Historically there is evidence that the Iraqis used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war and against the population of Iraqi Kurdistan. There was no evidence that Iraq had ever deployed biological weapons, though I recall all the worrying that they might do so in 1991. No one who saw it will ever forget the sight of the CNN correspondent donning his gasmask when the alarm went off. It was a false positive, thank God.

It bothered me then. How did we know that Hussein had biological warfare capabilities. Was it effective spy work? What was the evidence? Now we know the answer to those questions. We knew of his biological weapons work because we supported it and provided him with the root stock from which he could create the biological arsenal.

In May of 1986 American Type Culture Collections, an American scientific supply company headquartered in Virginia, sent cultures of three strains of Anthrax, three strains of botulism bacteria and three strains of gas gangrene bacteria to the University of Baghdad. Again in 1986 the CDC sent botulism toxin and botulism toxoid samples to the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission at its weapons research facility at Muthanna. The 1986 shipments were not the first. In 1985 CDC sent samples of a strain of the West Nile virus to a microbiologist at a university at Basra.

The light is beginning to dawn. We knew of the biological warfare capability because we helped Saddam acquire it. Only the most naïve among us could believe that the Reagan Administration did not know what he was doing with the germs we were sending. The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission did not have an international reputation for medical research. At the time of the shipments President Reagan’s special envoy to the middle east was a younger Donald Rumsfeld. He now claims he knew nothing of the shipments at the time. The shipments were approved under a program administered by the Reagan Commerce Department.

If we are now impelled to induce "regime change" in Iraq by any means necessary then it would be well to remember that the reason we advance as justification is the unintended consequence of our earlier decision to assist him in acquiring the very weapons that we now decry. If, and I believe that the course to war is inevitable, after we launch the invasion American lives are lost to biological weapons it is important that we remember that the shells will be labeled, "Made In USA".