Hans Blix 1/27/2003

January.27.2003
U.N. Report: Anthrax, VX Nerve Gas, Missles Missing in Iraq [War in Iraq] - admin 19:55:43
U.N. Report: Anthrax, VX Nerve Gas, Missles Missing in Iraq

Professor Hans Blix, leader of the U.N. weapons inspector teams has released an initial report detailing Iraq�s weapons of mass destruction programs.

VX nerve gas is missing and unaccounted for by the Iraqis. The report details a smoking gun Iraqi Air Force document. �The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume these quantities are now unaccounted for.�

The Iraqis are hiding anthrax stores as well. �Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 litres of (anthrax), which it states it unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991.� Iraq failed to declare the illegal import of bacterial growth media. The quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 litres of concentrated anthrax.

Illegal importation of rocket motors for the Iraqi liquid-fuelled missile named the Al Samoud 2, and a solid propellant missile called the Al Fatah. �Foremost amongst these is the import of 380 rocket engines which may be used for the Al Samoud 2. What is clear is that they were illegally brought into Iraq, that is, Iraq or some company in Iraq circumvented the restrictions imposed by various resolutions.�

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saddam Hussein has �not much more time� to comply if he wants to avoid war. �The inspectors' findings came as no surprise,� Powell said. �To this day, the Iraq regime continues to defy the will of the United Nations.�

France and Germany issued a joint statement condemning the `rush to hostilities.' At a separate meeting in Versailles, French President Chirac said, `War is not inevitable,' and Germany�s Schroeder said he would use all his power to disarm Iraq without war.

What more evidence the French and German leaders need to be convince of Iraq violations of U.N. resolutions remains to be seen. However, there is growing debate the French and German goverments do not want the possible illegal transfers of material and weapons to Iraq during the years of sactions to come to public attention. This possible reason may be the reason for the French and German resistance to disarming a Iraqi mad man bent on genocide.


Resolution 1441

PS: Note that in respect to number 5 (1441) information in relation to underground facilties was never provided.

Also note the number of chemical bombs droped by
Iraq (in the above article)

Which by the way is there own admision

How did Iraq get its weapons? We sold them

Sunday Herald of Scotland 09/08/02: Neil Mackay and Felicity Arbuthnot

Original Link: www.sundayherald.com...

THE US and Britain sold Saddam Hussein the technology and materials Iraq needed to develop nuclear, chemical and biological wea pons of mass destruction.

Reports by the US Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs -- which oversees American exports policy -- reveal that the US, under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr, sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene.

Classified US Defence Dep-artment documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxine, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxine can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.

The Senate committee's rep orts on 'US Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq', undertaken in 1992 in the wake of the Gulf war, give the date and destination of all US exports. The reports show, for example, that on May 2, 1986, two batches of bacillus anthracis -- the micro-organism that causes anthrax -- were shipped to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education, along with two batches of the bacterium clostridium botulinum, the agent that causes deadly botulism poisoning.

One batch each of salmonella and E coli were shipped to the Iraqi State Company for Drug Industries on August 31, 1987. Other shipments went from the US to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission on July 11, 1988; the Department of Biology at the University of Basrah in November 1989; the Department of Microbiology at Baghdad University in June 1985; the Ministry of Health in April 1985 and Officers' City, a military complex in Baghdad, in March and April 1986.

The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam Hussein ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5000 men, women and children died. The atrocity, which shocked the world, took place in March 1988, but a month later the components and materials of weapons of mass destruction were continuing to arrive in Baghdad from the US.

The Senate report also makes clear that: 'The United States provided the government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-system programmes.'

This assistance, according to the report, included 'chemical warfare-agent precursors, chem ical warfare-agent production facility plans and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment, biological warfare-related materials, missile fabrication equipment and missile system guidance equipment'.

Donald Riegle, then chairman of the committee, said: 'UN inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licences issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programmes.'

Riegle added that, between January 1985 and August 1990, the 'executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record'.

It is thought the information contained in the Senate committee reports is likely to make up much of the 'evidence of proof' that Bush and Blair will reveal in the coming days to justify the US and Britain going to war with Iraq. It is unlikely, however, that the two leaders will admit it was the Western powers that armed Saddam with these weapons of mass destruction.

However, Bush and Blair will also have to prove that Saddam still has chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. This looks like a difficult case to clinch in view of the fact that Scott Ritter, the UN's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, says the United Nations des troyed most of Iraq's wea pons of mass destruction and doubts that Saddam could have rebuilt his stocks by now.

According to Ritter, between 90% and 95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were des troyed by the UN. He believes the remainder were probably used or destroyed during 'the ravages of the Gulf War'.

Ritter has described himself as a 'card-carrying Republican' who voted for George W Bush. Nevertheless, he has called the president a 'liar' over his claims that Saddam Hussein is a threat to America.

Ritter has also alleged that the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons emits certain gases, which would have been detected by satellite. 'We have seen none of this,' he insists. 'If Iraq was producing weapons today, we would have definitive proof.'

He also dismisses claims that Iraq may have a nuclear weapons capacity or be on the verge of attaining one, saying that gamma-particle atomic radiation from the radioactive materials in the warheads would also have been detected by western surveillance.

The UN's former co-ordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, Count Hans von Sponeck, has also told the Sunday Herald that he believes the West is lying about Iraq's weapons programme.

Von Sponeck visited the Al-Dora and Faluja factories near Baghdad in 1999 after they were 'comprehensively trashed' on the orders of UN inspectors, on the grounds that they were suspected of being chemical weapons plants. He returned to the site late in July this year, with a German TV crew, and said both plants were still wrecked.

'We filmed the evidence of the dishonesty of the claims that they were producing chemical and biological weapons,' von Sponeck has told the Sunday Herald. 'They are indeed in the same destroyed state which we witnessed in 1999. There was no trace of any resumed activity at all.'

A frightening possibilty is that Iraq no longer has these WMD.

This wouldn't mean that the war was unjustified - it would mean that someone else, of unknown identity, DOES have WMD.

And this is even worse than knowing someone has WMD. (north korea). Because at least there we know who and what were up against.

That's why we're in Iraq. We need to know if Iraq has WMD - or not. That's the important part. Are those weapons accounted for or not?
Getting Saddam and freeing the people were just lucky side-effects. (great things, but secondary to our safety.)




By 'we', I mean, American policymakers (and many others).

So what you're saying then Toltec, is that we should find this in Iraq:

6500 filled chemical bombs
1000 tonnes of VX gas
5000 litres of concentrated anthrax

And if we don't find them, then the US claims before the war started were false, and so the French/German governments will have been vindicated in their anti-war stance. Yes?

I think you'd have a hard time telling the Iraqi people right now, that the war was unjustified....

Oh, and by mentioning Ritter's name, credibility pretty much goes out the window....

Yep, Ritter's been smeared pretty good hasn't he? Doesn't it worry you that the smearing is mostly down to the fact that he's a prominent anti-war spokesman who is difficult to ignore if you argue with him directly?

But anyway, whether or not the Iraqi people feel liberated, that isn't what this war is about as you yourself have admitted in recent posts.

The public justification was WMD/terrorist links, that's what got the US populace scared enough to allow Bush to attack a sovereign state in a preventative war...

Without that link the US's credibility is 0/10...

Dom to claim that after three weeks in respect to what has thus far been accomplished. Saying the US has no credibility questions to credibility of the person saying it.

So what you're saying then Toltec, is that we should find this in Iraq:

6500 filled chemical bombs
1000 tones of VX gas
5000 litters of concentrated anthrax

And if we don't find them, then the US claims before the war started were false, and so the French/German governments will have been vindicated in their antiwar stance. Yes?

No, that is not what I am saying, what I am saying is how in Gods name can the French and German governments. Provide support to a country leadership which has done the above, furthermore where is the documentation that Saddam Hussein provided access
to all underground facilities.

The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs.

What we find in Iraq is what is in Iraq as I have said before, my impression (understanding) is that disallowed items are underground. In time we will find them and given the time it has taken to get to where we are today, It will be a lot sooner that many apparently hope.



"Lie Detector" reread the article I posted in respect to who the UN/Hans Blix suspected as to the cause of illegal sales. Also take into consideration the article failed to report Germany entire military industral complex, was identifed as suporting Iraqs former government.

It is not very credible