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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lou Weed who wrote (87372)	3/28/2003 4:19:54 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

With all due respect, your question about bubonic plague indicates that you are speculating about issues in which your education is lacking. Bubonic plague is endemic in the Middle East. People in the US get it, too, but rarely (I think 5-10 cases per year.) It's treatable with antibotics and has a high survival rate. How do you develop antibiotics, treatments, cures, and preventatives, if you can't test them against cultures or infected lab animals to see if they work?

To: Lou Weed who wrote (87372)	3/28/2003 4:40:45 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>Saddam adviser studied at MU By NATE CARLISLE of the Tribune’s staff Published Friday, March 28, 2003 The woman who U.S. intelligence officials say is a top Iraqi biological weapons scientist is a University of Missouri-Columbia alumna who was once issued a summons by campus police for disturbing a speech about Iraq and Iran. U.S. Intelligence officials believe this image taken from a video on Iraqi television yesterday shows Huda Salih Mahdi Amash, one of Saddam Hussein's top biological weapons scientists. Amash received her doctorate in 1983 from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Seated next to Amash is Saddam's son, Qusai. Huda Amash received her doctorate from the MU microbiology area program in 1983, according to campus records. Yesterday, she was seen on Iraqi television with Saddam Hussein. The video recording of the meeting, which included other Iraqi leaders, was portrayed as current by Iraqi television, but U.S. officials said it was unclear when it was made. Intelligence officials, speaking to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, said that one of those on the video was Amash, who is believed to have played a key role in rebuilding Baghdad’s biological weapons capability in the mid-1990s. Amash’s 1983 doctoral thesis was titled "The Effects of Selected Free Radical Generating Agents on Metabolic Processes in Bacteria and Mammals." According to the paper, she was born on Sept. 26, 1953, in Baghdad and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Baghdad in 1975. She came to America "on a scholarship from the Iraqi government to complete her graduate study" and earned a master’s degree from Texas Women’s University. She came to MU in the fall of 1979. She dedicated the paper to her parents and also thanked her husband, Ahmed, and children, Zena and Sayf Al-Deen. According to an MU police report, Amash was among a crowd of about 200 who on April 2, 1983, gathered in Allen Auditorium to hear a speaker discuss conflict between Iran and Iraq. "I remember we were having trouble with a couple in the group," MU Police Maj. Jack Watring said this morning. "I think it was during the Iran-Iraq war and there were a couple in the group who disrupted it." The report, which spells her name "Hoda Amash," says Amash began yelling and disrupting the speech and was removed from the auditorium. She then was issued a summons. "Mrs. Hoda Amash was not cooperative," reads the last line of the report. University payroll records say Amash was a graduate research assistant in the Dalton Research Center from June 1981 until she resigned Oct. 20, 1983. Her annual salary was $5,920. Over the years, Amash has been cited in many news articles and a few books that mostly discuss the impact sanctions have had on Iraq. But the fact that she attended MU was apparently not common knowledge until NBC and CNN reported it last night. News reports all spell Amash’s name "Ammash," however MU records spell her name with only one ‘m.’ MU also lists her full name as "Huda Saleh Amash" while news reports from CNN and the AP give it as "Huda Saleh Mehdi Ammash." Richard Finkelstein, who served as chairman of the microbiology department at the MU School of Medicine from 1979 to 1993, said he never heard of Amash until last night. Finkelstein was quick to say this morning that Amash should not be referred to as having graduated from MU with a microbiology degree. In the early 1980s, according to Finkelstein, MU had what was called a "microbiology area" where the medical school, the College of Veterinary medicine and other schools and departments contributed to educating students wanting to study microbiology but who couldn’t get accepted to a specific college’s program. "The department of microbiology prides itself on its graduates," Finkelstein said. "I can’t say the same about the area program. "If she graduated from the area program, I feel a lot better about" Iraq’s "weapons," Finkelstein added.<< showmenews.com

To: Lou Weed who wrote (87372)	3/28/2003 4:43:31 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

>>Iraq's leading biologist, dubbed "Dr Germ", has refused to meet UN weapons inspectors but did agree to talk to Panorama Reporter Jane Corbin. Panorama's Jane Corbin reports In the forbidding building of the National Monitoring Directorate security men were waiting to escort me along a dim corridor. A portrait of Saddam Hussein stood in one corner. It was the first time the woman dubbed "Dr Germ" and even "toxic Taha" had ever agreed to be interviewed. Dr Rihab Taha was head of Iraq's biological weapons programme for seven years, until 1995. And she is top of the list of scientists the UN team want to interview. I asked her if she was ashamed of her past work. "No, not at all," came Taha's answer. "Iraq has been threatened by different enemies, and we are in an area which suffers from regional conflict. It is our right to defend ourselves." Liver cancer While she acknowledged research and development into biological agents, she insisted the regime never weaponised the bacteria it developed. "We never intended to use it," she continued. "We never wanted to cause harm or damage to anybody." But the facts are undeniable. Dr Taha's team grew 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin, a food poison that swells the tongue and suffocates its victim. Two thousand litres of aflatoxin were produced, which causes liver cancer. And they also prepared gas gangrene, which causes skin to melt away. UN weapons inspectors discovered munitions filled with these agents dumped in a river, proving they had indeed been weaponised. Hiding weapons Dr Taha studied plant toxins at the University of East Anglia, between 1980 and 1984. She had been sent by the regime, like others, to gain the expertise which Saddam intended to harness for military purposes. She would become extremely emotional and cry to put us off the scent Former UN weapons inspector By 1991 she was responsible for three of the country's major bio facilities and was responsible for transportation, concealment and deployment of munitions. She married General Amer Rashid who became the man in charge of liaising with UN inspectors after the Gulf War. He was later appointed Iraq's oil minister. For years Dr Taha insisted her work at the al- Hakem laboratory was veterinary science for civilian purposes. "She would become extremely emotional and cry to put us off the scent," one former inspector remembered. Deadly poisons When a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein defected in 1995, the UN learned the truth about what was going on at al-Hakem. But they have been unable to account for 8,500 litres of anthrax and large quantities of growth medium to culture germs. The al-Hakem laboratory was destroyed by the UN And there has been no definitive answer to the question of whether Iraq has developed viruses such as smallpox and haemorrhagic fever. The inspectors want to talk to Dr Taha about small-scale biological production she is believed to have pioneered after the destruction of al-Hakem. Intelligence sources believe small stocks of agents are held in laboratories hidden in lorries and trains. An Iraqi defector recently told Panorama that he fitted out special "clean rooms" for biological weapons manufacture, describing filtration systems and confirming "everything is mobile now". In the event of war, the labs could produce large stocks of agents to fill munitions. These could be used against Western forces or even the Iraqi people if an uprising threatens the regime. Missing anthrax Dr Taha said she works as a consultant to the National Monitoring Directorate, carrying out administrative work and writing up old research projects. She denied doing any work on pathogens now. She did help the ministry compile the biological section of the Iraqi weapons declaration, intended to rebut US and British charges that Iraq is hiding forbidden weapons programmes. Dr Taha rejects Hans Blix's assertions that there are gaps in the document, notably a failure to account for missing anthrax. "We have been very transparent... It's just psychological propaganda to throw doubt on Iraq." She was vague on why the UN and Iraqi accounts do not agree, saying that the inspectors calculation of the amount of anthrax they produced is unrealistic. Threats "Would you speak to the Inspectors privately?" I asked Dr Taha. "No I do not trust them. It is better to have witnesses," she replied. I watched the Iraqi officials present at the meeting writing down her words. It was impossible to tell from her neutral tone what her true feelings were. US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke of intelligence which indicated Iraqi scientists had been warned of serious consequences if they revealed any sensitive information. And according to Mr Powell, a false death certificate was issued for one scientist while he was sent into hiding. Other experts have been placed under house arrest. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz shrugged off these accusations, insisting: "They are free people." Rumour and fear I knew Dr Taha had no choice but to repeat the denials. And I knew she had worked on terrible scenarios of mass murder in her laboratories. But I felt a twinge of apprehension for her, whatever she had done. There were rumours her estranged husband was in trouble for daring to argue with Saddam Hussein that Iraq should come clean with the UN. A few days ago, I received a call. A Kurdish newspaper was reporting that Dr Taha had been murdered. The report alleged it was to stop her confessing what she knew to inspectors. An Iraqi official denied this, calling the report "shameless propaganda". In the murky pool of rumour, propaganda and fear that swirls around Baghdad, there is no way of knowing where Rihab Taha is now and what secrets she still protects. << news.bbc.co.uk

To: Lou Weed who wrote (87372)	3/28/2003 5:25:40 PM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

On February 9, 1994, Chairman Donald W. Riegle, Jr. disclosed on the U.S. Senate floor that the U.S. government actually licensed the export of deadly microorganisms to Iraq. It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program If you see the Commerce Dept list of where the biological materials were delivered to, one interesting delivery place was the Iraq Atomic Energy Agency...an odd place to send biological material to. I gave the link to CB ...she blew it off as 20-20 hindsight. jttmab