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Dear list members,
This is yet another interesting article on Iraq from the same
newspaper, yesterday's Observer.
Muhamad
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,972830,00.html
>>> <VnStroope@aol.com> 06/09 1:40 pm >>>
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Roger Stroope
Austin College
Sherman Texas, USA
www.austincollege.edu
To: mlrn3@aol.com
From: mlrn3@aol.com
Mailing-List: list iac-discussion@yahoogroups.com; contact iac-discussion-owner@yahoogroups.com
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Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 16:30:34 EDT
Subject: [iac-disc.] Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs
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This is what a friend in DC had told me from the beginning. Our government
knew this and has lied, lied, lied to everybody. mlrn3
http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4686547,00.html
Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs'
Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs
Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett
Sunday June 8, 2003
The Observer
Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly claimed to be
Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are nothing of the sort.
The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical experts
from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have been ordered
to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities, following US analysis
which casts serious doubt on whether they really are germ labs.
The British review comes amid widespread doubts expressed by scientists on
both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to make
biological weapons.
Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the
units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery
balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987.
The British review follows access by UK officials to the vehicles which were
discovered by US troops in April and May.
'We are being very careful now not to jump to any conclusions about these
vehicles,' said one source familiar with the investigation. 'On the basis of
intelligence we do believe that mobile labs do exist. What is not certain is that
these vehicles are actually them so we are being careful not to jump the gun.'
The claim, however, that the two vehicles are mobile germ labs has been
repeated frequently by both Blair and President George Bush in recent days in
support of claims that they prove the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction.
During his whistle stop tour of the Gulf, Europe and Russia, Blair repeatedly
briefed journalists that the trailers were germ production labs which proved
that Iraq had WMD.
But chemical weapons experts, engineers, chemists and military systems
experts contacted by The Observer over the past week, say the layout and equipment
found on the trailers is entirely inconsistent with the vehicles being mobile
labs. Both US Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he addressed the UN
Security Council prior to the war, and the British Government alleged that Saddam had
such labs.
A separate investigation published by the New York Times yesterday discloses
that the trailers have now been investigated by three different teams of
Western experts, with the third and most senior group of analysts apparently
divided sharply over their function.
'I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter,' a senior analyst said of
a tank supposed to be capable of multiplying seed germs into lethal swarms.
The government's public report, he said, 'was a rushed job and looks political'.
The analyst had not seen the trailers, but reviewed evidence from them.
Another intelligence expert who has seen the trailers told the US paper:
'Everyone has wanted to find the "smoking gun" so much that they may have wanted
to have reached this conclusion. I am very upset with the process.'
Questions over the claimed purpose of trailer for making biological weapons
include:
+ The lack of any trace of pathogens found in the fermentation tanks.
According to experts, when weapons inspectors checked tanks in the mid-Nineties that
had been scoured to disguise their real use, traces of pathogens were still
detectable.
+ The use of canvas sides on vehicles where technicians would be working with
dangerous germ cultures.
+ A shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for
working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with making
biological weapons.
+ The lack of an autoclave for steam sterilisation, normally a prerequisite
for any kind of biological production. Its lack of availability between
production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed
weapons.
+ The lack of any easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the
processing tank.
One of those expressing severe doubts about the alleged mobile germ labs is
Professor Harry Smith, who chairs the Royal Society's working party on
biological weapons.
He told The Observer 'I am concerned about the canvas sides. Ideally, you
would want airtight facilities for making something like anthrax. Not only that,
it is a very resistant organism and even if the Iraqis cleaned the equipment,
I would still expect to find some trace of it.'
His view is shared by the working group of the Federation of American
Scientists and by the CIA, which states: 'Senior Iraqi officials of the al-Kindi
Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in Mosul were shown
pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they claimed that the trailers were
used to chemically produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.'
Artillery balloons are essentially balloons that are sent up into the
atmosphere and relay information on wind direction and speed allowing more accurate
artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile.
The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such a
system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the British. In
1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an Artillery Meteorological
System or Amets for short.
Additional reporting by Solomon Hughes
Guardian Unlimited * Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
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