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Posted on 04/14/2003 7:53:03 PM PDT by kattracks
An American general in Iraq said last night that his troops had uncovered 11 vans buried underground that could be mobile chemical and biological weapons laboratories. No weapons of mass destruction were found in or around the 20ft square metal units, said Brigadier General Ben Freakley, of the 101st Armoured Division, whose soldiers made the discovery near a weapons facility outside Kerbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. It was visited by UN inspectors at the end of February. "Initial reports indicate that this is clearly a case of denial and deception on the part of the Iraqi government," Brig Freakley said. "These chemical labs are present, and now we just have to determine what in fact they were really used for." There have been several false alarms regarding weapons of mass destruction during the conflict so far. But last night's reported find more closely accords with accusations the US has long levelled at Iraq than any of the earlier incidents. Mobile labs, the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told the UN security council in February, "are easily moved and are designed to evade detection by inspectors. In a matter of months, they can produce a quantity of biological poison equal to the entire amount that Iraq claimed to have produced in the years prior to the Gulf war". Brig Freakley told a CNN reporter embedded with the division that "about 1,000lb" of documentation had been discovered inside the vans, which also contained equipment he estimated as being worth $1m (£635,000). The site of the buried labs was "clearly marked so they could be found again", he said. The UN said inspectors did not find anything suspicious when they visited the Kerbala ammunition filling plant on February 23. "They were close to an artillery ammunition plant, so this is consistent with the Iraqi denial, the former Iraqi leadership denial... of any wrongdoing," Brig Freakley said. Further investigations would be made, he added. The chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told the security council in February that although "food-testing mobile laboratories and mobile workshops have been seen... no evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found". An earlier discovery last week by the 101st Airborne, thought perhaps to be nerve agents, turned out to be pesticides. Reports of suspicious levels of radioactivity also have not so far resulted in the discovery of evidence of illegal weapons programmes.
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Some of these barrels turned out to be pesticides, but I haven't heard an official statement saying that the buried barrels were pesticides.
It's only a matter of time before our troops find WMDs. Unlike Trixy Blixy, we want to find WMDs.
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