Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs - No Political Rants -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paul_philp who wrote (262)	3/5/2003 3:15:42 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 504

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> **************** 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

To: paul_philp who wrote (262)	3/5/2003 1:09:04 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 504

The Iranian-Election Revolt The people speak. The West won’t listen. March 4, 2003 Once again, there is big news out of Iran, and once again the Western media refuse to see what is in front of their noses. Iran held municipal elections over the weekend. All the regime's big guns had implored the people to turn out in record numbers, to demonstrate that the people were committed to participation in the Islamic Republic. Supreme Leader Khamenei, Eminence Grise Rafsanjani, and President Khatami — the vapid matinee idol of the New York and Los Angeles Times apologists — made clear their desperate desire for a record turnout. Be careful what you ask for. There was a record turnout, but it was a negative record. The official reports speak of a ten-percent turnout in Tehran and other major cities, with higher participation elsewhere. If those numbers were accurate, it would represent a massive abstention, and hence an enormous vote of no confidence in the system. But the real numbers are worse still: Of the roughly seven million people entitled to vote in Tehran, less than 70,000 actually voted. I make that about one percent. These data come directly from a high-ranking official involved in the elections office, who was shocked by the results. The Iranian people rejected the regime in the most unmistakable way, yet the "story" you read in our newspapers is that the hard liners routed the reformers in something resembling a real election. As if the Iranian people, after years of mass demonstrations against the mullahcracy, after thousands of freedom fighters had sacrificed their lives in protest against Islamic oppression, had suddenly seen the darkness and decided they preferred tyranny to freedom. Or perhaps they had heard the shameful nonsense emanating from the mouth of Deputy Secretary of State Armitage ("Iran is a democracy") and decided that since the Supreme Leader was a confirmed democrat, the best path to liberty was to give the regime a huge vote of confidence. No way. The elections were a protest non-vote, pure and simple. The pathetic Khatami and his apologists at the BBC and elsewhere in the Western media are now crying that "the system" is being undermined and chances for reform have been weakened, but they have totally missed the point. Chances for reform are nil so long as Khamenei and Rafsanjani are in command, and the Iranian people are disgusted with Khatami's failed promises and empty gestures. He's not only ineffectual, but a coward to boot. He's threatened to resign with monotonous regularity, but never does it. He promised reforms but has produced none at all, and there is manifestly less freedom today than when he came to office. If we had had any honest reporters in Tehran for the past two weeks, they would have put the elections in their proper context. The vote came hard on the heels of a weeklong demonstration for the benefit of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which visited Iran on a fact-finding mission. Headed by the usual Frenchman, the commission managed to complain about the protracted use of solitary confinement in Iranian prisons. But they did not denounce the more terrible practices such as torture and arbitrary executions. Indeed, while they were in Iran, the regime rounded up five more newspaper editors and locked them up, with no protest from the commissioners. And apparently the commissioners did not insist on interviewing the country's most celebrated prisoners, like student leader Tabarzadeh or the recently arrested jurist Sholeh Sadi, who had bravely denounced the regime in uncompromising language. And unbeknownst to the commissioners, the regime had staged a "dry run" for the prisoners. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed agents of the regime, pretending to be commissioners, were sent into the prisons to interview prisoners. Those who complained about maltreatment were isolated, and maltreated some more. Those who spoke well about their conditions were permitted to be interviewed by the real commissioners. God willing, Judgment Day is coming to the Middle East, and the long-suffering people of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia will get their chance to be free. I have no doubt that they will have suitably harsh words for the Western governments and journalists who failed to help them, or even tell the real story. nationalreview.com