Iraqi Defector Talks!!!

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1055

Bush Admin appears to have selective hearing. Believe!!!


''The nuclear bomb hoax''
By Imad Khadduri
Former Iraqi nuclear scientist

Friday, February 07, 2003

(YellowTimes.org) – In his speech in front of the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003, Colin Powell did not offer any viable new evidence concerning Iraq's nuclear weapon capability that Bush and his entourage continue to wave as a red flag in front of the eyes of the American people to incite them shamefully into an unjust war.

On the contrary, the few flimsy so-called pieces of evidence that were presented by Powell regarding a supposed continued Iraqi nuclear weapon program serve only to weaken the American and British accusations and reveal their untenable attempt to cover with a fig leaf their thread bare arguments and misinformation campaign. The false and untrue pieces of evidence follow:

Powell, in a theatrical query, asked why the Iraqi scientists were asked to sign declarations, with a death penalty if not adhered to, not to reveal their secrets to the IAEA inspection teams. Exactly the opposite is true. The four or five, as I recall such declarations, which I read in detail, held us to the penalty of death in the event that we did not hand in all of the sensitive documents and reports that may still be in our possession! Had Powell's intelligence services provided him with a copy of these declarations, and not depended on testimonies of "defectors" who are solely motivated by their self-promotion in the eyes of their "beholders," and availed himself to a good Arabic translation of what these declarations actually said, he would not, had he in any sense been abiding by the truth, mentioned this as "evidence."

This is exactly the cause of the second untruth brandished by Powell by referring to the cache of documents seized in the house of Faleh Hamza: that Iraq is hiding or is still working (it is hard to discern from the tangle of his word what is really meant) on its "third" uranium enrichment process.

Faleh, according to my explanation of the above declarations, did not consider the reports on his work to be covered under this declaration for the following reason: Faleh did dabble during the eighties at the Physics Department in the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center itself -- but not under the nuclear weapon program activities which came under the label of the PetroChemical 3 program -- with the uranium laser enrichment process using a couple of medium range copper lasers.

His low-key research concluded that it was not yet viable to pursue this line of enrichment on a production scale and the whole project folded up after it reached its cul-de-sac in 1988. He packed up and then joined the PC3 working on the Calutron enrichment method in 1989. Furthermore, this was well documented and explained in our final report to the IAEA inspectors in late 1997, to which they confirmed and referred in their own final report on the matter.

Yet, fully aware of this fact, the James Bondian and insulting manner with which UNMOVIC (following in the footsteps of their CIA infiltrated UNSCOM predecessors) invaded the home of Faleh and searched it, even the private belongings of his family to the glare of the cameras, added insult to injury and exponentially increased Faleh's position vis-à-vis the authorities who were trying to protect the scientists from such American theatrics.

Arrogantly, the Americans are wondering why other scientists are not coming forward. Even worse, Blix chose to wave this torn flag in front of the Security Council in his report on Monday, January 27, 2003. This fact alone was one of the reasons I have decided to come out. Even Mohamed Baradei, the head of the IAEA, chided Blix the following day for not taking into account IAEA's knowledge on this matter, which was that the 3000 pages of documents were financial statements and Faleh's own lifetime research work, and had nothing to do with the nuclear weapon program. That is why he kept them at his home. It was becoming apparent that Blix was succumbing to the American pressure tactics and leaned backwards to provide them with flimsy "proof" at the expense of his supposed fairness and mandate as a U.N. official. Powell grasped even this straw.

Powell only accused but did not provide any evidence that Iraq had tried to get nuclear grade fissile material since 1998. He vainly gave the impression that everything was set and readily waiting for just this material to be acquired and the atomic bomb would be rolling out the other door. He did not bother to ask himself the following questions:

Where is the scientific and engineering staff required for such an enormous effort when almost all of them have been living in abject poverty for the past decade, striving to simply feed their families on $20 a month, their knowledge and expertise rusted and atrophied under heavy psychological pressures and dreading their retirement pension salary of $2 a month?

Where is the management that might lead such an enterprise? The previous management team of the nuclear weapon program in the eighties exists only in memories and reports. Its members have retired, secluded themselves, or turned to fending for their livelihood of their families.

Where are the buildings and infrastructure to support such a program? The entire nuclear weapon program of the eighties has been either bombed by the Americans during the war or uncovered by the IAEA inspectors. It is impossible to hide such buildings and structures. Powell should only take a look at North Korea's atomic weapon facilities, or perhaps even Israel's, to realize the impossibility of hiding such structures with the IAEA inspectors scouring everything in sight.

Powell need only ask those on the ground, the IAEA inspectors delegated by the U.N. upon America's request, to receive negative answers to all of the questions above. Instead, he chose to fabricate an untruth.

Finally, there are the infamous aluminum pipes that are supposed to be used in a centrifugal enrichment process. Powell and Bush should be able to relax regarding this point, for they would have at least a ten-year attack window before Iraq would be able to militarize these pipes. According to the "American experts" themselves, such a process would need kilometers of strung-out, highly-tuned, delicately controlled spinners to fulfill their ill-wish for Iraq. Not to be noticed by their satellites, PowerPoint presentations and colored arrows would then be an intelligence folly. This is not even mentioning the lack of a stable electric power supply in Iraq or the phantom of highly technical staff to run these kilometers long "very high grade and expensive" mortar casings that are not made to U.S. military standards. Perhaps Powell's grievance was, "How dare Iraq think of such expensive mortars?"

Powell said: "Let me now turn to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program." This verges on being humorous. But as the Arabic proverb goes: The worst kind of misfortune is that which causes you to laugh.

[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada. He has been interviewed by the Toronto Star, Reuters, and various other news agencies in regards to his knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear program. This article was originally printed in YellowTimes.org.]

Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com

YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated.

 

Mas ...
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=874

''Iraq's nuclear non-capability''
By Imad Khadduri

Thursday, November 21, 2002

(YellowTimes.org) - As the war storm against Iraq swirls and gathers momentum, seeded by the efforts of the American and British governments, serious doubts arise as to the credibility of their intelligence sources, particularly the issue of Iraq's nuclear capability. It has been often noted that reliable intelligence on this matter is not immediately forthcoming. Moreover, such intelligence as has been presented is spurious and often contradictory. Perhaps it is not too late to rectify this misinformation campaign.

I worked with the Iraqi nuclear program from 1968 until my departure from Iraq in late 1998. Having been closely involved in most of the major nuclear activities of that program, from the Russian research reactor in the late sixties to the French research reactors in the late seventies, the Russian nuclear power program in the early eighties, the nuclear weapons program during the eighties and finally the confrontations with U.N. inspection teams in the nineties, it behooves me to admit that I find present allegations about Iraq's nuclear capability, as continuously advanced by the Americans and the British, to be ridiculous.

Let us go back to 1991. A week before the cessation of two-month saturation bombings on the target-rich Iraq, the Americans realized that a certain complex of buildings in Tarmiah, that had just been carpet bombed for lack of any other remaining prominent targets, exhibited unusual swarming activity by rescuers the next morning. When they compared the photographs of that complex with other standing structures in Iraq, they were surprised to find an exact replica of that complex in the north of Iraq, near Sharqat, which was nearing completion. They directed their bombers to demolish the northern complex a few days before the end of hostilities. My family, along with the families of most prominent Iraqi nuclear scientists and the top management of the northern complex, were residing in the housing complex. The Tarmiah and Sharqat complexes were designed for housing the Calutron separators, similar to those used by the American Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs that were dropped by the Americans on Japan.

At the end of 1991, after that infamous U.N. inspector, David Kay, got hold of many of the nuclear weapons program's reports (reports whose maintenance and security I had been in charge of), the Americans realized that their saturation bombing had missed a most important complex of buildings: that complex at Al-Atheer, which was the center for the design and assembly of the nuclear bomb. A lone, single bomb, thermally guided, had hit the electric substation outside the perimeter of the complex, causing little damage.

The glaring and revealing detail about these two events is the utter lack of any intelligence about these building complexes -- information that should have caused the repository of American and British intelligence to overflow. That is to say American and British intelligence had no idea of the programs that those buildings harbored -- programs that had been ongoing at full steam for the previous ten years!

What really happened to Iraq's nuclear weapon program after the 1991 war?

Immediately after the cessation of hostilities, the entire organization that was responsible for the nuclear weapons project turned its attention to the reconstruction of the heavily damaged oil refineries, electric power stations, and telephone exchange buildings. The combined expertise of the several thousand scientific, engineering, and technical cadres manifested itself in the restoration of the oil, electric and communication infrastructure in a matter of months -- an impressive accomplishment, by any measure.

Then the U.N. inspectors were ushered in. The senior scientists and engineers among the nuclear cadre were instructed many times on how to cooperate with the inspectors. We were also asked to hand in to our own officials any reports or incriminating evidence, with heavy penalties (up to the death penalty, in some cases) for failing to do so. In the first few months, the "clean sheets" were hung up for all to see. As the scientific questioning mounted, our scientists began to redirect the questioners to the actual technical documents themselves that had been amassed during the ten years of activity. These documents had been traveling up and down and throughout Iraq in a welded train car. Then the order was issued to return the project's documents to their original location. At that point, David Kay pounced on them in the early morning hours of September 1991. Among the documents were those of Al-Atheer and the bomb specifics.

In the following few years, the nuclear weapons project organization was slowly disbanded. By 1994, its various departments were either elevated to independent civilian industrial enterprises, or absorbed within the Military Industrial Authority under Hussain Kamil, who later escaped to Jordan in 1996 and then returned to Baghdad where he was murdered.

Meanwhile, the brinkmanship with the U.N. inspectors continued. At one heated encounter, an American inspector remarked that the nuclear scientists and engineers were still around, and hinted accusingly that those scientists and engineers may be readily used for a rejuvenated nuclear program. The retort was, "What do you want us to do to satisfy you? Ask them to commit suicide?"

In 1994, a report surfaced claiming that Iraq was still manufacturing a nuclear bomb and had been working on it since 1991. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors brought the report to Baghdad, demanding a full explanation. The inspectors requested my opinion on the authenticity of the report, inasmuch as I was the responsible agent for the proper issuance and archiving of all scientific and engineering documents for the nuclear weapons project during the eighties. It was my opinion that the report was well done, and most probably had been written by someone who had detailed knowledge of the established documentation procedures. However, as we pointed out to the IAEA inspectors, certain words used in the report would not normally be used by us but rather by Iranians and we supplied an Arabic-Iranian dictionary to verify our findings. The IAEA inspectors never referred back to that report.

During these years, crushing economic inflation was growing. It would spell the end for most of the Iraqi nuclear scientists' and engineers' careers in the following years.

In 1996, Hussain Kamil, who was in charge of the entire range of chemical, biological and nuclear programs, announced from his self-imposed exile in Amman that there were hidden caches of important documentation on his farm in Iraq. (Apparently, he had had his security entourage stealthily salvage what they thought were the most important pieces of information and documentation in these programs.) The U.N. inspectors pounced on this and a renewed string of confrontations occurred, until the inspectors were asked to leave Iraq in 1998.

In the last few years of the nineties, we did our utmost to produce a satisfying report to the IAEA inspectors concerning the entire gamut of Iraq's nuclear activities. The IAEA finally issued its report in October 1997, mapping these activities in great detail. The inspectors raised vague, "politically correct" queries which seemed obligatory in their intent.

In the meantime, and this is the gist of my discourse, the economic standing of the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers (along with the rest of the civil servants and the professional middle class) has been pathetically reduced to poverty level. Even with occasional salary inducements and some insubstantial benefits, many of those highly-educated persons have been forced to sell their possessions just to keep their families alive. Needless to say, their spirits are very low and their cynicism is high. Relatively few have managed to leave Iraq. The majority are too gripped by poverty, family needs, and fear of the brutal retaliation of the security apparatus to even consider a plan of escape. Their former determination and drive, profoundly evident in the eighties, has been crushed by harsh economic realities; their knowledge and experience grow rusty with the passage of time; their skills atrophy from lack of activity in their fields.

Since my departure from Iraq in late 1998, one cannot help but notice the mien of those former nuclear scientists and engineers as being but a wispy phantom of a once elite cadre representing the zenith of scientific and technical thought in Iraq. Pathetic shadows of their former selves, the overwhelming fear that haunts them is the fear of retirement, with a whopping pension that equates to about $2 a month.

Yet, the American and British intelligence community, obviously influenced by the war agenda, vainly attempts to continue to provide disinformation. For example, a consignment of aluminum pipes (the intelligence experts opine) might conceivably be used in the construction of highly advanced, "kilometers long" centrifugal spinners. The consideration that there are no remaining Iraqi personnel qualified to implement and maintain these supposed spinners seems to have eluded the intelligence agencies' reports.

Last month, a group of journalists was taken on a guided tour of a "possible" uranium extraction plant in Akashat in western Iraq. The Iraqi guide pointed to the obviously demolished buildings and asked tongue-in-cheek, "Who would make any use of these ruins? Maybe your experts would tell us how."

It is true that the Iraqi nuclear scientists and engineers did not commit suicide. But for all the remaining capability they possess to rebuild a nuclear weapons program, they may as well have.

Bush and Blair are leading their public by the nose, attempting to cloak shoddy and erroneous intelligence data with hollow patriotic urgings and cajolery. But the two parading emperors have no clothes.


[Imad Khadduri has a MSc in Physics from the University of Michigan (United States) and a PhD in Nuclear Reactor Technology from the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom). Khadduri worked with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission from 1968 until 1998. He was able to leave Iraq in late 1998 with his family. He now teaches and works as a network administrator in Toronto, Canada.]

Imad Khadduri encourages your comments: imad.khadduri@rogers.com

YellowTimes.org is an international news and opinion publication. YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or broadcast provided that any such reproduction identifies the original source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org are appreciated.

 

Powell et al just have selective hearing. This defector (Imad Khadduri) does not back up the story they wanted to hear.

I find Imad Khadduri credible. If the other Iraqi defectors are as credible as Khadduri, the best one could say is that there is conflicting accounts of the same story. I find the fact that Powell et al have ignored Khadduri's accounts disheartening. I expect better behavior from the US President and his administration.

Here is a link to Khadduri discrediting '''Saddam's bombmaker":
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=889

 

This article and this author repudiates the nuclear WMD claims Powell made. Some of the article's points have been referenced elsewhere on this very board (like the pre GWI laser enrichment program and notes thereof, aluminum tubes, etc.)

BTW, what US intell are you talking about?

US intell does not think Saddam is a threat (i.e. would only use WMD as a deterrence, which Bush is hell bent on proving true). US intell does not think that an Iraqi attack on the US is "imminent". US intell does not think that Saddam was part of 9/11 or even linked more than casually to OBL or other terrorists.

Bush without consulting (or worse yet ignoring) US Intell has been searching for Iraqi regime change justifications. His admin has cherry picked intell data to support their theories.

Again, I find using one defector's information over another's, just because Bush can use it to bolster his own half-baked theories, grossly disturbing. This is not about doing the right thing. This has become doing what Bush thinks is best (and has thought so since his 2000 presidential candidacy).