Poisoning the air US reports of Iraqi stockpiles of nerve gas antidote should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism, warns Brian Whitaker
The Guardian
December 9, 2002
By Brian WhitakerOne of the oldest tricks in the run-up to a war is to spread terrifying stories of things that the enemy may be about to do. Government officials plant these tales, journalists water them and the public, for the most part, swallow them.
On November 12, the New York Times reported that Iraq had ordered a million doses of a well known antidote to nerve gas. This information came from "senior Bush administration officials" whom the paper did not name, and was soon regurgitated by other news media across the US and beyond.
Although the New York Times made clear that the drug concerned, atropine, has some perfectly normal medical uses, the story pointed - as the officials who leaked it undoubtedly intended - to a far more sinister conclusion. It implied that Iraq not only possesses nerve gas but intends to use it in a conflict with the US - hence the need to protect its own forces from accidental injury.
For the benefit of anyone too dim to spot the "correct" interpretation, unidentified American officials spelled it out: the quantities of atropine ordered by Iraq, the officials said, far outstripped the amount it could conceivably need for normal hospital use. "If the Iraqis were going to use nerve agents," one explained, "they would want to take steps to protect their own soldiers, if not their population. This is something that US intelligence is mindful of and very concerned about".
Since the atropine story was published, its author - Judith Miller - has gone on to write more scary stuff about Iraq. On December 3, she reported an unverified claim that a Russian scientist, who once had access to the Soviet Union's entire collection of 120 strains of smallpox, may have visited Iraq in 1990 and may have provided the Iraqis with a version of the virus that could be resistant to vaccines and could be more easily transmitted as a biological weapon. (Note the "may"s and "could"s.)
Meanwhile, the Bush administration, having got atropine into the public eye, began kicking up a stink about it in the UN security council. Twice in the last two weeks, it threatened to block a renewal of the oil-for-food programme unless action was taken to stop Iraq acquiring atropine and other substances. Had the US carried out its threat, Iraq would by now have been unable to continue selling its oil or buying food and other civilian goods from abroad - another way, perhaps, of tightening the screws around Saddam Hussein. In the event, a crisis was averted and the American antics achieved little more than annoying other members of the security council.
This behaviour might at least be understandable if we could be sure that the American fears about atropine were justified, but we can't. There is one awkward fact not mentioned in the New York Times story - that Iraq has previously bought large quantities of atropine with the blessing of the security council. Six separate orders for the drug have been approved under the oil-for-food programme since 1997. Three of the approved Iraqi orders were comparable, in terms of the number of doses, to the million-shot order that is now causing so much controversy. One was for 1,000,000 doses, another for 964,000 and the biggest for 1,500,000.
Atropine is used for treating various heart and respiratory disorders. It is also the drug of choice in cases of organophospate (pesticide) poisoning, where massive amounts - up to 100 times the normal dose - may be needed to effect recovery. The UN sanctions committee, which of course includes Americans, took the view that the Iraqi orders were probably about adequate to meet the country's routine medical needs. But suddenly, as the US prepares to invade, along comes another order - seemingly very similar - which, according to American officials, far outstrips the amount Iraq could conceivably need for normal hospital use. Someone, somewhere, has clearly got it wrong.
There is also a lot that the US has not disclosed about the latest Iraqi order for atropine. For a start, there has been no public confirmation of the order from independent sources. The New York Times story said the supplies were coming mainly from a Turkish company, which US officials declined to name. But in Turkey, one manufacturer of atropine, Drogsan, said it does no business with Iraq and has not received any request. Another firm, Bousel, said it had not produced atropine for a long time. Their denials were backed up by two senior Turkish government health officials.
Although the figure of 1 million doses in the Iraqi order sounds impressive, the US has not revealed how much atropine is contained in each dose - a highly relevant fact which would help to determine whether the drug could be for military or civilian use. The standard battlefield dose to protect against nerve gas is 2.0mg, repeated every few minutes if necessary. Of the 3,502,000 doses ordered by Iraq previously, and approved by the sanctions committee, 3,464,000 were of 0.6mg. A further 35,000 doses were of 1.0mg, and just 3,000 of 2.0mg. No military-sized doses have been ordered under the oil-for-food programme since 1997.
The US has also linked the atropine order to Iraqi purchases of autoinjectors - devices that troops can use on a battlefield to self-administer drugs by jabbing themselves in the thigh. The number of autoinjectors ordered has not been disclosed but, since a large number would be worth mentioning, it may be fairly small. It's also unclear whether the autoinjectors are the right size for administering battlefield doses of atropine.
In the light of the current fuss, it is extremely odd that only a few months ago the security council decided let Iraq buy as much atropine as it wants without asking permission first. Until last May, all Iraqi imports needed approval from the sanctions committee. This was unwieldy, often leading to serious delays in acquiring medicines and other essential goods, so the rules were changed to let Iraq buy anything, without sanctions committee approval, so long as it was not on the "review list" of suspicious items.
The list of suspicious goods agreed last May, which is extremely long, was the result of 12 months' detailed negotiation among security council members. Many - probably most - of the items on the list were included at the behest of the US, but atropine was not among them. Under extraordinary American pressure, the security council has now agreed to review the list over the next six months, in exchange for US agreement to continuing the oil-for-food programme.
The atropine affair is just one of many accusations, apparently based on intelligence reports, that have been levelled against Iraq in the last few weeks. The difficulty with such reports is interpreting what they mean: snippets of information can be combined to produce all sorts of conclusions.
Saddam Hussein is a tricky customer, and it's certainly possible that the Americans are right in their assessment of what he intends to do with the atropine. But it's equally possible that they are wrong. The atropine story also serves to stir up war fever - and for that reason, if no other, it should be treated with suspicion until the US produces more evidence than at present it is willing to divulge.