Paul...Found this tonight.. 1998 - How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light
KLP Note: Posted this as well on Hawk's board...It should clear up for some what was happening 5 years ago and compare with what is going on today. One would really think that eventually people will begin to "connect the dots"... The same problems in the previous Administration as there are today...and still Saddam laughs, and plays with the UN. Note the drones comment here as well. Looks like they aren't a "new thing".... One also just has to ask why the UN didn't listen to Butler...his comments are here as well.
PS...When KL is posting, you can call me KLP so we don't confuse folks as to who is whom....<g>
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By WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JUDITH MILLER
search.nytimes.com
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The New York Times
February 26, 1998
How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
and JUDITH MILLER
In a January day in 1995, Dr. Rod Barton, a United Nations weapons
inspector with a gambler's instinct, decided to try bluffing the Iraqis.
Ever since their defeat in the Persian Gulf war, they had steadfastly
denied ever making any kind of germ weapons, despite much evidence to
the contrary.
Barton, a 46-year-old Australian biologist, did not have much in his
hand -- just two pieces of paper. The documents proved nothing but were
provocative: They showed that in the 1980s, Iraq had bought about 10
tons of nutrients for growing germs, far more than needed for civilian
work, from a British company.
"That was all I had," Barton recalled in an interview. "Not a full
house, just two deuces. So I played them both."
Sitting across from four Iraqi generals and scientists in a windowless
room near the University of Baghdad, Barton laid the documents on the
table. Did these, he asked, help refresh the Iraqis' memories?
"They went ashen," he recalled.
That meeting marked a turning point. In the months that followed, Iraq
dropped its denials and grudgingly admitted that it had run an elaborate
program to produce germ weapons, eventually confessing that it had made
enough deadly microbes to kill all the people on earth several times
over. . . .
Among the disclosures were these:
-- Just before the gulf war in 1991, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law began a crash military program intended to give Iraq the
ability to wipe out Israel's population with germ weapons, an Iraqi
general told inspectors. MiG fighters, each carrying 250 gallons of
microbes, were to be flown by remote control to release anthrax over
Israel. One pilotless plane was flight-tested with simulated germs just
before the war began, but the attack was never attempted.
-- The locations of more than 150 bombs and warheads built by the Iraqis
to dispense germs are a mystery, as are the whereabouts of a dozen
special nozzles that Iraq fashioned in the 1980s to spray germs from
helicopters and aircraft.
-- On nearly all recent missions, inspectors have found undeclared "dual
use" items like germ nutrients, growth tanks and concentrators, all of
which have legitimate uses but can also make deadly pathogens for
biological warfare.
Today, despite progress in penetrating Iraqi secrecy, inspectors say
they remain uncertain about most of Saddam's facilities to wage
biological warfare.
The inspectors have found traces of military germs and their seed stocks
but none of the thousands of gallons of biological agents that the
Iraqis made before the 1991 gulf war. Baghdad says it destroyed the
older material but offers no proof.
And the inspectors are unsure of the extent to which Iraq has solved the
technical challenges of delivering germs to targets -- a problem that
bedeviled other states experimenting with biological arms.
Finally, the U.N. inspectors have suspicions -- but no proof -- that
Baghdad is hiding germs and delivery systems. Their worries are based,
in part, on a chilling calculus of missing weapons: The United Nations
can account for only 25 of the 157 germ bombs that Iraq has acknowledged
making for its air force.
And inspectors have no idea of the whereabouts of some 25 germ warheads
made for missiles with a range of 400 miles; Baghdad says it destroyed
them but, again, offers no proof.
Richard Butler, chairman of the U.N. Special Commission charged with
eliminating such weapons, said in report after report that the
uncertainties are disturbing and legion. He recently told the Security
Council that the 639-page document that comprises Iraq's latest "full,
final and complete" declaration, its fifth to date, "fails to give a
remotely credible account" of Baghdad's long effort to make biological
arms. . . . [This report is quite extensive and provides more
information than found in ordinary news stories.]
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company |
