How did U.S. corporations help Iraq obtain weapons of mass destruction?
During its alliance with the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, Iraq had active programs producing chemical and biological weapons, and researching and working towards production of a nuclear weapon. These programs were actively and knowingly supported by U.S. corporations and the U.S. government, as revealed in 1994 House Banking Committee hearings. Those hearings revealed, among other things, that the American Type Culture Collection, a company outside of Washington DC, had provided Iraq with the seed stock for biological weapons agents including anthrax, botulinum, e-coli and many more, under license by the U.S. Commerce Department. A leak in the German newspaper die Tageszeitung of some of the 8,000 pages that Washington deleted from Iraq’s December 7, 2002, arms declaration provided further information. The deleted sections documented 24 U.S. corporations, 55 U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations, and a number of U.S. government agencies that provided parts, material, train
