The Hell Hole Spectator: SPECIAL REPORT: Iraq's Yellow Rain
Adams, James Ring
THE HELL HOLE SPECTATOR by James Ring Adams Iraq's Yellow Rain W hat terror weapon is Saddam Hussein hiding from U.N. inspectors, even at the risk of renewed U.S. bombing? The evidence points to...
...President George Bush to confront Gorbachev directly...
...This report quickly became a hot potato and remains one to this day...
...The Pentagon said Patriot missiles caused the explosion and blamed the symptoms on a toxic propellant released from an Iraqi SCUD as it broke up in the air...
...With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the allies continued to pressure Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who promised to dismantle the Biopreparat...
...Perhaps it's something in the diet, but NAAFA members seem to have a special knack for the inapt metaphor...
...True, it's not yet the fattest country on earth...
...Central Intelligence Agency sources warned reporters not to trust the findings of the Belgian specialist Aubin Heyndrickx, who was treating the Iranian victims of Majnoon...
...As the toxins bum their way through throat, stomach, and intestines, they cause vomiting and bloody diarrhea...
...At a symposium in London, he remarked that Iraq's "Aflatoxin bomb" looked like a cover for another agent, a quick-acting battlefield toxin, that was produced with the same fermenting process...
...is beginning to offer funding to some of the former Biopreparat laboratories, trying to keep their staff from selling their skills to countries like Iraq...
...However, when they first heard about the film, NAAFA wrote to Paramount offering to work with the studio by going through the script and replacing the offensive jokes America has the weight of its weight on its shoulders...
...on January 19, 1991, a flash of red light and a loud shock wave woke nearly 75o Seabees of the 24th Naval Mobile Construction Battalion camped near al Jubayl in northern Saudi Arabia...
...Unit veterans strongly suspect a cover-up...
...At the end of 1983, Iranian human wave attacks were pushing Iraqi forces back through the marshes around Majnoon Island when Iraq unleashed a new chemical weapon...
...This account fits the chronology of Iraq's homegrown biowar program, which it claims didn't begin in earnest until 1985...
...est mystery...
...Even the Defense Department officer in charge of the exchange, Col...
...man who yearns to be trim and sexually desirable like, well, Eddie Murphy...
...The toxins can be synthesized or altered with artificial ingredients...
...But fat people are on the drive, wedged behind the steering wheel with a couple of Twinkies for the road and heading straight for the latest fat rights demo, with a quick stop at the drive-thru Dunkin' Donuts...
...52 March 1998 The American Spectator Peanut Mold or Yellow Rain...
...The film was a huge box-office hit, out-grossing (so to speak) every other comedy in America...
...The weapons behind the latest crisis...
...This case was a shot in the arm for the fat activist movement," said Judy Freespirit...
...He delegated the job to the notorious General Anatoly Kuntsevich, the former chemical troops commander and political hard-liner...
...by 1991, it was nearly 33 percent...
...Dennis Duplantier, doubts that Yeltsin has total control of the program...
...teenage daughter was found dead in her room, covered in bed sores and surrounded by empty food cartons...
...In a budding exchange program, U.S...
...Lesser amounts can cause long-term suppression of the immune system...
...At the same time, Israeli intelligence leaked a report about Iraqi negotiations with the Soviet Union for some spectacular new weapon to break the stalemate with Iran...
...It was hard to dissolve, even for a mycotoxin, so you wound up making a munition filled with solvent...
...The organization leading the battle for "respect for the obese" is NAAFA—the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance— who've been weighing in with their thoughts on this year's first trial of the century: the California woman whose 68o-lb...
...American, but we've got 250 million and they can muster a mere io,000...
...The trichothecene family of mycotoxins produced what the Reagan Administration identified as the active agent in Yellow Rain, and it is nasty...
...Some mycotoxins are named for the species of fungus that produces them, but the trichothecenes are classed together by their chemical structure...
...diplomats were scarred by a loud counterattack from Western apologists unwilling to admit that Moscow was violating a major treaty against biological weapons...
...scientists toured five of these facilities, and were stunned at their size...
...Biopreparat researchers had used genetic engineering to produce new antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases such as tularemia and pneumonic plague...
...Unlike Aflatoxin, the trichothecenes dissolve fairly readily...
...As troops struggled into their masks and rubberized suits, they noticed a "dense yellowish mist" floating over the camp...
...According to a paper by Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, no SCUD attacks were reported that night...
...But the details don't fit...
...Agricultural researchers have found that aflatoxin potentiates both T-2 and another "yellow rain" component called DAS (diacetoxyscirpenol), meaning that the harm caused by the agents together is more severe than each would cause alone...
...But the biggest question of all was: Why Aflatoxin...
...The State Department fell silent about Yellow Rain...
...One type of toxin can be produced by several different species, and a prolific species like fusarium, stachybotris, and, yes, penicillium can produce several different trichothecenes...
...That distinction belongs to Nauru, a small Commonwealth island in the central Pacific composed chiefly of guano deposits—which somehow seems very appropriate...
...In October 1989, a scientist from Leningrad named Vladimir Pasechnik arrived in Toulouse, France, to buy chemical equipment for his research laboratory, the Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations...
...Stick the entire population of Nauru in a New Jersey mall and no-one would even notice...
...European doctors reported mustard gas, canisters of which were later found by a U.N...
...The Aflatoxin Bomb But it was Iraq itself which put Yellow Rain back on the terror weapon hot list and presented UNSCOM with its greatJAMES RING ADAMS is an investigative writer for TAS...
...Mordvinov kicked the request back to Moscow, and two weeks later his boss Yakov Ryabov flew to Baghdad to make arrangements...
...At 3 a.m...
...Senior Israeli officials repudiated the work of their own analyst...
...The stakes in the current crisis could be high indeed...
...A general alarm sounded, with aradio message warning of "a confirmed chemical agent...
...But U.S...
...Special Commission (UNSCOM) now say outright they were on the trail of a major biological weapons system when Saddam Hussein cut them off this January...
...The New York Times surveyed 152 veterans of the unit in September 1996 and found that 114 reported chronic post-war illness...
...Then the reported production facility at Fudaliyah seemed totally inadequate to growing the quantity Iraq said it held...
...In the course of fifteen years spent building this institute, Pasechnik had discovered that he was part of a vast military project called the Biopreparat, devoted to developing new biological weapons...
...The theaters have no seats big enough...
...Nothing about this story added up...
...This blistering, highly lethal agent, scientifically a "mycotoxin," a form of poison produced by microscopic fungi, emerged at the beginning of the 1980's in Soviet surrogate attacks on anti-Communist insurgents in Laos and Afghanistan...
...Explanations of these mysteries were lacking until this spring, when a former UNSCOM inspector named Terry Taylor spilled the beans...
...We haven't seen the movie," said Sally Smith...
...Fat kids slip between the cracks all the time," said NAAFA's executive director Sally Smith...
...The term "yellow rain" referred to the dispersal agent used in the early 1980's, which spread the toxin in oily, sticky yellow droplets...
...The Cold War's Biggest Secret With the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika, the issue was forgotten, until a major defection brought it suddenly to the fore...
...The toxin then most frequently identified, T-2, was considered a battlefield failure since its dispersal radius was still limited...
...After the cease-fire, their stockpile was destroyed, the Iraqis added...
...As blistering agents, they do up to forty times more damage than the Lewisite and mustard gas of World War I. The skin forms pus-filled welts and sloughs off, giving rise to symptoms like those noted at al-Jubayl...
...54 March 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Yet there's a plausible report that an agent of this sort was turned on American forces during the Gulf War, and it did harm...
...But it didn't have the immediate drop-dead action that could make a difference in a fight...
...The whole Soviet project was a blatant violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, but the West softened its public complaints for fear of causing Yeltsin problems with his military.' In spite of Yeltsin's promise, there are worries that he had neither the will nor the control to carry it out...
...Indeed, America now weighs more than any other society in history...
...It is highly possible that Iraq's mycotoxin program continued the Soviet Union's work, with or without the direct involvement of Russian personnel...
...As one UNSCOM specialist was fond of saying, you would get hurt by an Aflatoxin bomb mainly if it fell on your head...
...These toxins immediately attack eyes, skin, and respiration...
...Conscience-stricken, he called the British embassy in Paris, and was quickly hustled across the channel...
...It was simply a lousy candidate for a battlefield weapon...
...In the latest twist, the U.S...
...The evidence points to a new form of one of the nastiest villains of the Cold War, Yellow Rain...
...A communications officer later stated in an affidavit that radio operators in the command bunkers were ordered to burn the log pages covering the incident...
...The only people who didn't like it were NAAFA...
...In an interview with the Moscow correspondent of the Jewish Forward, Kuntse'The best public account of Pasechnik's flight appears in The New Spies (London, 1994) by the former defense correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and current chief executive of United Press International James Adams, who is no relation to this writer...
...His debriefing confirmed the worst fears of western intelligence...
...But they clam up when pressed for more specifics...
...If only...
...In July 1995, officials in Baghdad revealed to the inspectors that not only had they experimented with a substance called Aflatoxin, but they had loaded it into missile warheads and gravity bombs during the Gulf War and given commanders pre-delegated authority to use it...
...The arms inspectors at the U.N...
...Baghdad's count of the number of munitions loaded with Aflatoxin kept changing, fluctuating up and down from the original report of four al-Hussein missiles and seven R-400 gravity bombs...
...Pound for pound, they may outweigh the average MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control classified 25 percent of Americans as obese...
...Radio Moscow reported with fine irony that the talks "provided for help in reclaiming an oil field...
...There are other choices, however...
...For one thing, the nitric acid propellant should have corroded the rubber suits, but they were unaffected...
...A Fox to Guard the Wolf With this guilty secret in the background, it's no wonder that Saddam Hussein is turning to Russia as his trump in the standoff with the U.N...
...The revelations prompted British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S...
...After all, America has far more lardbutts —pardon me, persons of bulk—than blacks or gays, and almost as many as women...
...Kuntsevich was fired in 1994 and later fell under suspicion of illegally selling chemical weapons precursors to Syria...
...UNSCOM officials don't hide their annoyance that their hand was tipped even this much...
...But UNSCOM specialists doubt that this weapon has returned in its original form...
...The American Spectator • March r 99 8 53 vich maintained that the sale was sanctioned by a government agreement...
...That's just one of the ways fat people are oppressed in this society," added her colleague, Patti Horton...
...It implies, bluntly, that Baghdad learned the secrets of Yellow Rain from its Soviet friends...
...Depending on exposure, death can come in minutes...
...According to this analysis, Iraq asked specifically for a CBW system during the November 14, 1983 visit to Baghdad of Vladimir Mordvinov, deputy chairman of the USSR Committee for Foreign Economic Relations...
...Those who didn't suit in time began to choke and felt a burning on their skin...
...It was almost as if some secret deal had been struck to abandon the issue if the attacks ceased...
...As Saddam calls for a greater Russian role in UNSCOM, his current monitors wonder if he calculates that his former suppliers would be less likely to expose what they gave him...
...So what exactly had so offended them when they saw the movie...
...Alas, she was speaking metaphorically...
...It also explains why Iraq was able to make what UNSCOM called such remarkable gains in such a short time...
...mission, but they also detected trace amounts of T-2...
...Any number of breakthroughs could have occurred in the thirteen years since "yellow rain" went underground...
...But they've been talking like this ever since The Nutty Professor, the 1996 film in which Eddie Murphy, with the aid of a ton of special effects, plays a 400 lb...
...Stachybotris made a name for itself in New York City recently when a bloom of the mold closed down a newly renovated public library on Staten Island...
...Their poisons can be even more deadly when combined together or mixed in a "cocktail" with chemicals like mustard gas...
...At last," roared a fat activist the other week, "fat people are on the march...
...UNSCOM spokesman Ewen Buchanan explains that they don't want to tip Iraq to what they know, which he hints is quite a lot...
...These fungi are easily found in nature...
...Tucker finds it possible instead that Patriot missiles were launched against an aircraft equipped to spray a biological weapon...
...The toxin could ruin your peanut crop, as it sometimes does in the U.S., and in the long run might cause liver cancer in humans...
...Exposed areas later broke out in rashes and blisters, which turned to ulcerating sores...
...Strong complaints from the Reagan State Department apparently persuaded the Soviet Union to stop using it...
...When one asks them about the likely candidate for the secret substance, one or more of the trichothecenes, they roll their eyes...
...It was no cinch to handle, either...
...today, it's pushing 40 percent...
...This threat is back, along with a more widely acknowledged range of biological weapons, but the psychological denial by the disarmament lobby has left the West largely helpless to deal with it...
...On top of the guano sit the island's hearty trenchermen...
...Incident at Majnoon A battle from the most desperate days of the Iran-Iraq war hangs over this whole issue...
...Although she lived only seven blocks from her junior high, Christina Corrigan hadbeen too fat to make the trip...
...The Soviet military was spending billions of rubles and employing 15,000 workers in plants capable of mass producing biological weapons...
...oilt CULTURE VULTUR ES by Mark Steyn °bestiality A fter blacks (or, if you prefer, persons of color) and gays (persons of orientation) and women (persons of gender), it was inevitable that one day fat people would also call for an end to discrimination...
...Actually, it's very hard to give fat activists a shot in the arm: try finding a vein in the folds of flesh...
...And there is a nagging, still unrefuted report that Iraq is feeding offthe work of the masterminds of this terror weapon, the biological warriors of the former Soviet Union...
...Anyway, fat Americans are now demanding, as Al Gore would put it, a place at the table...
...Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the old KGB chief with close ties to Baghdad, mediated the last crisis in November and is now the main voice against a Western military strike...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 3
