Did
Saddam Have WMDs After All: ISIS Overruns Iraq Chemical Weapons
'Mega-Facility'
19
June, 2014
With
all eyes firmly focused on what really matters (the oil refineries),
The
Telegraph reports
that ISIS has over-run a
Saddam Hussein-era chemical weapons (CW) complex.
The al-Muhanna 'mega-facility',
about 60 miles south of Baghdad, gives the jihadists access to
disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons
including mustard gas and sarin. The US state department is
'concerned' but "do not believe that the complex contains CW
materials of military value." However, as a former commander of
Britain's chemical weapons regiment warned, "we
have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before
and has carried out experiments in Syria."
This
is likely great for ISIS 2014 Annual Report;
but, of course, the other awkward question is: does this mean Saddam
did have WMDs (and ISIS found them) after all?
As
The Telegraph reports,
the jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein
chemical weapons complex on Thursday...
Isis
invaded the al-Muthanna mega-facility 60 miles north of Baghdad in a
rapid takeover that the US government said was a matter of concern.
The
facility was notorious in the 1980s and 1990s as the locus of
Saddam’s industrial scale efforts to develop a chemical weapons
development programme.
During
its peak in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Iraq produced bunkers full
of chemical munitions.
A
CIA report on the facility said that 150 tons of mustard were
produced each year at the peak from 1983 and pilot-scale production
of Sarin began in 1984.
Its
most recent description of al-Muthanna in 2007 paints a disturbing
picture of chemicals strewn throughout the area.
“Two
wars, sanctions and UN oversight reduced Iraqi’s premier production
facility to a stockpile of old damaged and contaminated chemical
munitions (sealed in bunkers), a wasteland full of destroyed chemical
munitions, razed structures, and unusable war-ravaged facilities,”
it said.
“Some
of the bunkers contained large quantities of unfilled chemical
munitions, conventional munitions, one-ton shipping containers, old
disabled production equipment and other hazardous industrial
chemicals.”
Britain
has previously acknowledgeded that the nature of the material
contained in the two bunkers would make the destruction process
difficult and technically challenging.
Should
we be worried?
US
officials revealed that the group had occupied the sprawling site
which has two bunkers encased in a concrete seal. Much
of the sarin is believed to be redundant.
“We
remain concerned about the seizure of any military site by the
[Isis],” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said. “We
do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military
value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely
move the materials.”
...
Hamish
de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of Britain’s chemical weapons
regiment, said that al-Muthanna has large stores of weaponized and
bulk mustard gas and sarin, most of which has been put beyond ready
use in concrete stores.
“It
is doubtful that Isis have the expertise to use a fully functioning
chemical munition
but there are materials on site that could be used in an improvised
explosive device,” he told the Telegraph.
“We
have seen that Isis has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before
and has carried out experiments in Syria.”
One
US official told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that Isis fighters
could be contaminated by the chemicals at the site.
“The
only people who would likely be harmed by these chemical materials
would be the people who tried to use or move them,” the military
officer said.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.