DAVID KELLY GOES AWOL

[Helms]

Timesink- I meant to post as follows:

I was with you then (NYT) and I am with you now (BBC). Lets see how many news organizations of "record" go down in flames. Hey Chelsea got a six figure job, why can't we? Because the only person i can pardon is myself.

[AAABEST]

Thank you guys, every once in a while I draw a blank and need to be told what to think from long-timers.

[browardchad]

Kelly left Porton Down in 1992. What the Telegraph fails to mention is that in 1993, according to my notes, Porton Down's anthrax defense program was privatized by Speywood Holdings, Ltd., and ultimately controlled (through shell companies), by a Saudi (Citibank) investment banker, Fuad El- Hibri, who is believed to have supplied anthrax "research" samples to Saudi Arabia after Britain refused to do so. El-Hibri also later gained control of the sole U.S. anthrax vaccine manufacturer, Intervac.

It's interesting that in the '98 fas.org reference, Kelly is worried about the spraying of bio weapons by Iraq, but in recent testimony, he told Parliament that he could have told the BBC reporter there was only "a 30% chance" Iraq had WMD. Another Ritter maybe?

[lainde]

bttt

[PhilDragoo]

The Anthrax Vaccine Labyrinth by Jim Rarey

Bioport. Porton. Speywood. All conveniently located on Mobius Strip.

No one's seen Andrew Gilligan and Baghdad Bob together.

[Edmund Burke]

My thought exactly. Was Clinton there to advise fellow socialist Blair on how to off this guy and save his job?

[Grampa Dave]

Does David Kelly look like this guy?

[Miss Marple]

It was manifestly not in Blair's interest to off this guy.

My guess is someone who had it in for Blair, since his government is going to be non-stop investigations for the next few months.

[arasina]

Thank you for posting the Oral Evidence. Very interesting, and I must also say, very confusing.

[arasina]

"...I don't see how he (the reporter, Gilligan) could make the autoritative statements he was making from comments that I made."

That's the same quote that poked me in the eye. But some of Dr. Kelly's other comments could be called circumlocution. At one point, he says he met Gilligan in September of 2002 and earlier he said he knew him for over a year? I guess I just don't get it...yet.

[cyncooper]

It's interesting that in the '98 fas.org reference, Kelly is worried about the spraying of bio weapons by Iraq, but in recent testimony, he told Parliament that he could have told the BBC reporter there was only "a 30% chance" Iraq had WMD. Another Ritter maybe?

Another interesting turnaround, akin to Ritter, and perhaps Kelly, is Joseph Wilson who went to Niger in 2002 and says he found nothing suspicious. It seems in 1999 Wilson was approached by a businessman to help open trade between Iraq and Niger and he, Wilson himself, interpreted this to refer to procurement of uranium. He omitted this 1999 incident in his recent NY Times op-ed.

[piasa]

No, he's not a Kelly. He's a Kay or McKay, something like that.

[piasa]

This is the guy you are thinking of.

David Kay, a former U.N. chief nuclear weapons inspector, said on "NBC Nightly News" that U.S. forces had collected a massive amount of documents that when completely analyzed would prove ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

[sam_paine]

Riiiight. I finally connected it. But the Kelly story started breaking immediately after the first whispers of the Kay story, and it's hard to keep track on the sidebar!!!

[apokatastasis]

David Kelly's death is consistent with a modified version of the anthrax cover-up theories purveyed by banned freeper "The Great Satan". Kelly was head of microbiology at Porton Down in August 1988, when Iraq tried to acquire the Ames anthrax strain there. Officially, those requests were refused. But who knows what happened off the record?

That was the year in which the Iran-Iraq war finally ended. It seems that in 1987 Iran was winning, so the West decided to back Iraq unreservedly. The war turned around for Iraq, and on 8 August 1988, Iran agreed to a ceasefire, partly out of fear of Iraq's unconventional weapons.

So here is the scenario. The decision was made by someone - I won't guess who, or how many were in the loop - to covertly assist Iraq's nascent WMD programs, going so far as to allow Iraq to acquire some of the leftovers of Western biowarfare research. At the time, this was seen merely as "playing hardball" with Iran. No-one imagined how much trouble *Iraq* would go on to cause, and certainly no-one imagined that thirteen years later, those same leftovers would be showing up in the mailbag at Capitol Hill. So the anthrax letters had to be dissociated from 9/11; and David Kelly had to be killed before he give away the reason why.

[apokatastasis]

Or perhaps he did kill himself, but for reasons stretching further back than people think.

[Timesink]

Timesink, please add me. Thanks!

Okay, you're on!

[piasa]

The problem with that theory is that while there was much concern about Iran, the concern about Iraq was nearly as great and the desired outcome was a stalemate or a swift cease fire. To say anyone, save perhaps the French, Russians, Indians and Chinese, "unreservedly backed Iraq" is a huge stretch. (And even some of them had reservations- the reason Iraq turned to France for reactors was because the USSR had turned them down, leaving Iraq with only an old research reactor from earlier Soviet deals in the 60s.) The types of weapons found strewn about in Iraq indicate very well who was "unreservedly" backing Iraq; that's no American or UK junkyard- it's a junkyard full of stagnant soviet water and an abundance of Frogs.

Iraq had sought WMD long before the Iran Iraq war. It was dealing secretly through Brazil in the seventies for the stuff. The seventies was also when the USSR established Biopreparat, its bioweapons program which the west had no clue about until Yeltsin revealed it after the USSR crumbled. Up to then, our great international oversight organizations had assumed that a mysterious outbreak of anthrax in the USSR was just caused by "tainted meat," of all things. And it was in the seventies that there was an outbreak of smallpox in Iraq- which may have been natural, or maybe not. THere were rumors that the USSR had provided smallpox to Iraq, but it may be that it was already found there.

Providing anthrax or other bioweapons to Iraq wouldn't have a favorable cost/benefit ratio and would not change the outcome - not to mention that if it was handed over at that time it would take too long to produce and make dispersion devices for Iraq to make use of it in any conflict with Iran. If some outsiders wanted to tip the balance one way or another, biological weapons would be a very poor and inefficient way to do it. There were so many other much easier and cost effective ways to assist one side or the other that it would be foolish to choose bioweapons.

That doesn't mean Iraq wouldn't try to get what it could from western sources as well as its more traditional allies. German companies illegally supplied centrifuge tech and incubators, etc, for example. Capacitors were smuggled from US companies. Tubing was obtained from South Africa, etc. Iraq managed to acquire dual use items from darn near everyone that manufactured them, mostly through front companies and agents living abroad as citizens of other countries, but in some cases as with the German centrifuge expert and his Brazilian cohorts, the sellers knew very well where their products were going.

Biological weapons are last-ditch weapons, not much use for winning wars but useful to prvent anyone from wanting to tart one. They are good for revenge- after a war. They can slow an enemy advance by making them gear up, but aside from that aren't very effective or efficient. It takes way too much time for the victims to get sick to have an effect on a battle. For terrorism, perhaps, but in war they aren't worthwhile.

With Iranian forces inside Iraq, bioweapons would only sicken or kill Iraqis who live there, and probably do little against Iranian troops; this would not be considered a successful way to counter Iran when even the most rudimentary covert training of Iraqi troops would have been sufficient. Supplying them with training and a few better weapons or air cover would have ben quite useful; but instead of the US or UK, we see the French providing Mirage fighters and Exocets, and the weapons we see strewn about Iraq are with few exceptions, Chinese, Jordanian, Russian, etc.

It was clear enough from watching their tactics that Iraq wasn't getting advice from US or UK advisors.

Neither side was using their weapons well- the Iraqis weren't even using their tanks' targetting equipment or mobility but were practically eyeballing their shots while doing litle else. The tactics were just rotten. Iran wasn't much better since they had arrested or killed off the Shah's US-trained officers, leaving the mullahs to give orders to glassy-eyed kids hyped up on jihadist rhetoric. There wasn't a need to give either side any big push when it was easier to let them wear each other down.

The reason the US turned so vigorously on Iran was because Iran was actively attacking US and allied shipping and Iran was lobbing missiles across the Gulf at Kuwait, and was trying to annoy us with slash attacks using its speedboat navy. It wasn't because we or anyone else had any love for Iraq or a desire for Iraq to win, and we dealt with the situation quite openly and conventionally, wiping out a chunk of the Iranian navy and capturing a number of Iranians, as well as some of their oil platform bases.

Iraq was more likely than anything to obtain what it needed direct from the USSR's biopreparat program -a program the USSR denied until Yeltsin finally revealed it after the USSR had collapsed- or from everyone's good buddies, the French. Since Iraq bought most everything else from them, it's much more reasonable to suspect they boughtor traded most of their bioweapons from them, too, instead of looking for all suspects in the UK or US. The reason there's so much crap out there pointing towards western countries like the US and UK, is because western countries have a free press and Cuba, for example, does not. As a result, Cuba's participation in selling WMD and biolabs is virtually unknown, just as was Biopreparat in the USSR. Cuba before 911 opened a buioresearch lab in Teheran, Iran, for example, which is odd considering that Iran produces almost all the pharmaceuticals it needs already. Castro announced the opening on a trip he undertook in the months prior to 911 through Iran, Syria and Libya, and elswhere. Aside from Carter's rather weak propaganda attempt to diffuse Bolton's claim on a Cuban facility by having himself photographed out front, (he didn't get inside as he had claimed he would)little mention has been made of Cuba as a supplier of bioweapons research technologies. There's not much to mention- Cuba doesn't have a FreeRepublic, or a free press of any kind to uncover any details or do any investigations. Iraq was the same way. There is no freedom of information act in these countries, and it works like a charm to keep their activities from being investigated.

The sheer volume of real data as well as purely fake theory always works in favor of the totalitarian state when it comes to the blame game. And since the totalitarian state, or any other enemies of the US and UK have just as much access to our media as we do, and more so since they propagandize as a matter of policy using professionals under the guise of "unnamed / anonymous souces."

Meanwhile, we have virtually no access to their population, little information about their programs, and so we can only pick over reports on our own programs, making it look even more suspicious for lack of discussion of news on alternative possibilities.

The people who helped Iraq with WMD didn't do so because of the Iran-Iraq war. Money is more likely the reason for most, and for some perhaps a shared dislike of the US, UK and Israel figured in as well.

[Timesink]

Please add me to the ever-growing ping list. Thanks.

Well, I dunno if you're really cool enough...

Just kidding *grin*. You're added!

[Timesink]

Timesink, could you please add me to your ping list? Thank you.

Done!