WASHINGTON -- A suspicious sample of biological material recently found by U.S. weapons hunters in Iraq was probably purchased legally from a U.S. organization in the 1980s and is a substance that has never been successfully used to produce a weapon, experts said.
The discovery of the vial of C. botulinum Okra B, which was revealed in an Oct. 2 report by chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay, was highlighted in speeches by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell as proof that Saddam Hussein maintained an illicit bioweapons program.
The vial of botulinum B had been stored in an Iraqi scientist's kitchen refrigerator since 1993 and appears to have been produced by a nonprofit Virginia biological resource center that legally exported botulinum and other biological material to Iraq under a Commerce Department license in the late 1980s. The vial was the only suspicious biological material Kay reported finding.
D.C.: General's comments draw strong reaction
WASHINGTON -- Religious groups Thursday asked President Bush to reprimand a top Pentagon official who has publicly described the war on terrorism as a conflict between Judeo-Christian values and Satan. But the nation's top uniformed military official said that Army Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin apparently broke no rules in making his remarks.
Dressed in his Army uniform, Boykin told an Oregon religious group in June that radical Islamists hate the United States "because we're a Christian nation ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan." He told an audience in Florida in January that a Muslim Somali warlord was captured because "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real god and his was an idol."
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that "at first blush, it doesn't look like any rules were broken."
IRAQ: Blast damages part of main oil pipeline
BAGHDAD -- An explosion damaged part of the main pipeline running from Iraq's northern oil fields Thursday, forcing a reduction in the amount of oil available for export.
It was unclear whether the pipeline explosion near the city of Hadeetha, 125 miles northwest of Baghdad, was caused by saboteurs, a senior Oil Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.