Bizarre history of Saddam's anthrax program

[John Galt]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...726745,00.html

A BRITISH cow that died in an Oxfordshire field in 1937 has emerged as the source of Saddam Hussain’s “weapons of mass destruction” programme that led to the Iraq war.

An ear from the cow was sent to an English laboratory, where scientists discovered anthrax spores that were later used in secret biological warfare tests by Winston Churchill.

The culture was sent to the United States, which exported samples to Iraq during Saddam’s war against Iran in the 1980s. Inspectors have found that this batch of anthrax was the dictator’s choice in his attempts to create biological weapons.

The discovery has angered some British politicians. Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, has renewed his call, supported by 126 MPs in the last Parliament, for a UN investigation into whether Washington broke a weapons control agreement. “It just makes them look more hypocritical than ever,” he said.

The odyssey of the Iraqi anthrax was unravelled by Geoffrey Holland, a politics student and antiwar campaigner at the University of Sussex. The exact batch chosen by Saddam was disclosed in the CIA report by Charles Duelfer, the former UN weapons inspector, last autumn.

“Iraq declared researching different strains of B. anthracis, but settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive strain for use as a BW,” Mr Duelfer said.

A congressional investigation into Gulf War syndrome by Don Riegle had already uncovered invoices showing that this batch was shipped from the United States between 1986 and 1988.

The ATCC is a private, non-profit-making collection of cultures of living micro-organisms, viruses, plants and human and animal cells, stored in Virginia.

Its catalogue shows that batch 14578 consists of “bovine anthrax”, isolated by R. L. Vollum, a professor of bacteriology at Oxford University during the 1930s. It is named after him.

Martin Hugh-Jones, who co-ordinates the World Health Organisation’s Working Group on Anthrax Research and Control, said: “We have traced it back and it would have come in on some contaminated bones from Southern Rhodesia.

“England was importing sun-dried bones from dead animals in the colonies. They would be shipped to London and used to make soap. When they got the fat out, (the bones) were meant to be sterilised and ground as bone meal and fed to cattle. The sterilisation was not always complete. It was the major cause of anthrax for almost 100 years.”

The Vollum anthrax was used in biological weapons tests on the Scottish island of Gruinard in 1942, which had to be quarantined for 48 years. “It killed any number of sheep in Gruinard,” Professor Hugh-Jones said.

“(Saddam) obviously at one point had a programme because he was buying the laboratory’s cultures to underwrite a programme. Why would he want peaceful research with Vollum? Come on!”

[flere-imsaho]

[amdaily]

*sarcasm* This is obviously a fabricated story as Saddam had no WMD, no WMD programs, and no WMD aspirations, or so the news tells me.

[John Galt]

Originally Posted by amdaily

*sarcasm* This is obviously a fabricated story as Saddam had no WMD, no WMD programs, and no WMD aspirations, or so the news tells me.

The article is rather poorly written in terms of WHEN the sample was found (if it was recently, why haven't we heard about it) and WHERE the sample was found (which helps answer the WHEN question). I still find it amazing that these things are traceable all the way back to a cow in England in the early 20th Century. I do want more info about the actual sample and why it hasn't gotten more news play.

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Somehow, "Oops, my bad" just doesn't seem like it'd be enough...

Yes, I know that during the Regan years Sadaam was considered a wonderful statesman of sorts, and was even given the key to one of the cities here in the US. I don't know much about his history in general, the "Ooops" thing was just the first thought that came to my mind when I saw it.

/tk

[Buccaneer]

tk, it's always better to be "friends" with as many people/nations as possible - history has proven that. Some eventually turn, some don't but in the end, one can always expect change. The best examples are the tremendous friendship we had with Nazi Germany prior to WW2 and with the Soviets during WW2 (and China prior to WW3?). There's always economic incentives, like currently with North Korea, as it has been for centuries.

[amdaily]

Chirac and Saddam at Tammuz nuclear power center in 1975.

[terpkristin]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

tk, it's always better to be "friends" with as many people/nations as possible - history has proven that. Some eventually turn, some don't but in the end, one can always expect change. The best examples are the tremendous friendship we had with Nazi Germany prior to WW2 and with the Soviets during WW2 (and China prior to WW3?). There's always economic incentives, like currently with North Korea, as it has been for centuries.

As I said, I kind of knew that, but it was still my first thought when I saw the picture. Though I didn't know about the Nazi Germany connection. Interesting.

/tk

[MrBigglesworth]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

tk, it's always better to be "friends" with as many people/nations as possible - history has proven that. Some eventually turn, some don't but in the end, one can always expect change. The best examples are the tremendous friendship we had with Nazi Germany prior to WW2 and with the Soviets during WW2 (and China prior to WW3?). There's always economic incentives, like currently with North Korea, as it has been for centuries.

'Friends' and 'supplying WMD's and fermenting extremism' are two completely different things.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by terpkristin

As I said, I kind of knew that, but it was still my first thought when I saw the picture. Though I didn't know about the Nazi Germany connection. Interesting.

/tk

and by "tremendous friendships with Nazi Germany" what Bucc means is the tremendous financial friendships that Union Banking Corporation had with the leading German steel company owned by fanatical Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Union Banking Corporation of course was the critical company that helped to build the Bush fortune under Prescott Bush.


hxxp://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/new_world_order/bush_nazis.html

just one example of a source, this one seems to be a bit more "off the wall" than other, more reputable ones that don't make claims QUITE this wild BTW.