IP: ANTHRAX AND ABDUL HAQ: WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND from Toronto Sun

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

ANTHRAX AND ABDUL HAQ: WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND

By Eric S. Margolis

As our world continues to spin out of control, two horrible events last 
week had special resonance for me: the spreading anthrax terror, and the 
death of my old Afghan comrade-in-arms, Abdul Haq.

First, anthrax. In late 1990, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, I was in 
Baghdad, Iraq, covering the impending Gulf War. In a futile effort to 
prevent threatened US air attacks, Saddam Hussein rounded up foreigners and 
held them hostage in Baghdad hotels. This brutish act - which provoked 
outrage around the world - was a typical example of the Muslim world's 
uncanny knack for negative, self-defeating, public relations.

Among the hostages, I discovered three British scientists who had been 
employed at Iraq's top secret Salman Pak chemical and biowarfare plant. Two 
of the Britons confided to me they had been working to develop a weaponized 
form of anthrax for Iraq's army.
At the time, the public did not yet knew that Iraq was trying to use 
anthrax as a weapon. My dispatches from Baghdad were the first indication 
that Iraq had progressed beyond crude, World War I - style chemical 
weapons. The Iraqis threatened to hang me as a spy.
What made this news so fascinating was: 1. the British scientists told me 
they were part of a large technical team secretly organized and `seconded' 
to Iraq in the mid-1980's by the British government and Secret Intelligence 
Service, MI6. And 2: the feed stocks for all of the germ weapons being 
developed by Iraq came from an American laboratory in Maryland. Iraq 
received full approval from the US government to buy anthrax, plague, 
botulism, and other pathogens. Here is a prime case of what spooks call 
`blowback.'

<snip>

[worth reading rest djf]

http://www.bigeye.com/foreignc.htm


For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/