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April 01, 2004
WMDs still hidden away?
Posted by McQ
According to the Australian newspaper, "The Age", an Iraqi exile who worked at the top of Iraq's scientific establishment claims WMDs were present as late as 1998 and stored in various underground bunkers.
Rashid has told The Age he knows of five secret storage bunkers around Baghdad, Basra and Tikrit, three of which he visited regularly as a top scientist and senior employee of Iraq's now defunct Atomic Energy Commission.
One, he says, was under an island in the Tigris River near Saddam University. Another was beneath the house of one of Saddam's cousins, and reached by a tunnel with a hidden entrance 800 metres away.
He described the bunkers as being built 15 metres underground, of reinforced concrete, and multi-storeyed. "Between these layers, pipes would rise up, through the building above to provide access for ventilation.
"The lethal chemicals were stored in drums and the bunkers were air-conditioned. But there were also artillery shells and 122-millimetre rockets armed with chemicals."
He says the sites had been built using foreign construction companies, including a company from China, and that nobody was allowed to approach without authorisation and extensive ID checks by the Special Republican Guard.
Rashid is not his real name.
Wonder if we'll hear any more about this story or whether it will just "go away?".
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