Amidst the wall-to-wall reporting on Iraq that has become daily grist for the nation's news media, a headline in this morning's USA Today leaped out from the front page: "In Iraq's arsenal, Nature's deadliest poison."

The article describes the horrors of botulinum toxin, a potential weapon in Iraq's biological warfare arsenal. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known. We know that Saddam Hussein produced thousands of litres of botulinum toxin in the run up to the Gulf War. We also know where some of the toxin came from: The United States, which approved shipments of botulinum toxin from a non-profit scientific specimen repository to the government of Iraq in l986 and l988.

I asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about these shipments during an Armed Services Committee hearing a week ago, and I repeat today what I said to him then: In the event of a war with Iraq, might the United States be facing the possibility of reaping what it has sown?

The threat of chemical and biological warfare is one of the most terrifying prospects of a war with Iraq, and one that should give us serious pause before we embark on a course of action that might lead to an all-out, no holds barred, conflict.

Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair released an assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program which contained the jolting conclusion that Iraq could launch chemical or biological warheads within 45 minutes of getting the green light from Saddam Hussein.

The British government assessment, while putting Iraq's chemical and biological capabilities in starker terms than perhaps we have seen before, closely tracks with what U.S. officials have been warning for some time: Saddam Hussein has the means and the know-how to wage biological and chemical warfare, and he has demonstrated his willingness to use such weapons. By the grace of God, he apparently has not yet achieved nuclear capability.

On the matter of biological warfare, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that many improvements have been made to the protective gear worn by soldiers and to the sensors used to detect chemical or biological agents.

But according to the USA Today article on botulinum toxin, U.S. troops would be just as vulnerable to botulinum toxin today as they were during the Gulf War.

"There's still no government-approved vaccine, and the only antitoxin is made by extracting antibodies from the blood of vaccinated horses using decades-old technology," the article states.

Last year's anthrax attack on the United States Senate gave all of us in this chamber first-hand experience with biological warfare, and new insight into the insidious nature of biological weapons. And that attack involved only about a teaspoon or so of anthrax sealed in an envelope. The potential consequences of a massive bio-weapons attack against soldiers on the battlefield boggle the imagination.

My concerns over biological warfare were heightened last week when I came across a report in Newsweek that the United States government had cleared numerous shipments of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa to the government of Iraq in the mid-1980s, at a time when the U.S. was cultivating Saddam Hussein as an ally against Iran. The shipments included anthrax and botulinum toxin.

Moreover, during the same time period, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was also shipping deadly toxins to Iraq, including vials of West Nile fever virus and Dengue fever.

This is not mere speculation. I have the letters from the CDC and the American Type Culture Collection laying out the dates of shipments, who they were sent to, and what they included. This list is extensive and scary – anthrax, botulinin toxin, and gas gangrene to name just a few. There were dozens and dozens of these pathogens shipped to various ministries within the government of Iraq.

Why does this matter today? Why do I care about something that happened nearly 20 years ago, when Saddam Hussein was considered to be a potential ally and Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni was Public Enemy Number One in the United States? I care because it is relevant to today's debate on Iraq. This is not yesterday's news. This is tomorrow's news.

Federal agencies have documents detailing exactly what biological material was shipped to Iraq from the United States. We have a paper trail. We not only know that Iraq has biological weapons, we know the type, the strain, and the batch number of the germs that may have been used to fashion those weapons. We know the dates they were shipped, and the addresses to which they were shipped.

We have in our hands the equivalent of a Betty Crocker cookbook of ingredients that the U.S. allowed Iraq to obtain and that may well have been used to concoct biological weapons. At last week's Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary Rumsfeld said he no knowledge of any such shipments, and doubted that they ever occurred. He seemed to be affronted at the very idea that the United States would ever countenance entering into such a deal with the devil.

Secretary Rumsfeld should not shy away from this information. On the contrary, he should seek it out. No one is alleging that the United States deliberately sneaked biological weapons to Iraq under the table during the Iran-Iraq war. I am confident that our government is not that stupid. It was simply a matter of business as usual. We freely exchange information and technology including scientific research with our friends. At the time, Iraq was our friend. If there is any lesson to be learned from the Iraq experience, it is that we should choose our friends more carefully, and exercise tighter controls on the export of materials that could be turned against us.

This is not the first time I have advocated stricter controls on exports. In fact, I added an amendment to the 1996 Defense Authorization Act that was specifically designed to curb the export of dual-use technology to potential adversaries of the United States.

In the case of the biological materials shipped to Iraq, the Commerce Department and the CDC have lists of the shipments. The Defense Department ought to have the same lists so that the decision makers will know exactly what types of biological agents American soldiers may face in the field. Doesn't that make sense? Shouldn't the Defense Department know what's out there, so that the generals can know what counter-measures they might need to take to protect their troops?

I believe the answer to those questions is yes, and so I am sending the information I have to Secretary Rumsfeld. No matter how repugnant he finds the idea of the U.S. even inadvertently aiding Saddam Hussein in his quest to obtain biological weapons, the Secretary should have this information at hand, and should make sure that his field commanders also have it.

The most deadly of the biological agents that came from the U.S. were shipped to the government of Iraq by the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), a non-profit organization that provides biological materials to industry, government, and educational institutions around the world. According to its own records, the ATCC sent 11 separate shipments of biological materials to the government of Iraq between 1985 and 1988. The shipments included a witches brew of pathogens including anthrax, botulinum toxin, and gangrene.

Meanwhile, the CDC was shipping toxic specimens to Iraq – including West Nile virus and Dengue fever – from January 1980 until October 13, 1993.

The nexus between the U.S.- approved shipments of pathogens and the development of Iraq's biological weapons program is particularly disturbing. Consider the following chain of events: In May of 1986, the ATCC reported the first shipments of anthrax and botulinum toxin to Iraq. A second shipment including anthrax and botulinum toxin was sent to Iraq in September of 1988.

At approximately the same time that the first shipment was sent – in April of 1986 – Iraq turned from studying literature on biological warfare to experimenting with actual samples of anthrax and botulinum toxin. The turning point, according a report to the United Nations Security Council from the UN weapons inspection team, came when "bacterial strains were received from overseas" and delivered to an Iraqi biological weapons laboratory.

In April of 1988, the UN weapons inspectors reported that Iraq began research on the biological agent Clostridium perfringens, more commonly known as gas gangrene. Clostridium perfringens cultures were among the materials shipped to Iraq by the ATCC in both 1986 and 1988.

These are only a few examples of the pathogens that Iraq is known to have imported from the United States. It is not known how many of these materials were destroyed following the Persian Gulf War, or how many Iraq continues to possess, whether they are still viable, or whether in its pursuit of biological weapons, Iraq has developed ways to extend the shelf life of toxic biological agents. There is much that we do not know about Iraq's biological warfare program. But there are two important facts in which we can have great confidence: Iraq has biological weapons, and Iraq obtained biological materials from the United States in the 1980s.

I asked Secretary Rumsfeld, at last week's Armed Services Committee hearing, whether we might be reaping what we have sown in Iraq, in terms of biological weapons. The question was rhetorical, but the link between shipments of biological material from the United States and the development of Iraq's biological weapons program is more than just an historical footnote.

The role that the U.S. may have played in helping Iraq to pursue biological warfare in the 1980s should serve as a strong warning to the President that policy decisions regarding Iraq today could have far reaching ramifications on the Middle East and on the United States in the future. In the 1980s, the Ayatollah Khomeni was America's sworn enemy, and the U.S. government courted Saddam Hussein in an effort to undermine the Ayatollah and Iran. Today, Saddam Hussein is America's biggest enemy, and the U.S. is said to be making overtures to Iran.

The Washington Post reported today that the President is expected to authorize military training for at least 1,000 members of the Iraqi opposition to help overthrow Saddam Hussein. The opposition groups include the Kurds in the north, and the Shiite Muslims in the south.

The decision to provide military training to Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein would mark a major change in U.S. policy, ending a prohibition on lethal assistance to the Iraqi opposition. It is not a decision that should be undertaken lightly.

Although Administration officials told the Post that initial plans called for modest steps that would allow members of the Iraqi opposition to provide liaison to the local population and perhaps guard prisoners of war, the officials did not shut the door on providing training and equipment for more lethal activities.

"Nobody is talking about giving them guns yet. That would be a dramatic step, but there are many dramatic steps yet to be taken," one official was quoted as saying.

Has the Administration adequately explored the potential ramifications of creating ethnic armies of dissidents in Iraq? Could the U.S. be laying the groundwork for a brutal civil war in Iraq? Could this proposed policy change precipitate a deadly border conflict between the Kurds and Turkey? Could we perhaps be setting the stage for a Shiite-ruled Iraq that could align itself with Iran and result in the domination of the Middle East by hard-line Shiite Muslims along the lines of the Ayatollah Khomeni?

These are legitimate and troubling questions, and they should be carefully thought through before we unleash an open-ended attack on Iraq.

There are many outstanding questions that the United States should consider before marching in lockstep down the path of committing America's military forces to affect the immediate overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The peril of biological weapons is only one of those considerations, but it is an important one. The more we know now, the better off our troops will be in the future.

Decisions involving war and peace – the most fundamental of life and death decisions – should never be rushed or muscled through in haste. Our founding fathers understood that, and wisely vested in the Congress, not the President, the power to declare war. Congress has been presented with a presidential request for authorization to use military force against Iraq. We now have the responsibility to consider that request carefully, thoroughly, and on our own timetable. I urge my colleagues to do just that and avoid the pressure to rush to judgment on such an important matter.