Free Republic

'Dr Germ' and 'Mrs Anthrax' released from Iraqi jail 19/12/2005 - 12:48:51 Notorious Saddam-Hussein-era officials have been released from jail in Iraq and some have already left the country, an Iraqi lawyer said today. A legal official in Baghdad said between 24 and 25 top former officials in Saddam Hussein’s government have been freed, including Rihab Taha, known as Dr Germ, and Huda Salih Ammash, known as as Mrs Anthrax. The Iraqi lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref, said some of those released were his clients. “The release was an American-Iraqi decision and in line with an Iraqi government ruling made in...

Reported on Swedish Radio News 5.45 PM (GMT+1): After a two day search among the countless graves outside the Abu Greb prison 75 km west of Baghdad the headless body of the former Iraqi airforce general Ali Hussein Habib was found in a shallow grave. The body was identified by Habib's widow and brother in-law, Abu Haldoun. Habib was a retired air-force general who had been one of the persons in charge of the Iraqi chemical weapons program. General Habib was one of the few Iraqis who eventually agreed to be interviewed by UN weapons inspectors without any Iraqi government...

David Harrison in Baghdad uncovers the secret documents which expose the extent of Moscow's involvement The full extent of the help given to Saddam Hussein by Russia's intelligence services is laid bare in secret documents uncovered by The Telegraph. As well as spying on Tony Blair, Russian agents reported to Iraq that President George W. Bush hoped to justify war by provoking a conflict with the UN weapons inspectors. The documents were obtained from the smoking ruins of the federal headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (Iris) in central Baghdad. They show that, only months before war began, the Russian...

US Marines had a near miss when one of several Iraqi missiles fired at Kuwait landed near their camp in the Gulf Arab state's northern desert. "An unidentified missile struck outside Camp Commando at approximately 10.28 (0728 GMT) this morning," a statement by the US Marine Corps First Marine Expeditionary Force said."Initial reports cited that soldiers from the UK and (US) Marines sighted a grey missile land just outside the compound."Iraq retaliated after US missiles rained down on Baghdad - by firing four missiles on targets in Kuwait.Washington insisted the missiles were scuds but Baghdad insisted it did not...

THE chief United Nations weapons inspector denied yesterday that he was covering up finds in Iraq, even as it emerged that a second discovery had gone unreported to the UN Security Council. The same declassified UN report that revealed that inspectors had found an undeclared 7.45-metre drone also contained new information about the discovery in December of modified aircraft fuel tanks capable of spraying germ or chemical agents. But Hans Blix, the chief inspector, shrugged off suggestions by American and British officials that he tried to hide bad news from Security Council Foreign Ministers in his oral presentation last Friday....

The United States has accused Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, of burying potentially devastating revelations about new Iraqi weapons systems in his latest written report. The systems include outlawed rocket warhead cluster bombs that could scatter poison gas or germs over invading troops, and an unmanned aerial drone capable of dispensing chemical and biological weapons. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said omissions from Mr. Blix's verbal report to the UN Security Council last week raised questions that need to be answered. "There are outstanding questions, and all members of the Security Council, I think it is...

Welcome to PRI's The World: your daily international news magazine. Question: Ray Paulie was curios about something- “How the weapons inspections carried out by the UN and Iraq compare to the inspections carried out in Germany by France under the Peace Treaty of Versailles of 1919?” Comparison of Current Iraq Inspections and the Peace Treaty of Versailles 1919 by UNSCOM former Deputy Director Charles Duelfer Mullens: “French and other international inspectors did try to disarm Germany after the Treaty Of Versailles.” ”Who in the World turns to Charles Duelfer for a comparison with Iraq. For seven years Mr. Duelfer was...

CIA 'sabotaged inspections and hid weapons details' By Andrew Buncombe in Washington 14 February 2003 Senior democrats have accused the CIA of sabotaging weapons inspections in Iraq by refusing to co-operate fully with the UN and withholding crucial information about Saddam Hussein's arsenal. Led by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats accused the CIA of making an assessment that the inspections were unlikely to be a success and then ensuring they would not be. They have accused the CIA director of lying about what information on the suspected location of weapons of mass destruction had been passed on. The row is...

Ritter: On the Anti-War PathBy Julia GorinFrontPageMagazine.com | January 29, 2003 It's funny how soliciting sex from an underage girl can be the difference between Iraq having nuclear capability and not having nuclear capability.Just ask former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. In 1997, before Ritter was arrested for soliciting sex from a police officer posing as a teenager, Saddam Hussein indeed had been furtively building a nuclear arsenal, according to Ritter. But in 2002, a year after Ritter acquired a dirty little secret of his own, Hussein suddenly became beyond suspicion.Ritter has said that the timing "stinks," and lamented that...

Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector and an outspoken critic of war in Iraq, yesterday claimed he was the victim of a smear campaign after it emerged that he had been arrested in an internet sex sting in June 2001. Details of the arrest emerged in a local New York state newspaper last week. Reports said Mr Ritter, 44, had been charged with attempted child endangerment after arranging, in an online chatroom, to meet what he thought was a 16-year-old girlat a Burger King restaurant. The girl turned out to be an undercover policewoman. The case was later dismissed....

Quite a few conservatives, particularly neoconservatives, agree that President Bush has made the case for attacking Iraq. President Bush has obtained Congressional approval as well as the support of a U.N. Security Resolution to proceed with action against Iraq if Iraq does not comply with U.N. inspection and disarmament requests. Yet there are a few conservatives, including Bush's own Secretary of Defense, Colin Powell, who believe the U.S. should not start a war with Iraq, even if Saddam fails to comply completely with disarmanent and weapons inspection. There are intriguing arguments on both sides. Iraq has flaunted requests for weapons...

WASHINGTON -- The CIA delivered an initial assessment of Iraq's declaration of banned weapons programs to the White House on Wednesday amid growing concerns that the bulk of the 12,000-page dossier consists of previously discredited Iraqi reports. In particular, officials said, Iraq's account of its nuclear weapons program — totaling 2,081 pages, including a 113-page executive summary — appears to be largely a duplicate of Iraqi declarations delivered to U.N. inspectors in 1996 and 1997. Thousands more pages that Iraq submitted over the weekend on its biological and chemical weapons programs also appear to be copies of reports that U.N....

Germany has agreed to lend an unmanned reconnaissance plane and its supporting personnel to aid the United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq, it was announced Friday. Deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg said Germany would provide one of its LUNA X-2000 remote-controlled aircraft after the United Nations approached Berlin for help. The German army began testing the LUNA X-2000 in Kosovo two years ago. The drone is equipped with high-powered video cameras that transmit live pictures to operators on the ground. The supporting crew will be German soldiers who are officially on leave from the armed forces while doing UN work,...

Half-Hour Iraqi Delay Would Be Violation, Says Blix VOA News 16 Nov 2002, 14:33 UTC AP Hans Blix answers reporters' questions at Paris press conference The chief U.N. weapons inspector says if Iraq delays an inspection for even 30 minutes, it would be in serious violation of its obligations to the U.N. Security Council. Chief inspector Hans Blix made the comment Saturday to the Le Monde newspaper in Paris, where he and top aides have stopped over on their way to Baghdad. The inspectors arrive in the Iraqi capital Monday to prepare for the resumption of their search for weapons...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is facing his "last chance" to avoid giving the United States a legal basis for action against him, China's official English-language China Daily has said. The newspaper, in a strongly worded editorial aimed directly at Saddam, said on Wednesday he must fulfil a promise to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors fully or risk losing support against a U.S. invasion. "This is the last chance for Saddam Hussein to deprive the Americans of a legal case against himself," the paper said. "An Iraqi failure to satisfy the inspectors' requests might give Bush the excuse...

Washington File 20 September 2002 UN Arms Inspectors Preparing to Go to Iraq (UNMOVIC chief reports to Security Council) (630) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- The chief UN weapons inspector officially briefed the Security Council September 19 on preparations under way to begin inspections in Iraq, where, he said, "there will be no sanctuaries." Hans Blix, chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) said that he wants "to get off to a flying start" with inspections as soon as possible. He said that his upcoming meeting in Vienna with Iraqi...

An interview with Scott Ritter, Restaurant Inspector. Q. Mr. Ritter, in 1998 you were dismissed as a New York City food safety inspector after complaints from the “Taste of Tikrit” cafe. In subsequent testimony to the City Sanitation Board, you said the cafe “had mouse droppings in such quantity that they blocked the kitchen exits; the restaurant’s refrigeration consisted of one illegal immigrant waving a popsicle over a pile of chicken carcasses, and the owners were forced to play Led Zeppelin records at 120 decibels to drown out the sound of buzzing flies in the back.” You also noted that...

Thank you Mr President and the members of the Iraqi National Assembly for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. I understand that I appear before you today not only as the first American citizen to address your body, but also as the first non-governmental speaker as well. And I thank you for providing me with this historical opportunity. As you are well aware, we live in dangerous times with the threat of war looming on the horizon and the harsh reality of life without normalcy stalking your nation and indeed the entire Middle East on a daily...

"The inspectors don't have a chance."It's not a Pentagon hawk speaking out of a zeal to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq who insists that this is so. Instead, it's a former U.N. weapons inspector who speaks, simply, out of experience. Richard Spertzel was in Iraq 40 times as a U.N. inspector, but has a clear-eyed assessment of his handiwork. Before they ended altogether in 1998, inspections "were not very effective," Spertzel says, "and there's no reason to believe that conditions have changed — if anything they've gotten worse."The "international community," and many Democrats in Congress, want a return...