BEST OF BOTH WORLDS:

Fearing Saddam, anthrax scientist kept her secret - and chanced war (AP, 3/28/05)

In early 2003, as war fever built in Washington, an Iraqi scientist faced a fateful choice.

Rihab Rashid Taha could try to lower the heat by finally telling U.N. inspectors what happened to Iraq's "missing" anthrax.

Or she could remain silent, rather than risk Saddam Hussein's wrath.

The microbiologist's dilemma, she has told U.S. interrogators, was that her team 12 years earlier had destroyed the lethal bacteria by dumping it practically at the gates of one of Saddam's main palaces, and the feared Iraqi despot might grow enraged at news of anthrax on his doorstep.

Taha chose silence in 2003, thus stoking suspicions of those who contended Iraq still harbored biological weapons. Soon thereafter, two years ago this month, the United States invaded.

"Whether those involved understood the significance and disastrous consequences of their actions is unclear," the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group says of Taha and colleagues in its final report on Iraq weapons-hunting. "These efforts demonstrate the problems that existed on both sides in establishing the truth."

Disastrous? She got rid of the WMD and Saddam. Where's the disaster?

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 28, 2005 3:58 PM