10/6/2003: Bioweapon vials

A political one today, and this photo has been underwhelmingly covered in the old media, so:

This is one of the set of hidden vials discovered by David Kay's Iraqi WMD discovery operation. The vials contain "reference strains" of biological organisms, some of which are bioweapon strains. In total there were 97 vials hidden in this Iraqi scientists' house, with the explicit instructions to keep them so that the BW program could be renewed when the international heat was off.

The scientist says he was asked to keep more stuff, and deadlier stuff, but he decided that anthrax in the fridge is not a good idea when there are kids in the house.

The complete Kay report includes a good number of these kinds of things, all prohibited and undeclared to the UN, including a set of 500km missiles and plans for 1000km missiles (tw take note).

In the post-war context these things do not really constitute a "smoking gun", but if Kay's discoveries had been discovered pre-war, they would have been highly damning and certainly would have increased support for the war. We forget the pre-war context from 6-8 months ago, but these findings only would have made it more urgent.

So that's my take on it, post your own take below.

I seem to remember the missle issue existing before the invasion, UT, but no one seemed to think it constituted a severe enough threat.

You'd think that the existence of the reference samples, and the fact that they were being hidden would be enough to convince some people that perhaps there was something amiss, but no...

Well, the other half of Kay's report discusses what they found in the area of destroying evidence and "sanitizing" --

See my view on the post on this thread.

It's Crap

One of them exactly is a strain that supposedly could be used to make a bioweapon. Now, weaponizing a strain is usually the hardest part, and judging from this guy's history, the standard for what could be used to make a bioweapon is probably pretty loose.

Did anybody ever figure what all that toxic shit was, Iraq dumped in the river just before we took the capitol?

So, if the stuff was innocent, why hide it? Can't they just get more from a sympathetic world biology market after the nasty old American imperialist pigs are done?

I think it was stashed from the inspectors and the war came along before they could get back to it.

Thanks for the obligatory conspiracy theorizing Bruce.

I'm just sick of all the misinformation, spin, and fake science being thrown around in the news. You have to hand it to some of the talking heads, they would be really good poker players.

Well I was going by the official caption but as usual Instapundit has the real deal, a discussion over whether the key vial was the toxin or just the germ that can cause the toxin. The NY Times and the Post disagree and the early line is on the Post.

There's much confusion here, but maybe the worst point is that based on this scientist's explanation there's a cache of much worse germ starter kits out there somewhere.

If you blow that picture up, you can barely make out "CIA ISSUE" on them. Seriously folks, we're the stupid fuckers who gave them a ton of help killing people in the past, but now they're bad, right?

Quzah.

Quote:

Originally posted by bjlhct Thanks for the obligatory conspiracy theorizing Bruce. I'm just sick of all the misinformation, spin, and fake science being thrown around in the news. You have to hand it to some of the talking heads, they would be really good poker players.

Oh, OK, I thought you meant that the inspectors stashed them before the war to "find" them.

http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/200...9435/87745/5#5

If you're going to quote K5 comments you need to wait until they are out of the submission queue.

If you're going to quote K5 comments that are simply uninformed conjecture and a Guardian link, just post the Guardian link.

But that removes any need for K5?

Exactly

I don't know...uninformed conjecture may trump uninformed conjecture.

It's in the spirit of the original post.