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Posted on 10/13/2001 5:02:03 PM PDT by Diogenesis
Iraq 'behind US anthrax outbreaks'
David Rose and Ed Vulliamy, New York
Sunday October 14, 2001
The Observer
American investigators probing anthrax outbreaks in
Florida and New York believe they have all the
hallmarks of a terrorist attack - and have named Iraq
as prime suspect as the source of the deadly spores.
Their inquiries are adding to what US hawks say is a
growing mass of evidence that Saddam Hussein was
involved, possibly indirectly, with the 11 September
hijackers.
If investigators' fears are confirmed - and sceptics
fear American hawks could be publicising the claim to
press their case for strikes against Iraq - the pressure
now building among senior Pentagon and White
House officials in Washington for an attack may
become irresistible.
Plans have been discussed among Pentagon
strategists for US air strike support for armed
insurrections against Saddam by rebel Kurds in the
north and Shia Muslims in the south with a promise of
American ground troops to protect the oilfields of
Basra.
Contact has already been made with an Iraqi
opposition group based in London with a view to
installing its members as a future government in
Baghdad.
Leading US intelligence sources, involved with both
the CIA and the Defence Department, told The
Observer that the 'giveaway' which suggests a state
sponsor for the anthrax cases is that the victims in
Florida were afflicted with the airborne form of the
disease.
'Making anthrax, on its own, isn't so difficult,' one
senior US intelligence source said. 'But it only begins
to become effective as a biological weapon if they
can be made the right size to breathe in. If you can't
get airborne infectivity, you can't use it as a weapon.
That is extremely difficult. There is very little leeway.
Most spores are either too big to be suspended in air,
or too small to lodge on the lining of the lungs.'
As claims about an Iraqi link grew, senior health
officials in Britain revealed they warned all the
country's GPs last week to be vigilant about the
disease. 'I think we have to be prepared to think the
unthinkable,' said the Government's Chief Medical
Officer, Dr Liam Donaldson. The Department of
Health confirmed the Government is conducting an
urgent review of Britain's ability to cope with chemical
or biological attacks.
US intelligence believes Iraq has the technology and
supplies of anthrax suitable for terrorist use. 'They
aren't making this stuff in caves in Afghanistan,' the
CIA source said. 'This is prima facie evidence of the
involvement of a state intelligence agency. Maybe Iran
has the capability. But it doesn't look likely politically.
That leaves Iraq.'
Last autumn Mohamed Atta is said by US intelligence
officials to have met in Prague an agent from Iraqi
intelligence called Ahmed Samir al-Ahani, a former
consul later expelled by the Czechs for activities not
compatible with his diplomatic mission.
The Czechs are also examining the possibility that
Atta met a former director of Saddam's external
secret services, Farouk Hijazi, at a second meeting in
the spring. Hijazi is known to have met Bin Laden.
It was confirmed yesterday that Jim Woolsey, CIA
director from 1993 to 1996, recently visited London on
behalf of the hawkish Defence Department to 'firm up'
other evidence of Iraqi involvement in 11 September.
Remember the people who touched the powder saying it burned -- in order to have a cutaneous anthrax infection, the derma needs to be broken - or burned -- in order to be absorbed into the system.
We need to be extra vigilant. These guys are going to keep coming. Not being negative -- pragmatic. Know thy enemy.
But the info I have suggests that Iraq was not involved. My source is with the Mossad.
But the info I have suggests that Iraq was not involved. My source is with the Mossad. I'm open to revision however.
Again why would one terrorist send a love letter to her via this rag? Then another terrorist send one to Brokaw and Gates. Does JLo fit in this picture due to infatuation as opposed to the hate and filth sent in the other letters?
"Hawks"? "Hawkish"? Hmmmmm....I smell a liberal reporter. Surprise, surprise.
"Rumint" has it that Iraqi agents started and spread the hoof and mouth disease which wiped out British livestock last spring.
Word is that's why, in addition to 9-11, Tony Blair is so red hot and ready to rumble.
And I said that this is not the word we've been hearing from U.K. at all. Now, if something NEW has been added, that's one thing. But you shifted gears from Foot And Mouth Disease LAST YEAR, to a development that has taken place only recently. I'm simply challenging that assertion. It doesn't fit the known facts.
I hope we DO go after Saddam, and I hope the U.K. is in it with us. But until and unless "positive proof" is forthcoming, Blair says he won't go for it. That hardly sounds like they have the goods on Saddam for Foot And Mouth.
One would think that, given such dangers, the most extreme care would be taken to ensure that Iraq never had the opportunity to use such material. But that has not been the case. In August 1995, Hussein Kamil, Saddam's son-in-law who had overseen Iraq's unconventional weapons program, defected to Jordan. Until then, it had been thought that most of Iraq's proscribed agents had been destroyed during the 1991 Gulf war and that UNSCOM was slowly but steadily removing what remained.
Following Kamil's defection, it was learned that was not true. Iraq's most lethal agents had survived the Gulf war and Baghdad had managed to conceal that from UNSCOM. Moreover, even after UNSCOM learned of the concealed stockpiles, Iraq refused to turn over any of the proscribed agents since it claimed already to have destroyed the material. Thus, every report that UNSCOM has produced since December 17, 1995, has detailed the problem of the considerable unconventional capabilities Iraq retains.
Yet until quite recently the United States acted as if the information that came to light as a result of Kamil's defection was insignificant. Washington's response was merely to affirm the old policy of maintaining sanctions on Iraq, while dissuading others from raising the problem. Thus, until the present crisis, the Clinton administration failed to describe the danger posed by Iraq's unconventional agents. Since U.S. policy was "containment"-- defined above all as maintaining sanctions--it was felt to be unnecessary to point out unpleasant facts that may have raised questions as to the adequacy of containment as the US goal.
Since Kamil's defection, Iraq has acknowledged producing 2,265 gallons of anthrax. Anthrax is extraordinarily lethal. Inhalation of just one-ninth of a millionth of a gram is fatal in most instances. Iraq's stockpile could kill "billions" of people if properly disseminated and dispersed. [5] Anthrax, unlike some other biological agents, has an extremely long shelf-life. Although Baghdad claims to have destroyed its anthrax stockpile, it can produce no documents to support that assertion, while UNSCOM interviews of Iraqi personnel allegedly involved in the purported destruction produced contradictory accounts. Thus, no reasonable person credits the claim.
Also last spring, UNSCOM discovered that Iraq was involved in the production of a previously undeclared biological agent, which UNSCOM then described only as "a fast-acting toxin, suitable for use on the battlefield." Much later, the U.S. Secretary of Defense explained that Iraq had produced ricin. Ricin is extracted from the castor bean and as Cohen explained, "is one of the most deadly poisons on earth and there is no antidote....Iraq has been planting hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of castor beans." [6]
Nor is the problem limited to biological agents. The chemical nerve agent, VX, invented by a British scientist in the early 1950s, is extremely dangerous, in fact the most lethal chemical agent known in the West. A one-hundredth of a gram is fatal. Unlike most chemical agents, which dissipate quickly and for which a gas mask is adequate protection, VX is viscous, sticky, and persistent. And it is absorbed through the skin. For a person to have contact with an object contaminated by VX would cause immediate death.
Iraq has acknowledged producing 3.9 tons of VX but, as with its biological stockpile, claims to have destroyed it all. Of course, even if this claim were to be true--which is unlikely--Iraq can produce still more. It had two parallel production facilities. One, used to produce VX, was destroyed by UNSCOM. But a duplicate program was built around the manufacture of pesticides. It was never used for VX production but the technology is the same and is completely transferable. The equipment is still in Iraq, along with some 750 tons of VX chemical precursors, which Iraq acknowledged importing but maintains were destroyed during the Gulf war, another claim UNSCOM rejects. Indeed, recent U.S. estimates of Iraq's VX production run as high as 200 tons.
As Secretary of Defense William Cohen explained recently, the United States suspects that Iraq is still hiding "dozens" of SCUD missiles which could include special warheads suitable for delivering chemical and biological agents. It is unclear whether Baghdad has mastered the technology to cause the warheads to burst in mid-air. If a warhead detonated on impact as the missile hit the ground, it would not cause extensive damage. A mid-air burst is necessary to achieve the dissemination of an unconventional agent that would kill most human beings nearby. Still, if even one Iraqi missile with a biological warhead were to explode as intended over a Middle East city, it would mean the annihilation of an unprotected population.
Ballistic missiles are not the only way Iraq could deliver unconventional agents nor are they necessarily the best way. It is possible to protect a population against most unconventional agents through civil defense procedures, including the distribution of gas masks also effective against biological agents. An incoming missile would be spotted and the population could be alerted, as happened in Israel during the 1991 Gulf war. Yet if Iraq were to use other means of delivering unconventional agents, authorities might have no foreknowledge. Several methods are technologically easier than achieving mid-air SCUD missile bursts and Iraq has pursued them.
Last summer, U.S. Customs in Miami intercepted an Iraqi attempt to smuggle 34 used US military helicopters through Canada and a front company in the Philippines. Sixteen of the helicopters had been modified to disburse airborne chemicals. The helicopters were the same type--small, fast and highly maneuverable--that had been extensively deployed by U.S. forces during the Gulf war. [7] Although that shipment was blocked, Baghdad could have obtained military helicopters from other countries and probably did.
UNSCR 687 prohibited Iraq from keeping ballistic missiles, like SCUDS, but it was allowed to retain cruise missiles. Iraq's cruise missiles are regularly checked and tagged by UNSCOM. Yet if UNSCOM operations were to cease in Iraq, the missiles could be modified to carry unconventional agents. Also, UNSCR 687 said nothing about air defense missiles. Iraq possesses one such missile, the SA-2, which could be used to deliver unconventional agents on targets in the Gulf.
Iraq has also developed spraying devices for airplanes that would be suitable for the dissemination of biological agents, as former UNSCOM chairman, Rolf Ekeus has explained.[8] They could be used either to support a military operation or in a terrorist attack. The main Iraqi opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, with excellent sources in Baghdad, reported last summer that Iraq had converted agricultural aircraft into unmanned drones, suitable for spraying unconventional agents. [9] War games conducted at the U.S. Naval War College in the summer of 1995 included an Iraqi attack on U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf using specially rigged crop-dusting aircraft. That exercise also included a biological terrorist attack on a Saudi city that was estimated as capable of killing over a million people. [10]
Moreover, there is also a potential nuclear problem in regard to Iraq. Following Hussein Kamil's defection, it was learned that Iraq had been much further along in developing an atomic bomb than anyone had imagined. [11] Quite possibly, all Iraq lacks is the fissile material. With Russia's present economic decrepitude, that material might well be for sale. Recent Israeli estimates are that Iraq would probably have a bomb within a year if sanctions were to end and UNSCOM monitoring to cease or be rendered ineffectual. [12]
As these problems became known after Kamil's defection, regional parties responded with great concern. In September 1995, Kuwait's Foreign Minister visited Riyadh for a meeting with King Fahd to coordinate policy toward Jordan, given King Hussein's sharp turn against Iraq. But King Fahd had just been briefed on Baghdad's biological weapons. He refused to discuss anything else. In February 1996, a senior Saudi official, referring to the possibility that Saddam might actually use the unconventional agents he retained, told this author, "After all we've been through, please don't tell me that there is anything that man [Saddam] wouldn't do."
The Clinton administration's general response to concerns on these issues was to say that the United States was handling the problem. But there was no new response. For example, in December 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington. Both expressed concern about what had been learned about Iraq's nuclear program and the possibility of a breakthrough. Barak did so in exceptionally strong terms in a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Perry. U.S. notes of the meeting described Barak as having made, "An emotional personal appeal." Yet the Clinton administration did nothing.
Barak then went on to criticize publicly UN Security Council resolution 986, which Baghdad had begun to discuss with UN authorities. If it were implemented, a substantial part of the money Iraq was spending on humanitarian goods could then be shifted to proscribed purposes. Instead of addressing the problem, the administration told Barak not to criticize the resolution, saying it would be bad for the peace process. Apparently, a similar answer was given Israeli officials who raised these issues in early 1997. IRAQ'S STRATEGY FOR ENDING SANCTIONS
In setting off the 1997 crisis, Iraq's behavior was well-planned, cunning, and consistent with its strategy for lifting sanctions. "You create a crisis, aggravate the crisis, defuse the crisis and you have changed the dynamics in your negotiations," as a Western diplomat described Iraq's 1994 lunge at Kuwait. [13] That move was also carried out with an eye to lifting sanctions.
Then, it was generally accepted that most of Iraq's proscribed weapons had been found. In late 1994 and early 1995, once Iraq formally recognized Kuwait, a strong momentum built to lift sanctions. But UNSCOM's discovery that Iraq had an undeclared biological weapons program--first revealed in its April 10, 1995 report--blocked that drive. Saddam had already made the decision he would not relinquish any of Iraq's stockpile. Hence after the April 10 report, UNSCOM could not give Iraq the clean bill of health required by UNSCR 687. Hussein Kamil's defection a few months later only dramatically underscored the fact that much of Iraq's unconventional weapons capability remained hidden.
The 1997 crisis, in significant respects, followed that pattern. But it also showed a serious flaw in the Clinton administration's approach to Iraq. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, after Saddam's August 1996 assault on the Kurdish city of Irbil decimated the U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition, described this situation as, "The administration's growing inability to tell the world--and itself--the truth." [14]
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Do a search.
(I am less than impressed with your "scholarship".)
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