United Nations Special Commission

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United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was an United Nations organisation performing inspections in Iraq to ensure its compliance with the policies of the United Nations concerning Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War. Its director between 1991 and 1997 was Rolf Ekéus and from 1997 to 1999 Richard Butler. After the expulsion of Scott Ritter and his ensuing resignation, as well as the press attention that followed, the United Nations Special Commission was dissolved. The successor of United Nations Special Commission is the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. Richard O. Spertzel served as its Senior Biologist.

The Committee found evidence from the United Nations Special Commission that Rihab Rashid Taha, an Iraqi microbiologist who had been educated in England, had created substantial biological weapons for Iraq.

Scott Ritter would later say that Operation Rockingham had cherry-picked evidence found by the United Nations Special Commission, evidence which was used as part of the casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Contents 1 1990 2 1990s 2.1 1998-9 3 2000s 4 References 5 External links

[edit] 1990

The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was headed by Rolf Ekéus and later Richard Butler. During several visits to Iraq by United Nations Special Committee (UNSCOM), set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities, weapons inspectors were told by Rihab Rashid Taha that al-Hakam germ warfar center was a chicken-feed plant. "There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal-feed production plant," Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it."

However, in 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector Dr. Rod Barton from Australia showed Taha documents obtained by UNSCOM from the Israeli regime that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth media from a British company called Oxoid. Growth media is a mixture of sugar, proteins and minerals that allows microscopic life to grow; it is used in hospitals, where swabs from patients are placed in dishes containing growth media for diagnostic purposes. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth media was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it.

Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism toxin; [8] 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver cancer; clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor bean derivative which can kill by inhibiting protein synthesis. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniqes as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq had a smallpox outbreak in the 70s and UNSCOM scientists believe the government would have retained contaminated material.

UNSCOM learned that, In August 1990, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Taha's team was ordered to set up a program to weaponize the biological agents. By January 1991, a team of 100 scientists and support staff had filled 157 bombs and 16 missile warheads with botulin toxin, and 50 bombs and five missile warheads with anthrax. In an interview with the BBC, Taha denied the Iraqi government had weaponized the bacteria. "We never intended to use it," she told journalist Jane Corbin of the BBC's Panorama program. "We never wanted to cause harm or damage to anybody." [9] However, UNSCOM found the munitions dumped in a river near al-Hakam. UNSCOM also discovered that Taha's team had conducted inhalation experiments on donkeys from England and on beagles from Germany. The inspectors seized photographs showing beagles having convulsions inside sealed containers.

The inspectors feared that Taha's team had experimented on human beings. During one inspection, they discovered two primate-sized inhalation chambers, one measuring 5 cubic metres, though there was no evidence the Iraqis had used large primates in their experiments. According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter in his 1999 book Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis, UNSCOM learned that, between July 01 and August 15, 1995, 50 prisoners from the Abu Ghraib prison were transferred to a military post in al-Haditha, in the northwest of Iraq, (Ritter, 1999). Iraqi opposition groups say that scientists sprayed the prisoners with anthrax, though no evidence was produced to support these allegations. During one experiment, the inspectors were told, 12 prisoners were tied to posts while shells loaded with anthrax were blown up nearby. Ritter's team demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib prison showing a prisoner count. Ritter writes that they discovered the records for July and August 1995 were missing. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused to co-operate further with UNSCOM.

[edit] 1990s

Between 1991 and 1995, UN inspectors uncovered a massive program to develop biological and nuclear weapons and a large amount of equipment was confiscated and destroyed. The al-Hakam germ warfare center, headed by the British-educated Iraqi biologist Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, was blown up by UNSCOM in 1996. According to a 1999 report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the normally mild-mannered Taha exploded into violent rages whenever UNSCOM questioned her about al-Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on one occasion, smashing a chair, while insisting that al-Hakam was a chicken-feed plant.^[1]

"There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal-feed production plant," Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it."

Some experts also believe that, as of 1991, Iraq was within one to three years of developing nuclear weapons. However, others say that Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in 1981 when the reactor used to generate source material for its bomb was bombed by Israel.^{[citation needed]} The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists concurs with this view: there were far too many technological challenges unsolved, they say.^[2]

Iraq charged that the commission was a cover for US espionage and refused UNSCOM access to certain sites like Baath Party headquarters.^[3] Although Ekéus has said that he resisted attempts at such espionage, many allegations have since been made against the agency commission under Butler,^{[citation needed]} charges which Butler has denied.

[edit] 1998-9

In August 1998, Ritter resigned his position as UN weapons inspector and sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. "Iraq is not disarming," Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, "Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike."

In 1998 the UNSCOM weapons inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq. They were not expelled from the country by Iraq as has often been reported (and as George W. Bush alleged in his infamous "axis of evil" speech). Rather, according to Butler himself in his book Saddam Defiant (2000), it was U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh, acting on instructions from Washington, who suggested Butler pull his team from Iraq in order to protect them from the forthcoming U.S. and British airstrikes which eventually took place from December 16-December 19, 1998.

Scott Ritter later accused some UNSCOM personnel of spying.^[4] According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting a left-wing media watch organization, some major newspapers presented such accusations as having a factual basis, but later recounted them as simply accusations by Hussein's regime.^{[citation needed]}

On August 31, 1998, Ritter said: "Iraq still has proscribed weapons capability. There needs to be a careful distinction here. Iraq today is challenging the special commission to come up with a weapon and say where is the weapon in Iraq, and yet part of their efforts to conceal their capabilities, I believe, have been to disassemble weapons into various components and to hide these components throughout Iraq. I think the danger right now is that without effective inspections, without effective monitoring, Iraq can in a very short period of time measure the months, reconstitute chemical biological weapons, long-range ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons, and even certain aspects of their nuclear weaponization program."^[5]

In June, 1999, Ritter responded to an interviewer saying: "When you ask the question, 'Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?' the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No! It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability."^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 2000s

In 2002, Ritter stated that, as of 1998, 90–95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical capabilities, and long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, said Ritter, not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq had preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never existed. Many people were surprised by Ritter's "bizarre turnaround" in his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made.^[6] In 2000, Ritter produced a film that portrayed Iraq as fully disarmed. The film was funded by an Iraqi-American businessman who had received Oil-for-Food coupons from Saddam Hussein that he sold for $400,000.^[7][8]

During the 2002–2003 build-up to war Ritter criticized the Bush administration and maintained that it had provided no credible evidence that Iraq had reconstituted a significant WMD capability. In an interview with Time in September 2002^[9] he stated:

We have tremendous capabilities to detect any effort by Iraq to obtain prohibited capability. The fact that no one has shown that he has acquired that capability doesn't necessarily translate into incompetence on the part of the intelligence community. It may mean that he hasn't done anything.

In the same interview Ritter had this to say on accusations of UNSCOM being used for illegitimate spying on Iraq:

It's ironic that everyone has focused on the struggle of the inspectors vs. Iraq. Not too many people speak of the struggle between the weapons inspectors and the U.S. to beat back the forces of U.S. intelligence which were seeking to infiltrate the weapons inspectors program and use the unique access the inspectors enjoyed in Iraq for purposes other than disarmament. Iraq has a clear case that under this past inspection regime unfortunately it was misused for purposes other than set out by the Security Council resolution.

Ritter was widely denounced in the United States for his supposed "defection" and "lack of patriotism". Also in the interview, Ritter countered that he had given 12 years of service to his country as a Marine and that he was willing to put his record of service up against anyone.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• United Nations on UNSCOM
• The Hijacking of UNSCOM