as well as Hewlett Packard, DuPont, Honeywell.
Zumach also said the us Departments of Energy, Defense, Commerce, and Agriculture quietly helped arm Iraq. us government nuclear weapons laboratories Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia trained traveling Iraqi nuclear scientists and gave non-fissile material for construction of a nuclear bomb.

“There has never been this kind of comprehensive layout and listing like we have now in the Iraqi report to the Security Council so this is quite new and this is especially new for the us involvement, which has been even more suppressed in the public domain and the us population,” Zumach said.

Star Wars Goes Global
by Todd Paul

Thought you’d heard the last of the “Star Wars” missile defense program? Think again. Initiated by Reagan in 1983, shelved by Clinton after failed tests in 2000, and revived shortly thereafter by Bush, the “son of Star Wars” is alive and well and being pushed in Britain by Tony Blair’s Secretary of Defense, Geoff Hoon.

That’s right—Reagan’s homegrown missile shield has acquired a continental flair. That’s because Team Bush has decided that in addition to ruling space with satellite-based lasers, homeland defense requires basing interceptor missiles and radar stations all over the globe.
The Guardian reported in November that Hoon has been parroting Bushisms about the danger of missile attack by “rogue states,” signaling his country’s willingness to allow the use of early warning radar stations at Fylingdales and Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire as part of a defensive missile shield.

“Speaking in London this week, John Bolton, George Bush’s point man on international security, said ‘son of Star Wars’ programs—initially conceived as national missile defense (nmd) for the us mainland alone—would go ahead ‘as soon as possible’ to ‘protect the us, our deployed forces, as well as friends and allies against the growing missile threat,’” the Guardian reported in another November article.
And according to the National Review, the us is talking with Britain about the possible use of six British Navy destroyers as early-warning “sentries” in the missile shield.

“This summer, the White House launched a major diplomatic offensive aimed at shoring up support among nato countries for its plans for a global missile shield,” the National Review reported in December.
“The gamble is paying off. Throughout Europe, countries are gravitating toward Washington’s plans for a layered international system to protect against missile attack. Poland, for one, has already offered to assist...through the construction of a radar station designed to track threats from the Middle East. And officials in Warsaw are increasingly hinting at the possibility of even broader cooperation, including the deployment of terminal-phase missile defenses protecting European capitals.”

The Czech Republic, the report continues, is also planning to deploy surveillance equipment and antimissile defenses as part of Washington’s plan.

And US-based Boeing Company and the French- and German-dominated European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (eads) recently announced a cooperative agreement to develop global ballistic-missile technologies.

So if everyone’s coming on board, who are we defending against? A British Ministry of Defense white paper identifies the putative aggressors: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Having unilaterally abrogated the historic abm treaty and enlisted the reluctant cooperation of Russia, and buoyed by Congress’ rubberstamping of any initiative linked with the War on Terror, Bush now seems to be on the fast track to projecting us power into space and around the globe. Just before this issue of Chronogram went to press, Bush ordered the deployment of 10 interceptor rockets in Alaska by 2004.
But critics still question the real need—and the purpose—for such a system. Interceptors are useless against suicidal hijackers, anthrax mailers, and trucks full of fertilizer. Biological agents can be delivered more easily by a cough than by an icbm. Critics also cite the threat of a new arms race with China, should the missile defense system go forward.

And while Washington spent some $7.4 billion last year on missile defense, it spent only $1 billion on non-proliferation of nuclear materials—prompting the question: Is Star Wars about reducing potential threats or projecting us power and enriching us military suppliers?

US Seeks Special Immunity
by Todd Paul

As of December 10, 139 states have signed onto the new International Criminal Court (icc), and 87 have ratified or acceded to it. The United States is not among them.

Citing fears that us peacekeepers could be wrongfully prosecuted in a politically-motivated international trial, the us has declined to join the court unless us citizens are given immunity to prosecution. To this end, the Bush administration has been pressuring countries around the world to sign on to a proposal, known as Article 98, that would grant us citizens immunity to the court, and agree never to hand a us citizen over to the court jurisdiction.

And the Bush administration has gone one step further with the new American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. The law gives the president the authority to take “all means necessary and appropriate to release citizens arrested by the court.” Some critics have interpreted this to mean the us could invade the Netherlands to free us citizens being held at the Hague.

The aspa also bars various forms of us military assistance to governments, other than nato members and specified allies, that refuse to sign Article 98, unless the president agrees that continued military aid is in the national interest. Peacekeeping operations around the globe could be suddenly terminated under this law.

So far, only Israel and Romania have agreed to the us-immunity clause.
Joseph Deiss, the Swiss foreign minister, recently said us immunity would undermine the court’s authority and the principle of universal justice. “I do not believe Switzerland should sign this kind of agreement,” he said. “We hope the United States will not impede the work of the court.”

The icc, slated to be fully operational by mid-2003, would provide a forum to try perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.