The truth about Iraq's so-called WMDs

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2006/07/31/opinion/commentary/iq_3536890.txt

("Iraq's WMDs: The Russian connection," July 13), it is imperative that readers have a clarification of the facts.

The 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq were not "hidden" as Mr. Gasster claims, but buried or abandoned by Iraqi troops in a hasty manner during the first Iraq war and forgotten. They are all the weapons dated from before the 1992 U.S. invasion of Iraq. They were not properly stored in the heat of the Iraqi desert for over a decade, and therefore were militarily useless. Also, Mr. Gasster writes that the weapons were "sarin, nerve and VX weapons." To clarify, sarin and VX are both nerve agents. Moreover, no VX agents were ever in Iraq's arsenal -- VX was developed by the U.K. and the U.S. and has not been duplicated by any other countries. Iraq did experiment with other nerve agents, but never manufactured true VX. Also, some of the 500 weapons found were mustard, a blister agent. Iraq never had a delivery method for chemical weapons that could ever pose a threat to the U.S. However, this fact was never conveyed to the U.S. population by the current administration, an irresponsible oversight.

Mr. Gasster's claim that the 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq is "one of the world's major chemical arsenals" is a lie. The U.S. and Russia are presently destroying their chemical weapon stockpiles but their arsenals at the time of the first invasion of Iraq were more than half a million munitions and more than 40,000 tons of chemical weapons agents, respectively. While Saddam did have a sizable arsenal, it never came close to those of the U.S. or Russia. Iraq's chemical arsenal was destroyed after the first Iraq war in operations overseen by UNSCOM. There has never been a credible indication that Iraq restarted its chemical weapons program.

In addition, it was the U.S. and Western Europe that played a far greater role in Saddam Hussein's development of chemical weapons than Russia. The detailed report of which countries armed Iraq is available on the UN's Web site. While Mr. Gasster wishes to highlight the "Russian connection," the U.S. connection with Iraq's chemical weapon program is far greater.

Americans must understand the history behind Iraq's chemical weapons. The fact is that the only country that has suffered an attack with weapons of mass destruction since World War II has been Iran. Iraq attacked Iran using chemical weapons on numerous occasions in the Iran-Iraq war. However, when European countries and the Red Cross attempted to condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons on Iran in the 1980s, the U.S. blocked international condemnation and UN sanctions on Iraq. Simply put, the U.S. did not care if Iranians were killed with Iraqi chemical weapons. That the U.S. did not condemn Iraq's use of chemical weapons in the 1980s is a matter of fact and record. This amoral and short-sighted policy of the U.S. gave Saddam carte blanche with respect to his weapons of mass destruction.

[The Deacon]

1. A Further Clarification Needs To Be Made

The methods used by Iraq in production of its "G" class nerve agents (sarin, soman & tabun) resulted in very impure mixes with a 'shelf life' measured in months - at most a year. Saddam Hussein considered this an acceptable trade-off with speed of production since the intention was always to rush the completed agents to the front line in the Iran-Iraq War and use them immediately. (This from a GAO report on proliferation.) Weapons produced in these factories were never more than a transient threat.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Psst, don't try to tell truth to the RW wackos who MUST believe in Bush!