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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (4961)	3/5/2003 3:03:12 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

Hawk...while out reading tonight, found this 1998!!! Iraq Biological Weapons Program....Most interesting from the NYTimes. Also, the Professor at the bottom of this is a man who has filed some sort of Impeachment papers for Bush for not doing his job per the Constitution.....(see the "Stop the War..." thread...unbelievable) Makes one wonder who is funding this Professor... Note this 1998!!!!! From the Clinton years and what we knew but didn't find then either.... How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER search.nytimes.com 11+0+wAAA+nuclear 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 KLP Note: This is the law Professor from the U of Ill that has filed an Impeachment document against GWB recently.... Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, Ill. 61820 Phone: 217-333-7954 Fax: 217-244-1478 fboyle@law.uiuc.edu