Recently Iraq gave United Nations arms inspectors a report of nearly 12,000 pages, detailing its claims about the history and current status of its various programs to acquire, develop or produce weapons of mass destruction. The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom rather immediately declared the report false and inadequate, without getting much into particulars.

In fact, at the UN the debate would not get into particulars, because the US maneuvered its way into the position of photocopying the document for the other member states of the Security Council. In this process, the Bush administration excised more than 8,000 pages --- more than two-thirds --- of the Iraqi document. But as one might expect, journalists in Europe and in the US alternative press obtained uncensored copies from Iraqi and other sources. The first journalist to publicize the censored part of the report was Andreas Zumach, the German Die Tageszeitung newspaper's Geneva correspondent.

Now it might be said that Saddam Hussein created a massive sheaf of irrelevant documents to hide important stuff --- by boring the Security Council into ignoring obscure but important details, or inducing a sleepwalk that might keep the British and American mainstream media from reporting the story in any depth. It might also be alleged that he handed in a bulky report to distract attention from that which was omitted.

But what did the Bush administration omit?

They excised mention of the western corporations that Saddam Hussein said sold equipment for his armaments programs over the years. The country with the greatest number of such companies --- more than 80 --- was Germany, but a couple of dozen American firms were also on the list that George W. Bush censored.

If Iraq's claims are true, almost all of these companies violated international sanctions against sales of items with possible military use to Iraq, which have been in place and have had the force of law in the United States since the 1970s.

Note also that many executives of these companies are large contributors to US political campaigns.

For an interesting Panama connection, note the presence of UNISYS on the list. A UNISYS subsidiary was recently fired as the supplier of forms for Panama's cedulas, after it was discovered that thousands of these had been diverted to Colombian gangsters for sale on the black market.

The US companies on Saddam's list are:

Honeywell

Spectra Physics

Semetex

TI Coating

UNISYS

Sperry Corp.

Tektronix

Rockwell

Leybold Vacuum Systems

1Finnigan-MAT-US

Hewlett-Packard

Dupont

Eastman Kodak

American Type Culture Collection

Alcolac International

Consarc

Carl Zeiss

Cerberus

Electronic Associates

International Computer Systems

Bechtel

EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc.

Canberra Industries Inc.

Axel Electronics Inc.