The Washington Post reported while I was in flight to Nashville this afternoon that American troops discoverd over 1500 gallons of chemicals believed to be intended to attack US and Iraqi forces by Islamist terrorists. The warehouse in Mosul had eleven different kinds of precursor agents and appears to have only recently been stocked:
Combined, the chemicals would yield an agent capable of “lingering hazards” for those exposed to it, Boylan said. The likely targets would have been “coalition and Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi civilians,” in part owing to the difficulty anyone deploying the chemicals would have had in keeping the agents from spreading out over a wide area, he said.
Military officials did not immediately identify either the precursors or the agent they could have produced. “We don’t want to speculate on any possibilities until our analysis is complete,” Col. Henry Franke, a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer, was quoted as saying in a military statement.
Investigators still were trying to determine which group was responsible for the alleged lab and whether the expertise came from foreign fighters or members of Saddam Hussein’s former security apparatus, the military said.
No one believes at this point that the chemicals predate the fall of Saddam. That would mean that the chemicals made it into Mosul either by bringing them out of Syria or from a safe storage area in Northern Iraq. Either of those two scenarios could point back to pre-invasion Iraq as the source of the chemicals themselves, however; the former scenario only adds the possibility that Bashar Assad has lost his mind.
The size of this find makes it a significant development, both for the insurgency as it stands now and the sourcing of these chemical components. We may have some radical rethinking to do about the nature of not just the terrorists in Iraq, but also the war narrative that said Saddam had no WMD available for his use.
UPDATE: Welcome, Eschaton readers … who apparently can’t read when I wrote that no one believes this weapons cache predates the fall of Saddam. Apparently the same people who keep posting comments think that 1500 gallons of chemical-weapons precursors can simply pop up out of nowhere, however. Is it so hard to figure out that either they likely came from Syria or from a hidden cache somewhere in Northern Iraq — and to understand the implications of either scenario? They can’t exactly fly them in from the Home Depot in Ankara, folks. Neither the Zarqawi terrorists nor the Ba’athist remnant insurgents have that kind of protection for the extended lines of communications necessary to get them into Mosul from Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Iran.
UPDATE II: The Counterterrorism Blog has more, including a recap of some applicable testimony from Charles Duelfer.
Chemical stash found in Iraq
Preliminary reports, are coming out, that coalition forces have uncovered a chemical production and storage facility. Check out this news release from the USDoD, complete with pictures. As an aside, I would like to point out the mention that they
WMDs found (again)
There are a few folks on the right who simply cannot accept the fact that Saddam Hussein had no access…
WMD in Iraq
The lefties are out in droves trying to spin this as evidence that Bush is the cause of all evil in the world. Go read the comments and see the moonbats bark. The talking points must have gone out on the wire pronto pronto!
Weapons Found in Iraq
Via Captains Quarters: WMD Found in MosulOver 1500 gallons of chemicals. Washington Post Associated Press CNN MSNBC…
1500 Gallons of WMD Chemicals Found in Iraq
This is being reported in the Washington Post. Some moonbat commenters over at Captain’s Quarters almost immediately started in with that ol’ lefty song, you know the one-Bush lied, there was no WMD in Iraq. To which Ed Morrissey responds:Apparently
Linkfest thread
I’m too tired from packing and being pissed off at the overall state of domestic political affairs to do anymore substantive writing for tonight. So consider this an open thread to discuss any of the links I provide below:
***Wankers at PowerL…
Did U.S. Troops just piss on the Insurgents’ Manhattan Project?…
Were insurgents able to exterminate a significant number of coalition and Iraqi security forces–even Iraqi civilians–with chemical weapons, that’d certainly play unfavourably in Western Media, but there are easier ways to play the Western Media… I …
War Produces WMDs?
Glanced this at Eschaton, and checked around to see if others had picked it up. Apparently, a chemical weapons factory has been discovered in Iraq. The kicker? If does date to before the 2003 invasion. In fact, it probably dates to sometime afte…
1500 Gallons of Chemical Weapons
… found in Iraq. According to the article, the stash was built post-invasion. So there’s an implication that the insurgency will try a chemical weapons attack somehow.
There’s also the question of where the chemical weapons origin…
Does Cindy Sheehan care?
From the Associated Press… Thirty bodies were found Sunday in a grave south of Baghdad, Iraqi forces said. Iraqi commandos…
Weekend Round-Up
Scott Randolph was a democrat. But now he left his party for good to become a republican. Thanks to Cindy Sheehan (via The Corner). ►If you never read Day By Day by Chris Muir, just know that it is the best conservative comic-strip in the whole…