Jag lovade mig själv att jag inte skulle ta upp detta ämne igen. Men nu kan jag inte låta bli. Torsdagen den 22 juni 2006 kom det fram att USA har funnit 500 WMD:s i Irak sedan maj 2004. Man uppskattar att det finns fler kvar där. USA:s mainstreammedier har tonat ned det hela. I Sverige har man inte ens tagit upp det. Varför? Det är sant, som kritikerna till fyndet säger, att dessa är gamla vapen från före 1991. Men vad gör det för skillnad om de efter alla dessa år fortfarande är farliga och dödliga?

FoxNews:

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

”We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons,” Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: ”Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.”

He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.

”The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal,” Santorum read from the document.

”This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Washington Post:

Do the 20-year-old Iraqi chemical munitions found by U.S. and coalition forces support the prewar contention that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and justify the invasion of Iraq?

That question divided Republicans and Democrats again this week, this time at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on the estimated 500 rockets and artillery shells containing degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent.

Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) contended that an April report by the U.S. Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) is clear evidence of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

”Some may want to play down the significance of this report or even deny that WMD have been found in Iraq,” Hunter said at Thursday’s hearing, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction.

Citing the United Nations resolutions that called for destruction of all of Hussein’s banned weapons, Hunter added that ”the verified existence of such chemical weapons” proves they were not destroyed and ”in part because of such violations, we voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq.”

…

The classified overview of chemical munitions says that U.S. forces have found about 500 shells, canisters or other munitions containing the chemical weapons. Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the committee the shells were produced in the 1980s for the Iran-Iraq war but were not used.

…

In his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, President Bush said that U.S. intelligence indicated ”Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them — despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.”

…

Maples was caught in the verbal crossfire between Republicans and Democrats but proved adept at avoiding answers that aided either side.

Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) asked whether the munitions could be characterized as ”the Golden Oldies of weapons of mass destruction.” Maples said he was ”not sure what Golden Oldies are” but added that the munitions were ”dangerous. . . . even in a degraded mode, they will produce hazardous and potentially lethal effects and that we would categorize them as weapons of mass destruction.”

…

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who believes the shells represent weapons of mass destruction, asked: ”If you took that material and got it out of the country and took it to a metropolitan area, what would be the impact?”
Maples replied, ”I think conceivably it would have a very large impact.”
That caused Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala.) to ask, ”If some bad guys got this stuff and sneaked it into New York City and put it [into] the subways there, would it kill people?” Taken aback slightly, Maples responded, ”Potentially . . . yes, sir, it would.”

Investor’s Business Daily:

The head of the House intelligence panel is calling the national intelligence director to task for misrepresenting the discovery of chemical munitions in Iraq. Why is the intelligence establishment playing games?

A strongly worded letter sent last week by Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., complained to John Negroponte about a June 21 press briefing that Negroponte’s office organized and in which unidentified intelligence officials made ”inaccurate, incomplete and occasionally misleading comments” to reporters.

Reporters were told that CIA weapons inspectors in Iraq weren’t interested in weapons of mass destruction produced before the 1991 Gulf War. ”This assertion is demonstrably false,” Hoekstra wrote, and he quoted from the Transmittal Message to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) report.

The report said inspectors were looking ”to provide facts and meaning concerning the regime’s experience with WMD” and ”a dynamic analysis rather than simple static accounting of the debris found following Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

…

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday, the Defense Intelligence Agency head, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, said that although the Iraqi chemical weapons were in degraded condition, they were still ”a danger in Iraq for those who could come in contact with them.” Use ”outside of Iraq could not be ruled out,” he added.

The NGIC commander, Col. John Chiu, testified that ”regardless of the purity . . . any remaining agent is toxic, with potential to be lethal.”

Och allt detta bör naturligtvis förstås ur ett större sammanhang:

The ISG’s 2004 Duelfer Report documented Saddam’s ability and willingness to use chemical weapons again. Among the findings:

• Saddam’s government intended to resume all banned weapons programs once sanctions against Iraq were lifted.

• Saddam considered chemical warfare ”a proven weapon against an enemy’s superior numerical strength, a weapon that had saved the nation at least once already — during the Iran-Iraq War — and . . . deterred the coalition in 1991 from advancing to Baghdad.”

• The U.N.’s oil-for-food program ”sparked a flow of illicitly diverted funds that could be applied to . . . Iraq’s chemical industry.”

• ”The way Iraq organized its chemical industry after the mid-1990s allowed it to conserve the knowledge base needed to restart a CW (chemical weapons) program.”

• Hardware found by the ISG ”suggests that Iraq may have prototyped experimental CW rounds.”

• The head of the Iraqi paramilitary force tried to obtain chemical weapons for use during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

• The Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) from 1991 to 2003 maintained ”a set of undeclared covert laboratories to research and test various chemicals and poisons, primarily for intelligence operations.” Those labs could have provided an ideal, compartmented platform from which to continue R&D or small CW production.

• Saddam’s IIS program used human subjects for testing.

The Bush administration did not lie about WMD so we could go to war. In liberating Iraq, the U.S. ousted a dictator who already committed genocide against fellow Muslims using chemical weapons.

Samtliga kursiveringar är mina.