Old, mostly inert, gas weapons were found in Iraq, which it used in its war with Iran. Nothing was said of this publicly when WMD were searched for in Iraq. Those weapons were still effective enough to injure many soldiers. I have heard that we (the US) did not disclose those findings because we produced them for Hussein. I find that difficult to believe, but they were there, we knew about it, and yet did not disclose their existence. Hussein said at the time that all such weapons were neutralized.
Cite? I find it hard to believe that W found WMD in Iraq and just swept it under the rug.
They produced it themselves - not that difficult, it’s an offshoot of the chemistry of the fertiliser industry. Why would we go to the trouble of supplying them with gas; wasn’t as if Mr Hussein was that much of a pal of ours anyway.
From the above link:
The issue wasn’t whether Iraq had ever had chemical weapons programs - nobody disputed that. The issue in 2003 was whether Iraq had current ongoing chemical weapons programs. That was the justification for invading. So finding old chemical weapons really didn’t mean anything.
Iraq insisted that they destroyed all those weapons. Some of them were still potent.
<nitpick> Not Mr Hussain - Mr Saddam.
The Duelfer report, drafted in 2004, concluded that residual chemical weapons were likely simply forgotten about or lost, rather than there having been an intentional effort to conceal a CW stockpile. It could well have been that Iraqi leaders thought they destroyed their stockpile, but didn’t realize that miscellaneous remnants were scattered around the country, even in substantial amounts.
Thread title edited to better indicate subject.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
They were potent in the same sense an unexploded, long-forgotten WWII shell buried in the ground is still potent. They were not the active WMD program which the war criminals in the Bush administration claimed as the justification for war.
As for the original question, it’s pretty clear from the 1994 Riegle Report that the US exported chemicals to Iraq which could be turned into chemical weapons (dual-use chemicals). And it’s fairly unlikely that the Reagan administration was unaware of what the Iraqis were doing with the chemicals. And from State department memos which were declassified, it appears that Donald Rumsfeld may have personally intervened to keep the chemical shipments going.
So, while we’ll probably never know how involved the US was exactly in the actual development of Iraqi chemical weapons, at the very least, the US probably knew what was going on and the US allowed chemicals to be shipped to Iraq, which the Iraqis then converted into chemical weapons.
I don’t recall anyone making the argument in 2003 that we needed to invade Iraq in order to secure their leftover weapons from 1990.
Indeed, if old, remnant stocks of chemical weapons were a justification for invasion, we should expect foreign forces on US shores imminently. After all, only one country has ever used REAL weapons of mass destruction against an enemy, how do we know they won’t do it again?
Quite a few western powers supplied support to the Iraqi chemical weapons program, interestingly…and one of the largest suppliers of precursor chemicals was Singapore.
It’s a fascinating subject, actually, just for the technical aspects.
The “West” does not equal US. The U.S. did appear to furnish some materials that could have been later used for weapons. However France and Germany were heavily involved in the building of iraq’s infrastructure to include various plants and factories. Or I should say private companies based in those countries.
I don’t recall the US invading Kuwait, being driven out, and signing a ceasefire agreeing to divest itself of WMD and documenting that this was complete. Do you have a cite to that effect?
In answer to the OP, yes, Iraq had poison gas, and no, the US did not furnish it. And it was not covered up - by the time the WMDs were discovered the MSM had settled too firmly on the “Iraq did not have any WMD” story to cover anything else.
Regards,
Shodan
But answer the real question.
That question is not “Did Iraq ever have chemical weapons at any time?”
The real question is “Did Iraq have active programs for making or using chemical weapons in 2003?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/international/middleeast/17CND-SARI.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/05/26/iraq.duelfer/
I reject your thesis.
The MSM settled on the “Iraq did not have any WMD programs” story because it is true. You gloss over the fact that the CIA concluded the exact same thing: there may be some 15-year old junk laying around (that would obviously be quite toxic, but not really an effective weapon in a military sense), and the WMD programs had been abandoned years before.
Chemical and nuclear…don’t forget the yellowcake.
Is this more of a GD thread than a GQ thread?