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Iraq's chemists bought anthrax from America
London Telegraph ^ | Filed 10-18-01 | London Telegraph

Posted on 10/17/2001 10:02:23 PM PDT by Salvation

Iraq's chemists bought anthrax from America
(Filed: 18/10/2001)

Saddam's bio-warfare scientists were trained in Britain and sent off for bacteria by mail order, reports Roger Highfield

THE intelligence community has focused on Iraq as a possible source of the anthrax used in the bio-terrorist attacks in America.

If Iraq is the culprit, it is likely that Saddam Hussein would have used one of 21 strains of the anthrax bacterium which his scientists bought by mail order from America in the 1980s.

In a further irony, most of the leading scientists in the Iraqi bio-warfare programme, including its project chief, Rihab Rashida Taha, were trained in Britain.

In 1995, three years before the United Nations special commission weapons inspectors were forced to pull out of the country, Iraq admitted that it had produced 2,000 gallons of anthrax.

The UN destroyed most of those supplies, but officials believe that Baghdad hid four times as much as was discovered.

Iraq still has the best biological expertise in the region and experts agree that, since the UN inspectors left, Saddam has been back in the bio-warfare business.

Britain has played an unwitting role in arming Iraq, although a spokesman for the successor to Unscom - the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission - said: "There is not an awful lot of difference between making vaccines and making bio-weapons - it is a bit unfair to mark those who supplied Iraq as guilty."

British companies exported to Iraq large quantities of the growth media in which biological weapons are cultivated and its leading scientists were trained here.

The covert biological weapons research programme was directed by Gen Amer Saadi, who obtained a masters degree in chemistry at Oxford, and Rihab Taha, who studied microbiology at the University of East Anglia, said Richard Spertzel, the UN's former chief biological inspector.

Overall supervision was conducted by Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, the director of Iraq's Military-Industrial Corp, and Ahmed Murthada, a British-trained engineer.

The country's biological weapons programme is believed to have started in 1974 at Salman Pak in the al-Hazan Ibn al-Hathem Institute, where Dr Taha arrived in 1980.

Five years later, Salman Pak was taken over by the Technical Research Centre and, in 1987, Dr Taha moved her team into the new al-Hakem facility at Salman Pak, where construction of facilities for production of anthrax began, among other agents.

At the time of the Gulf war, Iraq later acknowledged the large-scale production of anthrax spores and to have filled 50 bombs and five missile warheads with anthrax.

However, even in its "full, final and complete declaration" regarding its BW programme, submitted in September 1997, Baghdad continued to present the UN weapons inspectors with a false picture.

Iraq approached Porton Down in Britain for the Ames strain of the anthrax bacterium, said Dr Spertzel. "That [request] was fortunately denied," he said.

Iraq obtained much of its anthrax supply from the American Type Culture Collection. Between 1985 and 1989, it obtained at least 21 strains of anthrax from ATCC and about 15 other class III pathogens, the bacteria that pose an extreme risk to human health.

One strain had a British military pedigree and three of the other strains were listed as coming from the American military's biological warfare programme.

This came as a shock, said Dr Spertzel, although he added that at that time the ATCC had a policy to supply laboratories with credible reputations. The anthrax strains were ordered by the University of Baghdad and then diverted to the bio-warfare effort.

Mohamed Atta, the September 11 hijacker, reportedly had encounters with an Iraqi operative in Prague as recently as April and there have been reports of meetings between Iraqi agents and associates of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

However, Dr Spertzel added that what took place in these encounters, and whether bio-warfare was discussed, was a matter of speculation.

30 September 2001: Saddam has germ warfare arsenal, says defecting physicist
12 October 1995: Iraq's weapons could wipe out world, says UN


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
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Is Saddam next?
1 posted on 10/17/2001 10:02:23 PM PDT by Salvation
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To: Salvation
"...scientists bought by mail order from America in the 1980s."

Really? The United States never ceases to amaze me.

2 posted on 10/17/2001 10:12:54 PM PDT by WIMom
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To: Salvation
Interesting post . . .
3 posted on 10/17/2001 10:20:39 PM PDT by rainingred
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To: Askel5
ATCC? Where have I heard that before?

Quit baking for the firemen and get over here.

4 posted on 10/17/2001 10:28:36 PM PDT by nunya bidness
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To: Salvation
Deport science and engineering graduate students from terrorist nations now! The sleepers who came back in the late 80s now have their degrees and their citizenship and, for all we know, are well placed in our government agencies.
5 posted on 10/17/2001 10:38:37 PM PDT by Rockitz
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To: Salvation
Tonight on FOX news... it was reported the commanders in the middle east were being required to work on targets outside afghanistan related to the major terrorist groups that support al quiada and the taliban... and especially targets in the Sudan. I am VERY confident that this was a strategic "leak" by the Department of Defense... and means, well er, nothing.

IE: if we say sudan is next, SUDAN will say either "I give up first" or will prepare for the attack that is imminent (in their view) hee hee.... Either action tells us a lot IF we are watching carefully from Outer Space... which they all know WE ARE. Which leads us to Sodom Insane... if HE heard the slip, he is thinking; "Either this is a clever ploy by the Americans to try and get our guard down, so lets instead rev up the guard, hide the WMD's and get me to a bunker..." OR he is thinking "Whew, USA f'd up again... get the troops ready and fire up the WMD manufacturing... "

And once again, no matter his moves, we are watching... have already seen.. and are already making plans. Damn its tough to duck when a bomb is not coming... while waiting for the one that might be... until after the one that does... does!

No terrorist nation is safe. The "love-american-style" show with Bush/Cheney/Powell/Rice/Rummy, is a scripted act destined to turn each of our enemies against each other in violent acts of self preservation, to no avail. Since America defeated our best pals the brits in the art of assymetrical warfare... a la "patriot, the movie" style... it has been forgotten that WE not the Terrorist Scum, are the ones that INVENTED and PERFECTED guerilla warfare.

had we been "allowed" to win in Vietnam... we would have. No one wanted to.

The vaunted AFGHAN guerilla warriors got ALL of their training, assistance, and warfare planning from OUR guys... and defeated the former Soviet Communists. Truth be told, it was OUR strategists that WON that war, our special and black ops guys... our technology, our weapons, our strategic genius and intelligence assets... When I hear folks say how tough these pukes are, it makes me want to heave... had we not supported them... they would all be feeding pigs in Siberia... not farming them... the feed FOR them a-la-soviet occupation.

We may lose this entire nation... but it will be because of how Clinton cannibalised our national military prowess for " a fistful of dollars" and "a few dollars more."

We will NOT fall easily though... and OUR team is the best, has the best, and knows how to use the best available to achieve the desired outcomes. I am VERY proud of my family members, americans, soldiers, pilots and marines. They do their jobs well. I pray they live to share the joy of their homecoming to a FREE nation...

Iraq, you better gdamn believe it are on the list... as to whether they are next, near the top, or have a snowball's chance in hell of getting off of it before its too late, we will have to leave to our elected leadership. God help them do it best, do it right, do it till its done.

6 posted on 10/17/2001 10:40:41 PM PDT by eccl1212
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To: Salvation
What's kind of scary is the little tidbit about the Ames strain of Anthrax. Request denied, fortunately the article says. So the question remains: WTF is the Ames Strain, and why are we glad Saddam Insane didn't get it?

It also begs the next question: Could Saddam and his party-pastry crew of bioterroristas manage to find their butts in the dark with a flashlight and both hands long enough to develop a strain similar to Ames?

Who has these answers? Inquiring minds want to know.

And in the meantime, which filter should I be putting on my gas mask to keep out those spores?

Excuse me, I have to change my tinfoil hat now. Mind control waves, you know.

David

7 posted on 10/17/2001 10:47:06 PM PDT by DGallandro
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To: Salvation
most of the leading scientists in the Iraqi bio-warfare programme,
including its project chief, Rihab Rashida Taha, were trained in Britain.

The doctor is a woman,and nicknamed Dr. Germ

and this...

The article introduces us to Dr. Rihab Rashida Taha, Iraq's long-time chief of bioweapons production. She trained in the United Kingdom and is known to various American inspectors as "Dr. Germ". She is attributed with thwarting United Nations officials at every turn. Of more concern is the subsequent revelation about bioweapons. According to a Pentagon official, they can be produced using a recipe found on the Internet, a beer fermenter, a culture, a gas mask and a total investment of around 10,000 dollars. The official says:

"If you buy commercial equipment and put it in a very small room you can be producing anthrax within a month".

8 posted on 10/17/2001 11:04:16 PM PDT by PRND21
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To: DGallandro
Could Saddam and his party-pastry crew of bioterroristas manage to find their butts in the dark with a flashlight and both hands long enough to develop a strain similar to Ames?

Absolutely. The head of the chemical/biological research was profiled on 60 minutes a while back and she is a brilliant scientest. Very much a zealot, too, whichi is a scary combination. I remember watching it thinking, "Now that's one person the CIA outta take out."
9 posted on 10/17/2001 11:08:33 PM PDT by MikeJG
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Comment #10 Removed by Moderator

Comment #11 Removed by Moderator

To: WIMom
Jihad in America

real player

12 posted on 10/17/2001 11:17:02 PM PDT by FITZ
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To: Salvation

Nuke The Bastards!!!


13 posted on 10/18/2001 12:16:40 AM PDT by GreenGrouper
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To: MikeJG
I wonder how many of her manuals we'll find lying around the USA once this sorry mess is (mostly) cleaned up. If masses of it are this easy to cook up, it is being done stateside. Why bother smuggling in large quantities?
14 posted on 10/18/2001 12:20:31 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
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To: Rockitz
"Deport science and engineering graduate students from terrorist nations now!"

Here's an historical flashback.

Hossein Sheikholeslam was a leading figure among the thugs that took over the American Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. He was also a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. On October 22, 1983 Sheikholeslam checked out of the Sheraton in Beruit, the day before the explosions at the Marine and French Compounds. Both events showed the terrorists in the Islamic World that terrorism can drive the Americans and Western nations out of the Middle East.

15 posted on 10/18/2001 3:54:58 AM PDT by prometheus
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To: PRND21
Taha is one scary monster. Anybody who devotes her life to finding more and more gruesome ways to kill human beings doesn't deserve to be called one.
16 posted on 10/18/2001 3:58:54 AM PDT by shezza
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To: Salvation
Sounds like we are one screwed up country. No enforceable borders, no immigration enforcement, no airline security, no cia of value, a comprimised fbi, a sold out senate and congress and the biologicals with which we are being threatened came from us. Something is very wrong with this picture. Sounds like we've been had.
17 posted on 10/18/2001 3:59:57 AM PDT by Osinski
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To: trax2001
Speaking of Russians, the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the Russian mafia, and their ties to bio-warfare, take a peek at this story. Guaranteed to widen eyes and tingle spines.
18 posted on 10/18/2001 4:03:48 AM PDT by shezza
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To: Rockitz
Speaking of foreign graduate students, I wonder if the mail from Princeton (Zip code 08540) would go through the Trenton post office. I wonder how many foreign graduate students and technicians at Princeton University would have access to anthrax.
19 posted on 10/18/2001 4:58:18 AM PDT by aristeides
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To: Salvation
One of Bill Clintoon first orders was to revamp how we handle training medical students in this country. He dug deep into his bag of cronies and pulled out Donna Shallala (I can't keep from hearing Eric Clapton when I hear her name)to make it happen.

Anyway, as a result it became increasingly harder for our young men and women to get accepted into medical schools because the desks were being filled with more and more foreign medical students. Remember the raid on Grenada? Remember the medical school that was liberated? It was filled with OUR kids! Americans who were smart enough but, had the wrong birthplace to make the cut.Loads of our kids were being forced to apply and attend overseas if they wanted to pursue medicine.

So, we start filling our medical schools and hospitals with students and residents from other countries. Some of the kids are from wealthy middle eastern families. Some are government sponsored.

It appears that in fact....we DID train the same doctors and biochemists that are now raining down Antrax and God knows what else on our heads.

While we are sweeping up our state department over willie nilly visas we also need to address the fiasco Bill Clintoon spawned in our medical community. We have the best medicine on the planet. Our medical school should be off limits to non-citizens.

Our farmers feed the world...but why should our institutes of higher learning have to train them?

20 posted on 10/18/2001 5:05:08 AM PDT by Fighting Irish
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