Iraqi Scientist: Regime Destroyed Banned Biochemical Weapons

Iraqi Scientist: Regime Destroyed Banned Biochemical Weapons

Sandy Wesley, NewsMax.com
Monday, April 21, 2003

Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted and destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment four days before President Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war, members of an American military team told the New York Times.

Members of the team said their information came from a scientist who had worked in Iraq’s chemical weapons program for a decade. The scientist also said, according to the military team:

Hussein’s government had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990s.

The dictatorship more recently was cooperating with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

The Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha, an American team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, which found the scientist, refused to identify him for fear he might be subject to reprisals. They would not allow the New York Times to interview him.

However, MET Alpha officials said that they considered his information credible and that material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them were precursors for a toxic agent banned by chemical weapons treaties.

“What they’ve discovered could prove to be of incalculable value,” Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, told the Times. “Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out, it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery.”

Major justification for invading Iraq was finding and destroying chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment that the Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was hiding.

The MET Alpha accounts provide an explanation for why U.S forces had not yet turned up banned weapons.

According to MET Alpha, the scientist said that Hussein’s regime destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990s, transferred others to Syria and had recently focused it efforts on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors and even American forces combing through Iraq’s weapons factories, the Times reported today.

MET Alpha officials quoted the scientist as saying he had watched several months before the outbreak of the war as Iraqis buried chemical precursors and other sensitive material to conceal and preserve them for future use. According to the officials, the scientist showed them documents, samples and other evidence of the program to prove the program existed.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Al-Qaeda
Bush Administration
Middle East
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
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