"Gandalf Grey" <gandalfgrey@infectedmail.com> wrote:
>
>June 18, 2003
>Word That U.S. Doubted Iraq Would Use Gas
>By JAMES RISEN


Ahh the selective memory of liberals.


The Evening Standard
January 24, 2003

Alert over chemical warfare

By Charles Reiss and Patrick McGowan

Damning new evidence today emerged that Saddam Hussein is equipping
his elite troops for a nerve gas war.

Documents obtained by the BBC appear to show that key elements of the
Iraqi army are being supplied with new chemical warfare suits.

They will also be issued, in the event of conflict, with stocks of
atropine, the drug used to counter the effects of nerve gas.

The news is likely to be pounced on in London and Washington as the
strongest evidence yet that Saddam has chemical warfare weaponry and
is preparing, in the last resort, to use it.

The pages of notes, handwritten in Arabic, were said to have been
smuggled out of the country in the past month and passed to Iraqi
opposition groups in London who handed them to the BBC.

The BBC, mindful of a possible disinformation exercise, have had the
documents verified by three different experts, according to its Today
programme. The pages also include detailed plans for attacking ships
in the Gulf. During the late Eighties the Iraqis used 122mm rockets to
carry warheads containing the deadly nerve gases sarin and VX. Saddam
has often denied that he still possesses chemical weapons as Iraq has
been repeatedly ordered to give up all such weapons under UN
resolutions dating back to 1991.

Last week the threat of war in Iraq escalated sharply after warheads
designed to carry deadly chemicals were found by UN weapons
inspectors. The 122mm warheads were empty but in "excellent"
condition, said the UN.

More than 10 years ago Iraq denied it had nerve gas stockpiles but was
then forced to admit that it had made and stockpiled VX, sarin and
tabun gases.

Iraq used chemical weapons during its war against Iran in the Eighties
and to suppress dissidents among its own Kurdish population. Last
November the CIA discovered Baghdad had ordered a million doses of an
antidote to sarin and VX and frantic efforts were made to block the
order being delivered.

Experts said the only possible reason the Iraqis could want so much
atropine was to protect their own soldiers and civilians against the
nerve agents which Saddam is believed to have stockpiled.

Atropine is a powerful defence against both sarin gas and the more
powerful VX, which can be in liquid or gas form.

Within just two minutes of exposure to high concentrations of such
poisons, the victim may lose consiousness and die.

A CIA report released last month said Baghdad had begun renewed
production of chemical warfare agents and probably had a "few hundred
tonnes of them" including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin and VX.

A White House source said that Baghdad had also ordered another
chemical weapons antidote, obidoxime chloride.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ing%20Standard