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Iraq I: Scientist Says Saddam Hid Weapons Programs Near Commercial Facilities An Iraqi scientist has told Bush administration officials that Saddam Hussein placed the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs close to commercial facilities in an effort to produce the weapons on a moment’s notice, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN , May 29). Positioning the alleged WMD programs near commercial facilities also helped to keep them under wraps, the scientist said. In a May 7 White House document made available to the Post, the scientist describes Iraq as having “carefully embedded its (weapons of mass destruction) infrastructure in dual-use facilities” so the weapons could be made quickly in the event of an attack. According to the Post, the commercial facilities also made legitimate products such as pesticides, but “such sites also could employ ‘just in time’ manufacturing and delivery systems to reduce the need for stockpiles,” the document noted. Administration officials have pointed toward the recent discovery of two trailers in Iraq that could have been used to concoct biological weapons. The trailers — one captured by Kurdish forces near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and turned over to U.S. troops in late April and a second discovered by U.S. troops at the al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development and Engineering site in Mosul in early May — have long been suspected of being mobile biological production plants (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 2). The United States is ramping up efforts to find weapons of mass destruction, sending in the Iraq Survey Group, which will consist of 1,300 to 1,400 personnel. The team will be led by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is scheduled to arrive in Baghdad today. “This will be a deliberate process and it will be a long-term effort. We will be using all sources to put together pieces of an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle,” Dayton said (Politi/Alden, Financial Times, May 31). Some Looted Barrels Recovered U.S. officials, meanwhile, are busy recovering barrels that were used to store nuclear material that were looted from Iraqi government facilities. U.S. forces are paying $3 for barrels that originally contained uranium and were being used by civilians for storing food and washing clothes, Reuters reported. “We recovered 100 barrels, but we do not know how many more are out there,” said Lt. Col. Brent Bredehoft, head of the U.S. unit searching for the radioactive material (Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, June 2).
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