The Iraqi Defector that the bush regime doesn't want you to know about...

[radwriter0555]

Comprehensive examination and transcripts of interviews with some big kahunas from Iraq.

http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html

Gen. Hussein Kamel, the former director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, in charge of Iraq's weapons programme, defected to Jordan on the night of 7 August 1995, together with his brother Col. Saddam Kamel. Hussein Kamel took crates of documents revealing past weapons programmes, and provided these to UNSCOM. Iraq responded by revealing a major store of documents that showed that Iraq had begun an unsuccessful crash programme to develop a nuclear bomb (on 20 August 1995). Hussein and Saddam Kamel agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated (23 February 1996).

During the interview, Major Izz al-Din al-Majid (transliterated as Major Ezzeddin) joins the discussion (p.10). Izz al-Din is Saddam Hussein's cousin, and defected together with the Kamel brothers. He did not return with them to Iraq in 1996, moving instead to Jordan and now to an unknown European country.

In the transcript of the interview, Kamel states categorically:

"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed"
(p. 13).

Kamel specifically discussed the significance of anthrax, which he portrayed as the "main focus" of the biological programme (pp.7-8). Smidovich asked Kamel: "were weapons and agents destroyed?"

Kamel replied: "nothing remained".

He confirmed that destruction took place "after visits of inspection teams. You have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq." (p.7)

Kamel added: "I made the decision to disclose everything so that Iraq could return to normal." (p.8)

Furthermore, Kamel describes the elimination of prohibited missiles: "not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed." (p.8)

On VX, Kamel claimed: "they put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the programme was terminated." (p.12).

Ekeus asked Kamel: "did you restart VX production after the Iran-Iraq war?"

Kamel replied: "we changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine <...> We gave insturctions not to produce chemical weapons." (p.13).

Despite the significance of these claims, it was not known that Kamel made this assertion until February 2003. Kamel's claim was first carried on 24 February 2003 by Newsweek, who reported that Kamel told U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and banned missiles, as Iraq claims (Newsweek, 3/3/03). Newsweek reported that the weapons were destroyed secretly, in order to hide their existence from inspectors, in the hopes of someday resuming production after inspections had finished. The CIA and MI6 were told the same story, Newsweek reported.

Read the rest, pretty amazing stuff.

[Kbowe]

1. I am just amazed !!!

Little media coverage about this. But it would seem that the time is right for the Dem candidates to be screaming about this. Especially about the fact that this info is being squashed and kept out of the public limelight.

[dudeness]

2. colin powell

actually made reference to kamel in his 5 feb address to the UN..not sure if he used these quotes..(sarcasm) on..

[jagguy]

3. if any of this is true

then Iraq could have provided the documentation of the destruction to the UN inspectors and avoided war.

The bullshit-o-meter is pegged on this information.

[dudeness]

4. no amount of information was going to avoid this war..

n/t

[dudeness]

5. further info that the UN did know..it was ignored

In August, 1995, General Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of Iraq’s weapons program, defected to Jordan, with his brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel. They brought with them crates of documents containing detailed information about Iraqi efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction—much of which was unknown to the U.N. inspection teams that had been on the job since 1991—and were interviewed at length by the U.N. inspectors. In 1996, Saddam Hussein lured the brothers back with a promise of forgiveness, and then had them killed. The Kamels’ information became a major element in the Bush Administration’s campaign to convince the public of the failure of the U.N. inspections. Last October, in a speech in Cincinnati, the President cited the Kamel defections as the moment when Saddam’s regime “was forced to admit that it had produced more than thirty thousand liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. . . . This is a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for, and is capable of killing millions.” A couple of weeks earlier, Vice-President Cheney had declared that Hussein Kamel’s story “should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself.” The full record of Hussein Kamel’s interview with the inspectors reveals, however, that he also said that Iraq’s stockpile of chemical and biological warheads, which were manufactured before the 1991 Gulf War, had been destroyed, in many cases in response to ongoing inspections. The interview, on August 22, 1995,was conducted by Rolf Ekeus, then the executive chairman of the U.N. inspection teams, and two of his senior associates—Nikita Smidovich and Maurizio Zifferaro. “You have an important role in Iraq,” Kamel said, according to the record, which was assembled from notes taken by Smidovich. “You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq.”http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/2003/0512selective.htm

[jagguy]

9. So even the UN wanted war ?

I won't argue that the UN inspections people are grossly incompetent but I don't accept that they would play the setup man for the blood thirsty Bush presidency.

No. I can't take any of this too seriously. The UN is not our friend and they say it was never proven that destruction of the stuff occurred. Given the nature of the record keeping that they do there (they note EVERYTHING), it just doesn't ring true.

[Paschall]

10. I don't believe the UN would accept mere documentation

The UN resolutions required on-the-ground verification by inspectors. Documents can be forged, after all. Remember the Nigerian uranium?

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency had plenty of data on and from Kamel, but the IAEA determined he ordered certain information on Iraqi WMD programs be withheld from the UN. Kamel's assassination, of course, did not facilitate the IAEA's task. If you'll check out some of the documents from the above link, you'll see the IAEA had no way to verify Kamel's claims.

[radwriter0555]

11. How do you prove a negative? Yeah, sure, video tapes and all that, but

that stuff gets lost, destroyed, disintigrates, etc, even if you DO. THIS guy is a the WITNESS and he's in an interview, has no reason to lie... in fact gets killed when he gets home.

[sistersofmercy]

6. Oh yeah been making reference to this for awhile, found an article..

on globalresearch, we've been lied to for quite sometime. Why? well he just wouldn't be as much of a bad guy w/o it! Makes me wonder who really assinated him considering INC have been operating in iraq for years. Tried a coup about the time of his defection.

[sistersofmercy]

7. Look I'll try to find a link to the article I read written by Iraqi ...

defector who was part of nuclear program until 1998 when he was allow to defect. Funny thing canadian defectors have a totally different story to tell than american/INC defectors.

[Emillereid]

8. I for one read this stuff in Newsweek back in February before the war

but nothing was getting through the war smoke -- Colon used what he wanted of Kamel's, but conveniently avoided his claim that Iraq was WMD free.