Covered by virtually every media outlet in the world, Saddam Hussein was executed in Iraq for crimes against humanity. Now Saddam Hussein's cousin "Chemical Ali" and 14 other co-conspirators are on trial for the same crimes against humanity, the brutal crushing of a Shiite uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They are charged with perpetrating systematic brutal attacks against civilians. Missing from the charges is the role President George H. W. Bush played in this uprising against the dictator, Saddam. As we all are aware, the current President Bush made a huge commotion right before the start of the invasion of Iraq over Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons against his own people, but he failed to mention that these crimes date back to a period when Saddam was Washington's valued ally in the Middle East replacing the Shah of Iran who had been driven into exile.

Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, was instrumental in establishing a close alliance with Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. In a December 1983 meeting with Saddam as a special presidential envoy, he paved the way for the normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq used chemical weapons on a daily basis in total defiance of international conventions. None of this mattered to US officials at the time, as Iraq was an ally. In recent years, all the focus has been on the use of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq and the use of these kinds of weapons by United States has not been adequately covered by the established media. So we need to know more about chemical and biological weapons.

The goal of Francis Boyle, Professor of international law at the University of Illinois, in Biowarfare and Terrorism is to provide the general public with a succinct historical perspective on chemical and biological weapons in the United States. Boyle is no Johnny come lately to this debate. He has years of experience and was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American Legislation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. This is his second book.

According to Boyle, the United States government initiated, sustained, and then dramatically expanded an illegal biological arms buildup. The new billion dollar US Chemical and Biological Defense Program has been reoriented to mesh neatly with the neo-conservative, preemptive strike agenda, this time by biological and chemical warfare. The United States has always had an extremely aggressive, offensive biological warfare program dating back to World War II, and that it was none other than "Tricky Dick" Richard Nixon who terminated this program in 1960, not for moral reasons, but for reasons of Machiavellian realpolitik.

Hard to imagine that Nixon would put an end to chemical and biological warfare based on moral reasons. He felt that chemical and biological weapons were counterproductive militarily and could potentially blow back on our own troops in the field. Second, he felt that we already possess overwhelming nuclear forces. Thus, Nixon's objective in banning chemical and biological weapons was to take it out of the hands of third world leaders. So he ordered the complete destruction of all biological agents and munitions. However, the CIA, using a loop in the act, was able to maintain an active biological weapons research program in complete violation of international law.

However, political conditions changed in 1981. The Reagan Administration came to power, and many neo-conservatives came to Washington along with the new president. Their new position was that American must exploit its technological superiority in all fields of scientific endeavor across the board for war related purposes, including chemical and biological weapons.