Posted on 12/29/2002 4:40:20 AM PST by JohnHuang2
A DEADLY female scientist who has made enough biological weapons to kill everyone in the world twiceover may be one of the major reasons the US is pushing for war with Iraq. Known to UN weapons inspectors as Doctor Germ for her gruesome work, the US and its allies consider this female scientist to be one of the greatest threats since the end of the cold war -- a threat that must be dealt with at almost any cost.
The story of Dr Germ begins in 1979 when Taha travelled to England on a student visa to study plant toxins. Rihab Taha eventually earned a PhD from the University of East Anglia in Norwich where she studied biology intensely, focusing on infectious diseases. Much to British dismay, it was in England where Taha learned the skills which would later make her a threat to the entire world.
"It's like finding your daughter has done something dreadful," says Dr John Turner, former head of the university's biology department and Taha's teacher for four years. "Finding out what Taha does now was a great shock to me. Of all the students I've ever had Taha is the last person I would suspect of doing something like this."
Dr Germ's former classmates agree. None of them can believe the quiet, shy girl they went to school with could be capable of such atrocities. But UN weapons inspectors say Taha is a master of deception and her shyness is merely a front to disguise her true intentions.
"She was an unassuming individual to look at, no one would suspect she was the head of Iraq's germ warfare program," admits Dr David Huxsoll, who headed the first UN weapons inspection team after the Gulf War in 1991.
But under questioning, the seemingly meek and mild Dr Taha would explode into rages, shouting and tossing chairs. Many UN inspectors came to see both Taha's shyness and her outbursts as a staged tactic to disrupt questioning.
It was during these interrogations the full grisly story of Dr Germ came to light.
According to investigators, after she returned to her homeland in 1980, Saddam Hussein immediately put Taha in charge of developing a germ warfare program -- the deliberate cultivation of lethal diseases to be used against Iraq's enemies. Germ warfare is known as the "poor man's nuke" because of its potential to kill millions without the technical knowledge and vast expense required to create an atomic bomb.
This mission was given the utmost priority by the Iraqi dictator, who planned to use these gruesome weapons to take over countries such as Kuwait and to suppress rebellion at home. Saddam even executed four top scientists in the biological weapons program in 1984 because they had not made enough progress. Many wonder if Taha informed on the scientists so she could eliminate her competition.
Dr Germ's topsecret laboratories at Salman Pak became a place of horror where Taha and her team of 100 Iraqi scientists worked to weaponise the most lethal viruses and bacteria known to man. Former chief UN biological weapons inspector Richard Spertzel says Taha made enough lethal germs to kill everyone on earth twice.
According to UN estimates, Taha created 8400 litres of anthrax -- enough to kill everyone in the western world -- and a host of other terrifying biological weapons. She worked for a decade to create the world's largest stock of biological weapons outside of the former Soviet Union. She grew 19,000 litres of botulinum, a food poisoning that causes the tongue to swell and suffocates the victim. She cultivated 2000 litres of aflatoxin, a mould that destroys a victim's immune systems and gives them a fastgrowing and fatal cancer. Taha created gas gangrene which causes the victim's skin to melt and fall away. And this mother of an eight-year-old girl even stockpiled a virus that kills only infants with fatal diarrhoea.
The first round of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq recovered video tapes of Dr Germ's tests on animals but the images of dying creatures in glass boxes writhing in agony were so horrifying that they have never been released. But UN inspectors believe Taha may have been responsible for even greater atrocities.
There is strong evidence Dr Germ tested her biological weapons on humans. According to Israeli military sources, Taha watched safely behind a thick glass screen as her lethal moulds, bacteria and viruses were tested on Iranian prisoners of war strapped to beds in an underground testing facility at Al Hakam.
In another test, a group of 12 Iranian prisoners were tied to posts at an open air test site near Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia. Shells loaded with anthrax were blown up a few yards away. The prisoners were given helmets to protect them from shrapnel so the full effect of the bacteria could be properly monitored. Each died from the disease a couple of days later.
The first UN inspectors also suspect Dr Germ deliberately exposed Iraqi prison populations to certain diseases to gauge their effect as weapons of war. Among the diseases doomed prisoners were reportedly exposed to were haemorrhagic conjunctivitis, which temporarily blinds the victim and makes their eyes bleed, Crimean Congo Fever, and Camel Pox, a grisly disease that slowly kills the sufferer from blood loss through open skin lesions.
Many on the original UN inspection team believe Iraq risked another war by barring access to Abu Gharib jail near Baghdad to coverup these terrifying experiments conducted on human prisoners. Says Raymond Zilimskas, a former germwarfare analyst at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, "in Iraq there probably has to be unsavoury activities, including unethical experimentation. It is the records of this work that Iraq will go to any lengths to hide."
These horrors may have never come to light except for the defection of General Hussein Kamal, soninlaw of Saddam Hussein and a weapons of mass destruction expert in his own right. In 1995, General Kamal defected from Iraq to Jordan where he told the world about the dangers of Dr Germ.
Kamal was the first to expose the work of Dr Germ and the killer diseases that Iraq still holds in reserve. Hussein Kamal painted a very different picture of Rihab Taha, the softspoken scientist, which UN inspectors had previously dismissed as inconsequential. It was Kamal who triggered the investigations that brought to light the terrible atrocities committed by the Britishtrained scientist.
But Kamal never completed his testimony. He was personally convinced by Saddam Hussein to return to Iraq. The dictator assured his son-in-law that it was more important that his daughter have a husband than any political differences they might have. Once Kamal set foot in Iraq he was immediately killed.
But the truth about Dr Germ was out. UN inspectors again called in Taha and confronted her with the new evidence. Instantly the shy, quiet disguise fell away and the scientist coldly told them that she could not be more proud of her work. She spoke of her work with passion -- as if she had found the cure to horrible diseases instead of working to spread them.
"She suddenly had no hesitation about presenting herself as the brains behind biological weapons in Iraq. She is proud of her country and proud of her work. I don't think she had a qualm in the world about her misdeeds," says one former UN inspector.
Armed with little more than the knowledge biological weapons do exist in Iraq, the original UN weapons inspectors tried to find out where Iraq's weapons were and destroy them.
Unfortunately they were largely unsuccessful.
The Iraqi Government would not cooperate. Asked for detailed evidence of its biological weapons program, it submitted six different reports, each of which were rejected as lies.
When UN forces raided facilities they suspected of housing biological weapons, they often found warehouses that appeared to be recently emptied with documents still burning in rubbish bins. Dr Germ and her agents were always one step ahead of the inspectors.
Finally, UN inspectors were tippedoff that the cunning Dr Germ was the lover and secret wife of Lieutenant General Amer Rashid, the Iraqi official whose job was to work with the UN inspectors. It's now believed Rashid simply warned his wife of possible raids giving her time to get rid of the evidence. For years, weapons inspectors tried to pin down Iraq's terrible disease weapons but failed.
At one point inspectors were convinced that huge amounts of anthrax were being driven round and round the country in refrigerated trucks by Saddam Hussein's Special Republican Guard. At other times UN officials were held for several hours by armed soldiers before being allowed into certain areas. Once inside they found hurriedly emptied laboratories. The evidence strongly suggests Iraq still has a large amount of biological weapons. One warning sign -- 17 tonnes of anthrax growth material, the food that the bacteria eats until it infects a victim, are still unaccounted for by the Iraqi Government.
After UN inspectors were thrown out of Iraq in 1997 the problem got worse. Saddam Hussein disabled all monitoring cameras and hid production equipment. Former weapons inspector Richard Spertzel warns even if Iraq didn't have any biological weapons left when UN officials were in the country they almost certainly do now. By changing a few components at medical factories producing antibiotics, Iraq could create huge amounts of anthrax.
Many experts fear the last four years without inspections have given Iraq the opportunity to make more biological weapons than they ever had before.
Now emerging evidence of Iraq's association with terrorist groups has made America and its allies very nervous and steeled their resolve for war. While public debate continues overseas and in Australia about whether war with Iraq is right or wrong or inevitable, investigators of the September 11 terrorist attacks are pursuing possible links between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's alQaeda terrorist network. UN inspectors say Iraqi agents meet periodically with bin Laden agents. And Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader of the World Trade Centre attacks, met twice with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in Czech Republic in the summer of 2001.
In a world where terrorist organisations are becoming increasingly more organised and are openly seeking a means to trump the New York attack, the US and its allies may feel they can simply no longer ignore the threat of Rihab Taha and her ability to give America's enemies a poor man's nuke.
In the end, America may be going to war to eliminate one woman. This report appears on news.com.au.
Dr Rihab Taha is head of Iraq's germ warfare program and is the most dangerous woman in the world.
....;)
She grew 19,000 litres of botulinum, a food poisoning that causes the tongue to swell and suffocates the victim. She cultivated 2000 litres of aflatoxin, a mould that destroys a victim's immune systems and gives them a fastgrowing and fatal cancer.
Taha created gas gangrene which causes the victim's skin to melt and fall away. And this mother of an eight-year-old girl even stockpiled a virus that kills only infants with fatal diarrhoea.
The first round of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq recovered video tapes of Dr Germ's tests on animals but the images of dying creatures in glass boxes writhing in agony were so horrifying that they have never been released. But UN inspectors believe Taha may have been responsible for even greater atrocities.
There is strong evidence Dr Germ tested her biological weapons on humans. According to Israeli military sources, Taha watched safely behind a thick glass screen as her lethal moulds, bacteria and viruses were tested on Iranian prisoners of war strapped to beds in an underground testing facility at Al Hakam.
In another test, a group of 12 Iranian prisoners were tied to posts at an open air test site near Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia. Shells loaded with anthrax were blown up a few yards away. The prisoners were given helmets to protect them from shrapnel so the full effect of the bacteria could be properly monitored. Each died from the disease a couple of days later.
But according to the likes of Sean Penn, Ed Asner, and Mike Farrel, we have nothing whatsoever to worry about from these people.
Thank God that Jane Fonda is too stupid to cultivate any germs other than those (hopefully) mundane microbes she harbors in her nether regions.
On the other hand, Ted Turner is known to have been exposed to them...
And there's something horribly wrong with him...
Does our arsenal include a mini-nuke that resembles a dildo?
I am happy to announce that I have made
Dr Rihab Taha the new minister of health.
Uh, no.
Botulinum does kill by suffocation, but not because it "causes the tongue to swell". It's a nerve toxin which deadens the motor nerves, paralyzing the victim including the chest muscles which pump air into your lungs.
Surprise, but this is just one of many.
Here's a happy thought from Middle East expert Daniel Pipes:
Islamists constitute a small but significant minority of Muslims, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of the population. Many of them are peaceable in apearance, but they all must be considered potential killers.
How does 400,000 to 800,000 -- in our country -- potential killers sound?
Meet an Islamist -- peaceable in appearance, killer
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
Thank you for some more of your legacy, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton!
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