A suspected chemical weapons factory has been found in Iraq — but it’s believed to be a post-invasion factory:
BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 — U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday.
Monday’s early morning raid found 11 precursor agents, “some of them quite dangerous by themselves,” a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, said in Baghdad.
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,” partly because the chemicals would be difficult to keep from spreading over a wide area, he said.
But at this point, that’s what the news IS: a post-invasion weapons factory. It still is not proof of anything Sadaam Hussein was doing before the invasion. Indeed, some will surely make the argument that if U.S. troops weren’t there the factory might not now be there. There are a slew of questions that’ll have to be answered about this facility.
The AP also notes that there’s no proof this facility is linked to Sadaam’s departed regime:
U.S. troops, acting on a tip from detainees under interrogation, raided the building Tuesday, the statement said. The military did not say if anyone was detained in the raid and said it was investigating which insurgent group was operating the facility.
The military has found many suspected chemical sites in the past, none of which ended up containing chemical or biological weapons. Testing of such sites can take several days.
Boylan said the materials did not appear to be linked to Saddam Hussein’s ousted regime.
What it DOES tell us is that the insurgents are planning to make their battle against U.S. troops even nastier than they’d made it so far.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.