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Hundreds of Chemical Weapons Found in Iraq Since 2003, U.S. Intelligence Report Says
More than 500 chemical weapons have been found in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to an intelligence report disclosed yesterday by Republican lawmakers (see GSN, May 15). “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent,” said the report overview released by Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.). “Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist,” the document says. Santorum said the findings support the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. “This is an incredibly —in my mind — significant finding,” Santorum said. “The ideas that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false.” A Defense Department official said the weapons located were munitions manufactured prior to 1991, and were “in such a degraded state they couldn’t be used for what they were designed for.” The official also said most of the weapons were 155-millimeter shells with mustard gas or sarin of differing levels of potency. “We’re destroying them where we find them in the normal manner,” the official said. The intelligence report overview explained old chemical weapons in Iraq could be sold on the black market. “Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out,” it says. Charles Duelfer, former U.S. lead weapons inspector in Iraq, said last year that Iraq insurgents had used pre-Gulf War chemical weapons. Still, Hoekstra said, “the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn’t find anything.” “But this says: Weapons have been discovered; more weapons exist,” Hoekstra added. “And they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq.” The potential danger posed by the weapons depends on “many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions,” the intelligence document states. “While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal,” it says (Charlotte Raab, Agence France-Presse, June 21).
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