The secrecy of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons program was vast and spread throughout Iraq. As earlier reported, even Saddam’s top aides and generals did not know that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Saddam Hussein even bribed UN weapons inspectors to keep the heat off of what most of the world believed was his WMD program.

Behind Iraq’s chemical weapons labs was a scientist named Rihab Rashid Taha who is currently in U.S. custody. Miss Taha is believed to have engineered the program during the 1980s, some of which were used by Chemical Ali against the Kurds in Northern Iraq. Now Taha claims she got rid of the anthrax she was instrumental in producing at the gates to one of Saddam Hussein’s many palaces.

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.”

What is beyond belief to me is the shroud of secrecy within Iraq preceding the war in Iraq was not just with outside intelligence agencies, it was with the Iraqi people, top aides, generals and even scientists as well. If Saddam Hussein did not have any WMDs, why did he not grant the UN full access to inspect what they wished to inspect?

Saddam Hussein kicked UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq on numerous occassions, only letting them back inside Iraq right before the war. He defied the entire international community over a program which is believed to have been shelved during the early 1990s yet no stockpiles of WMDs were found.

I admit, there are rumors of a transfer of WMDs to Syria with the aide of Russia, however this has yet to be proven and most likely will never be proven unless Syrian President Bashir Assad is toppled either from outside forces or from Syrians. There have been small amounts of chemical weapons found inside of Iraq, but the small quantity is far from what was believed to be housed inside the country.