The Iraqi Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 170

to conceal the program complicated UNMOVIC's task of piecing together
a coherent and accurate account of it.
The following appreciation of Iraq's BW program is drawn from the in-
formation collected and presented by UNSCOM and UNMOVIC. 3 In Sep-
tember 2004 the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) issued its “Comprehensive Re-
port,” 4 and the information contained therein has been used to update
the information provided by UNSCOM and UNMOVIC. Numerous un-
certainties remain: the phrases such as “Iraq said,” “Iraq has stated,” and
“according to Iraq” that pepper the following account indicate that the
Iraqi statements are unsubstantiated and unverified. Moreover, Iraqi ac-
counts of “research” should frequently be construed instead as “activi-
ties” rather than as mere research or development. Iraq may well have
chosen to use the word research whenever possible to describe a range of
activities, since research is not prohibited by the BWC.
Initiation of the Program
The state of Iraq was created in 1921 as a mandate under the League of
Nations and was administered by the United Kingdom until gaining inde-
pendence in 1932. In 1945 Iraq became one of the original members of
the United Nations. The monarchy was overthrown in 1958 and a repub-
lic was established.
In 1968 the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party seized power in Iraq and em-
barked on modernizing the country, including its industrial sector. Sad-
dam Hussein become chief of the Revolutionary Command Council, as
well as head of the government, the party, and the armed forces. The de-
velopment of WMD began in the late 1960s or early 1970s at about the
same time as the change in the Iraqi leadership. According to Iraq, chemi-
cal weapons (CW) were first studied in 1971, when small quantities of
chemical agents were synthesized.
Iraq has stated that in 1974, in response to a rising threat from Israel
and Iran, a government decree was issued to study “scientific, academic
and applied researches in the fields of chemistry, physics and micro-or-
ganisms.” 5 However, no copy of this decree was provided to UNSCOM or
to UNMOVIC. Nor has there been any elaboration of what type of work
was envisaged by the word researches. Although Iraq has stated that this
work was motivated by the threat from its enemies, the fact remains that