Posted on 10/22/2001 12:49:12 AM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:01:43 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
October 22, 2001 -- A cunning woman scientist who heads Saddam Hussein's bio-terrorism team may be the mastermind behind the world's anthrax scare, a leading American germ warfare expert says.
Rihab Taha, 45, is so notorious that United Nations weapons inspectors have nicknamed her "Dr. Germ" for deadly experiments she conducted.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
FM and FD interesting eh?
"...Since the Gulf War, Taha, a British-trained biologist, has made a career of thwarting U.N. officials at every turn. She is, says one of them, "a consummate liar." First she claimed that her program had been strictly defensive, and then that all Iraq's biological agents had been destroyed. When inspectors uncovered caches of germ agents, she blandly claimed that only a few small quantities had survived. "Iraq has said that it destroyed stockpiles of biological weapons after the war," says Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. "We have absolutely no confirmation that that has happened. We assume that they do have some stockpiles of biological weapons." In addition to thousands of gallons of anthrax and botulinum and smaller quantities of other poisons, some "weaponized" germs are unaccounted for: artillery shells, missile warheads and bombs filled with toxins..."
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1997/dom/971201/world.germ_warfare_.html
-- she is married to the Minister of Oil, Amir Rashid Ubaydi, who helps direct Iraqi relations with UNSCOM.
http://www.csis.org/mideast/reports/mbmeXIVWMD31599.pdf
Iraq didn't wake up and find anthrax or smallpox. They bought it or found it in one of the former Soviet states.
"...Iraq today carried out a threat to freeze its oil exports under UN control, taking 2.3 million barrels of oil off the market in order to protest the UN Security Council's renewal for one month, rather than the standard six months, of the "oil-for-food" program under which the country exports oil in exchange for humanitarian assistance...Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi said yesterday, however, that exports will resume only if the UN renews the existing program for six months. ..."
June of this year.
http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/2001/06/04/index.asp
Maybe they got anthrax from that source too, but didn't the Commerce Department approve sales of anthrax to them in the 1980's, and didn't that outfit then in Rockville and now in Virginia send anthrax to them?
Gosh. Scott Ritter says everything was destroyed, aside from that "final 10 percent" which was the internal Iraqui inventory documentation that would have allowed him to confirm the destruction. No, they wouldn't let him see that.
Not to worry, though. Ritter is confident that he had complete access to everything in Iraq, because he "even got into Saddam Hussein's bathroom."
What is wrong with this picture?
However, the development of improved strains would accelerate if the strains came from Russia with built in advances.
Also the most effective way to create more virulent strains in a small amount of time is to use humans instead of green monkeys.
The soviets developed a strain of Marburg called Varient U named after Nikolai Ustinov, a Soviet scientist, who accidently injected himself with Marburg. After he crashed and died his autopsy showed that the Marburg had become more powerful and more stable.
So it's no stretch to assume that if the Iraqis have the means to test on people that they could develop bacteria and viruses that the Soviets only dreamed of.
Right on!
Got a report here that Saddam has eliminated her:
Iraqi bio-scientist breaks silence
see bottom of the article:
There were rumours her estranged husband was in trouble for daring to argue with Saddam Hussein that Iraq should come clean with the UN.
A few days ago, I received a call. A Kurdish newspaper was reporting that Dr Taha had been murdered. The report alleged it was to stop her confessing what she knew to inspectors.
An Iraqi official denied this, calling the report "shameless propaganda".
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