Free Republic

<p>Iraqi scientists know how to make chemical weapons that can penetrate military protective clothing, and Iraq imported up to 25 metric tons last month of a powder that is a crucial ingredient to such "dusty" weapons.</p> <p>Iraq told the United Nations the powder was destined for a pharmaceutical company. A former weapons inspector says that company was ordered by President Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf war to work on chemical and biological weapons.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - Iraqi scientists know how to make chemical weapons that can penetrate military protective clothing, and Iraq imported up to 25 metric tons last month of a powder that is a crucial ingredient to such ``dusty'' weapons.</p> <p>Iraq told the United Nations the powder was destined for a pharmaceutical company that a former weapons inspector says was ordered by President Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War to work on chemical and biological weapons.</p>

Accumulated evidence, albeit mostly circumstantial, is nonethless sufficient to implicate Iraq in the wave of Anthrax incidents in America in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, according to former IDF intelligence officer Dr. Danny Shoham. Mystery still surrounds the affair of letters containing the deadly biological warfare agent that were sent to various addresses in the US over a more than two-month period shortly after the suicide attacks on New York and Washington. Shoham, a senior researcher at Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, believes that the proximity of the two events is no coincidence and...

Environmental Pathology staff (from left) Marie Jenkins, HT, ASCP, histochemical technologist, Florabel G. Mullick, MD, ScD, SES, Department Chair, Frank Johnson, MD, SES, chief, Division of Chemical Pathology, and Victor Kalasinsky, PhD, chief, Division of Environmental Toxicology, at the Hitachi S-3500N Scanning Electron Microscope with the ThermoNoran Energy Dispersive X-Ray accessory.Detecting Environmental Terrorism: AFIP's Department of Environmental and Toxicologic Pathology provides critical DoD, Homeland Defense programs by Christopher C. Kelly When US Army investigators at Ft Detrick, Md, examined anthrax found in a letter sent to Sen. Thomas Daschle last fall, they discovered that the highly refined spores floated...

L-Gel decontaminates better than bleach The recent cases of anthrax spores deliberately spread through the mail reminded all Americans, and especially managers of federal and state agencies responsible for public health and safety, about potential terrorism with chemical and biological weapons. The anthrax cases have also underscored the need for safer and more efficient methods to decontaminate offices and homes of deadly biological agents. During the late 1990s, scientists at the Department of Energy national laboratories foresaw the need for a safe, reliable, and easily deployable decontaminating agent that could be used for civilian defense against biological and chemical...

<p>The United Nations overruled U.S. government objections and allowed Iraq to buy a specialty chemical that U.S. intelligence officials say will boost Baghdad's chemical and biological warfare agents.</p> <p>A large quantity of a chemical known as colloidal silicon dioxide was ordered by the Iraqis in August 2001 and held up by the U.S. government because of concerns about its use.</p>

SINCE THE DEADLY anthrax mailings more than a year ago, the government's public focus has shifted from the crime to measures necessary to combat bioterrorism and make such attacks more difficult in the future. .... This record is all the more disturbing because more than a year after the anthrax was let loose through the mail, U.S. authorities have made no arrests.