I don’t know… just seems contradictory.
Tigerman,
I recalled reading in the Washington Post and the Economist that the owner of the plant was in the U.S. suing the U.S. government for the destruction of the plant and that the government failed to contest the lawsuit. I assumed this resolved the issue. Something just doesn’t add up when the U.S. continues to claim Al Shifa was producing banned VX nerve gas while the owner of the factory is allowed in the U.S. uncontested, filing suit against the U.S. government over the bombing. I’m not sure what the the current status of his legal action is.
[b]"In a campaign to clear his name and regain control of $24 million frozen in Bank of America accounts, Idris hired a top Washington law firm to investigate the charges levied against him and his company. In January 1999, the investigation firm Kroll Associates issued a 300-page report based on interviews with sixty people throughout the Middle East, showing no connection between Idris and bin Laden. The report concluded that Al Shifa was a legitimate pharmaceutical factory, primarily involved in the repackaging of imported pharmaceutical products. Idris also sent a series of additional controlled samples from Al Shifa to two of the world
Well speaking of bad information, let’s take a look at one of the favored icons of the Left… Yes, Al Gore, the man who “invented” the Internet…
The world will little note nor long remember that in the not so distant past:
IN 1992, AL GORE ATTACKED PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH FOR IGNORING IRAQ’S TIES TO TERRORISM. SEN. AL GORE:
I dunno. Perhaps the owner of the factory really did make medicines there and perhaps he/she was forced by the government or other parties to manufacture the other stuff. I really don’t know.
Let’s see 50 percent of zero is zero.
. . . and 1 percent of zero is zero.
I don’t get it Fred, are you using obscure logic to point out that the US and Germany are equally culpable for providing Saddam with nothing? Or do you believe that like OJ with his search for the “true killer,” we will some day find the WMDs? After all, as Rummie pointed out, we know where they are – they’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
MT:
Cute but go check out sipri.org which details all of these things. Weapons were sold. Bills were paid. Records were kept. Now, the question was whether these things were destroyed or not. Saddam had tens of thousands of pages documenting his wmd programs like where they were located, how much was stored on which shelf and developed by whom and when, but could not come up with one sentence to show that he had destroyed them. Strange huh? And then he could not say here is a site where they were destroyed so tests could be taken. Not one. Strange huh? But you are right, I am sure that this is all a big joke, EXCEPT, one must wonder where the terrorists got all the chemicals that they were going to explode in Amman to make a poison cloud that would have killed 80,000 people. Now, where do you suppose that they got it? hmmmm?
So while you are a leftie, try to think once in a while. I know feelings are so much more self-validating but try, I know that you can if you really try. Think.
Cute that you repeat the same dumb argument over and over: SIRPI lists CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS sales and Germany ranks lower than the US in that (both less than 1%).
It is SIPRI Rascal:
I have posted the information. Germany is 4 percent Rascal not 1 percent.
And I have already posted ad nauseum the information that showed Germany sold more than half of Saddam’s wmds. Want me to post that yet again? Come on. You have already read and digested this so stop trying to have selective memory when something doesn’t fit with your view of the world. GERMANY sold more than half his wmds to him. GERMANY built his underground bunker in Baghdad. GERMANY is also selling a lot of questionable merchandise to Iran. GERMANY and GERMANS had better get their nation under control.
[quote=“fred smith”]
I have posted ad nauseum [/quote]
Since October 11th 2002, I believe… 
Touche now let me post that link once again so Rascal will run away. He always does when he loses the argument. Shall we go through and reread all of Rascal’s comments about how he was concerned about
dangerous pre-emptive precedents but has nothing to say when his own nation Germany is planning one the entire time it was criticizing America at the UN and signed an official treaty committing itself to pre-emptive action in Luxembourg in June 2003?
Or shall we look at how it’s about rule of law, international law no less, but then scratch our heads wondering how actions could have been approved for Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan (okay, okay and okay) without UN approval but Iraq is totally unacceptable and now that the UN has approved the American presence, what are we to make of Rascal’s critiques now. Or shall we hold the UN to the same high standards that the US is held to by Rascal? But what about the Oil for Food scandal? What about the corruption at the UN? What about the lack of democracy and questionable choices like Libya chairing the human rights committee and Iraq almost appointed to disarmament?
Or is it about even ONE innocent Iraqi civilian death being too many? Yet, the tally is 5,000 to 10,000 including those killed by insurgents, terrorists, during the bombing, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi insurgents, Iraqi terrorists, etc. but how does this compare with the 100,000’s that died during the Oil for food program? Nary a comment. Not even a syllable. Strange.
Oh dear this is new. Wonder if Rascal has seen it. Whoops I guess he will now.
TEHRAN, Sept 2 (AFP) -Iran said on Wednesday it would try eight German
companies accused of supplying chemical weapons to Iraq during their 1980-88
war and causing the deaths of thousands of people.
Fotovat Nassiri-Savadkuhi, the director of the judiciary’s public relations
office, did not name the companies or say when their trial would start.
“Because of the large number of plaintiffs, it will take some time before we
will investigate the cases,” he told the official IRNA news agency, adding
that around 600 victims of chemical attacks during the war had already filed
suit.
“The chemical weapons material provided to Iraq by German companies martyred
10,000 people and disabled 50,000 others,” Nassiri added. “As exporting
chemical weapons to be used against humanity is against our Iranian laws and
international conventions, these cases are worthy of investigation.”
From the Associated Press…
A new investigative film traces the roots of the Iraq nuclear crisis to links between German industry and Baghdad’s bomb builders, and questions the lenient sentence - probation - handed a German engineer for treason in aiding the project.
The documentary, “Stealing the Fire,” also offers a rare close-up look at a “proliferator,” the engineer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fastidious 68-year-old technician who protests he’s “too small to be turned into a scapegoat for the others.”
The film, produced and directed by Oscar-winning documentarian John S. Friedman and Eric Nadler, premieres Tuesday at a New York theater.
Blueprints and other documents Schaab and associates brought to Iraq in the late 1980s, along with Schaab’s own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Baghdad’s development of gas centrifuges - machines whose ultra-fast spinning “enriches” uranium by separating U-235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fissionable U-238.
And finally, yet again, for a Rascal that just wants to forget (how typical of our Crab Walk generation)…
PREPARED STATEMENT OF
GARY MILHOLLIN
Professor Emeritus
University of Wisconsin Law School
and Director,
Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control
IRAQ’S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROGRAM
AND TECHNOLOGY EXPORTS
HEARING BEFORE THE
HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
September 19, 2002
The second article in the New York Times is from 1993. It shows that America was not alone in supplying Iraq
Whaoooo!
Rascal… ?
Then you should also recall the following:
[quote=“When fred made the same stupid statement Rascal pointed out and”]Yes I do remember and hence my claim that WEST Germany did supply less conventional weapons than the US.
To add the EAST German sales is a bit unfair, isn’t it? (Should be added to Russia instead)
…
There is nothing to disprove, I just asked you to back up the numbers and provide the links to the sources you quote from.
No argument about the 1% conventional sales, but as long as you don’t provide the stats related to the other claims I can’t say you are right or wrong.[/quote]
[quote=“Then fred responded and”]I’m sorry Rascal but why shouldn’t East Germany count. Evil nation.
Okay. Fair enough. 4 percent is mostly [color=red]East[/color] Germany but you would not have known that had I not explained that to you myself so give me some credit.[/quote]
[Forumosa - Taiwan's largest and most active Taiwan-oriented global online community in English … ons#168644](Chuckles from Bush press conference - #85 by fred_smith
Now unless you turn this into an issue of scemantics and throw East Germany together with West German at a time when it was still seperated the fact stands - the sales stats listed at SIPRI are about conventional weapons and list (West) Germany at less than 1%, in fact slighty less than the US (also below 1%).
Yeah, yeah … the facts … 
Fred, you did notice that I didn’t comment on that - so what is there to question or accuse me off?
Anyhow, continue to compare 50% of WMD sales by Germany (wherever you took that figure from, didn’t bother to check/verify) to 1% of sales by the US - which are of course the already mentioned conventional sales. Makes perfect sense. :loco:
No Rascal:
I already explained to you many times that the US is 1 percent for BOTH conventional and wmds. Germany is 4 percent for the former and I don’t see why East Germany should not count as German albeit under a different government. The 50 percent plus for Germany is WEST Germany and compares with 1 percent for the United States. You already knew this so don’t play stupid but I expect that we will not hear any more from you on this so run away as usual.
Sorry fred, but I am honestly not aware that 1% includes WMD - so please post this link again as I do not consider your explanation (statement/claim whatever without any credible source) as sufficient.
Because of that it should be separated into EAST Germany and WEST Germany, not lumped together as Germany - or are you holding todays Germany / German government responsible for what East Germany did when it was run by a very different and Russian controlled government?
Oh Christ Rascal:
Must I post it for the fourth time just to prove the point? You just posted my quote from the previous discussion, head back yourself and find the post that I made detailing all of the wmd sales by country. It is back there.
SIPRI is for conventional weapons. Now, look at the testimony before the US House of Representatives. Germany accounted for more than all the other nations combined. Surely that should give you a fair idea of the amount of wmds that Germany was selling. The US was again most active in 1982-3 with deliveries through 1985 when the biggest fear was Iran. What was Germany’s big incentive to sell to Iraq? Profit motives. Pure and simple. At least the US had a morally tolerable reason for dealing with Saddam given that we are the security gurantor for the whole region.
[quote=“Tigerman”]Whaoooo!
Rascal… ?[/quote]
What the fuck do you (two) actually want from me? Have I ever denied, justified or excused Germany for selling this shit?
It’s no secret that Germany was the main supplier to Iraq, so tell us something new, perhaps than it warrants a “Whaooo!”.
On this page (‘AND FINALLY FROM SIPRI’) I believe you mentioned SIPRI for the first time.
I still see no evidence that 1% are including WMD, there are no links in your posts but I see lot’s of ‘conventional weapons’ stats.
You throw in WMD and lot’s of figures and compare them, as just now, to those figures from SIPRI that are from ‘conventional weapons’ sales as you also confirmed in some of your posts.
Now if you really stand by your claim that 1% includes WMD then do us all a favour and link it here, because I really tried and can’t find it.
I am not claiming you are wrong, but I would like to see the proof for it because I honestly believe you have not provided any evidence of that so far except making such claim and when challenged you have been asking others to find it.
If you are so certain that you are right and you know where to find the information then it should be easy for your to post it here.
(And as suggested earlier I would like to propose a link in any post where you make such reference to avoid situations like these - otherwise one might be led to assume you distort the information you claim to quote)
I am not going to comment further on the issue because whatever I say isn’t good enough for you and since both of you have repeatedly shown (directly or by implication) extreme prejudice I seen no reason why I should still bother.
Oh Christ Rascal:
Finally from SIPRI is not Sipri’s first mention. It was the last of many pieces of information supplied. 1% or less for the US for CONVENTIONAL weapons. The information on wmds is NOT FROM the SAME SIPRI report. There is a link in the Sipri organization (www.sipri.org) which reported on nations and wmds sales to Iraq. Take for example the Congressional Testimony here which shows Germany at 50 percent plus in addition to all of the 12 articles that I posted from our last discussion on this. The links were ALL provided or in the heading was a notation (AP) that means Associated Press or AFP which means Agence France Presse or NY TIMES, etc. got it? Are those acceptable sources to you? Most of my posts include the link so don’t get going on this you always post but never link bullshit. If the newspaper or CNN thing is in there does that mean you cannot figure out where it came from? All the other ones were posted as I pulled the information from Sipri. So everything after the first one is from the same site. Got it? Check for yourself.
Extreme prejudice from a man who only cares about things when they make America look bad. Remember all the discussions where you so avidly pointed to the American companies that were involved in selling weapons to Saddam UNTIL it was proved that this was nothing compared to Germany, France, Russia. So if Germany is say 60%, Russia at about 10% and France about 10% for chemical, nuclear and bio weapons, that leaves about 20% left for the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Canada, Japan, China, etc. etc. AND the US. One point of clarification, these numbers depend on whether computers are included? If not, then these numbers should be fairly accurate. Now, will try to find that link again. Now remember most of the bio, chemical (the US was not big into the nuclear here) would have been sold during 1982-85. So compared with 1979 to 2002 well really 1990 to the first Gulf War that is already a fairly limited time frame for US sales.
Damn Rascal. You are right I did post a whole number of articles but no percentages. Score one for you. Well, look at the articles that are printed. I think that it should come close to the percentages listed on the table I thought I had posted. Let me try to retrack that down, but just for starters. Germany more than any nation so let’s say 55% to possibly 60% and then who was primarily in charge of nuclear? France sold Osirek nuclear reactor (a huge project) plus other things and the Russians were big here so I think that the 10% plus and 10% plus can be supported just on the available evidence. Again that leaves ALL the other nations for 20 percent. Let me try to get that table again for you tomorrow. I have to go through that whole site again for the information.