i hope this new discovery doesn't get bush re-elected. if so, i'll be escaping.....
Iraq Mortar Shells Contain Blister Agent
Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Danish and Icelandic troops have uncovered a cache of 36 shells in southern Iraq, and preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent, the Danish military said Saturday.
A U.S. commander said the shells were buried in the desert and were thought to be leftovers from the eight-year war between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988.
The shells were found near Al Quarnah, north of the city of Basra where Denmark's 410 troops are based, the Danish Army Operational Command said in a written statement.
The shells were wrapped in plastic but had been "damaged" because they had been buried for at least 10 years, the statement said.
It said British experts did a preliminary test and said the shells contained "blister gas."
It did not specify the type of gas, but before the war, the United States alleged Iraq still had stockpiles of mustard gas, a World War I-era blister agent that is stored in liquid form.
U.S. intelligence officials also said Iraq had sarin, cyclosarin and VX, which are extremely deadly nerve agents.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said shells were 120mm mortar shells and were buried in the desert.
"We're doing some preliminary tests to ensure that if they do contain any kind of blister agent that we can dispose of them properly," Kimmitt said. He said the shells were thought to date from the Iran-Iraq war.
Saddam Hussein's regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during that war and killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians in a chemical attack on the northern city of Halabja in 1988.
A nine-month search for the weapons of mass destruction that President Bush said he went to war to destroy has been conducted by a succession of U.S. teams, and all failed to find any current stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
The lack of evidence has led critics to suggest the Bush administration either mishandled or exaggerated its knowledge of Iraq's alleged arsenal.
In October, Dutch marines found several dozen artillery shells from the 1991 Gulf War in the southern Iraqi town of Samawah, but the shells contained no biological or chemical agents. Samawah is 100 miles west of the southern region where the Danes discovered shells Saturday.
― Jacky Tran (waxyjax), Sunday, 11 January 2004 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)
four years pass...