Troops find 'chemical weapons' near Basra-Ali

Here is information (from article below) I have NOT seen anywhere else in all the news articles on these Chem weapons found in Iraq:

Ali Nimir, a former colonel in a Republican Guard artillery unit, said: "I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years ago. We were told that they were chemical weapons.

"They made a splashing sound inside if you moved them around. From what I recall they were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places around the country about a year before the war. I never saw them again."

Troops find 'chemical weapons' near BasraAli
By Colin Freeman in Baghdad
(Filed: 11/01/2004)

British officials were called in yesterday to test a batch of liquid-filled mortar bombs found hidden in southern Iraq to discover if they could be chemical weapons.

The 36 Russian-made bombs were found by Danish troops on Friday near Basra. They match the descriptions given by some senior Iraqi army officers of "special weapons" issued to artillery units, which were said to contain poisonous chemicals.

"Most were wrapped in plastic bags, and some were leaking," Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt, of the United States army, said in Baghdad. He added that they were thought to be left over from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

A Danish officer said: "The first inspections have shown that the mortars contain some liquid. We don't know what sort."

The results of the tests on the ordnance should be released today. The 120mm mortar rounds are probably the smallest calibre capable of delivering chemical weapons. They have a range of about five miles and were designed to carry a variety of warheads, including chemical, high explosive, smoke and incendiary rounds.

Similar devices were used to deadly effect by Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war, and against Iraq's Kurdish communities during the late 1980s.

America and Britain cited the threat of illicit weapons of mass destruction as a principal reason for launching the war on Iraq in March last year. But no such weapons have been found so far.

Meanwhile, British soldiers in Amara were pelted with hand grenades by a rioting Iraqi mob yesterday during violence that left at least five demonstrators dead.

Troops opened fire on rioters, killing one and injuring another, after bombs were hurled at them as they tried to quell trouble in the predominantly Sh'ite southern city. Iraqi police are thought to have shot dead another four of the demonstrators, who had surrounded a municipal building around 8.30 yesterday morning to demand jobs. No British troops were injured.

A British Army spokesman said the soldiers, believed to be from 1st Battalion, Light Infantry, were called in after Iraqi police apparently came under fire from the several-hundred strong crowd. Yesterday's violence follows other disturbances in the regional capital of Basra last week.

In Baghdad, Dara Nuraddin, a judge who heads the Governing Council's judicial committee, said that Saddam Hussein could stand trial in Iraq by June. But Governing Council members bristled at not having been consulted about Washington's decision to grant the jailed former dicator prisoner of war status.

The US Black Hawk helicopter that crashed in central Iraq two days ago, killing all nine soldiers and crew on board, was shot down by guerrillas, the American military said yesterday after a preliminary investigation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/11/wirq11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/11/ixnewstop.html

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Here is the latest update from the AP writer - ROBERT H. REID ASSOCIATED PRESS

Today: January 10, 2004 at 21:35:19 PST

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Danish and Icelandic troops have uncovered a cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert, and preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent, the Danish military said Saturday.

The 120mm mortar shells are thought to be left over from the eight-year war between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988, said U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.

The shells were found by Danish engineering troops and Icelandic de-miners near Al Quarnah, north of the city of Basra where Denmark's 410 troops are based, the Danish Army Operational Command said in a written statement.

The shells were wrapped in plastic but had been damaged, and they appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the statement said.

It said British experts did a preliminary test and said the shells contained "blister gas," but did not elaborate.

Before the war, the United States alleged Iraq still had stockpiles of mustard gas, a World War I-era blister agent that is stored in liquid form. The chemical burns skin, eyes and the lungs.

U.S. intelligence officials also claimed Iraq had sarin, cyclosarin and VX, which are extremely deadly nerve agents.

"We're doing some preliminary tests to ensure that if they do contain any kind of blister agent that we can dispose of them properly," Kimmitt said.

The Danish military emphasized that the tests were not definitive. In the weeks after the Iraq war, the U.S.-led coalition found several caches that tested positive for mustard gas but later turned out to contain missile fuel or other chemicals.

Initial tests by field troops are designed to favor a positive reading, erring on the side of caution to protect soldiers. More sophisticated tests are often necessary.

Other discoveries early in the U.S.-led occupation turned out to be old caches that had already been tagged by United Nations inspectors and were scheduled for destruction.

Saddam Hussein's regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during that war and killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians in a chemical attack on the northern city of Halabja in 1988.

After the first Gulf War in 1991, a U.N. resolution called for the destruction of all Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with a range of more than 93 miles. The resolution set up a U.N. inspections commission to oversee the process.

The inspectors uncovered hidden nuclear and biological weapons programs in Iraq but found virtually nothing new after 1996. In 1998, Baghdad claimed it no longer had any banned weapons, accused the United States of spying and barred further inspections.

In 2002, President Bush accused Iraq of resurrecting its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. After Bush called on the United Nations to pressure Iraq, Saddam agreed to let the inspectors return.

The inspectors worked for nearly four months but found no evidence of any of the weapons the Bush administration had alleged. Since the war, a nine-month search by a succession of U.S. teams has failed to find any current stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

The lack of evidence has led critics to suggest the Bush administration either mishandled or exaggerated its knowledge of Iraq's alleged arsenal.

In October, Dutch marines found several dozen artillery shells dating from the 1991 Gulf War in the southern Iraqi town of Samawah, but the shells contained no biological or chemical agents. Samawah is 100 miles west of the southern region where the Danes discovered shells Saturday.

In April, U.S. troops found a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near the northern Iraqi town of Baiji.

Preliminary tests performed at the scene indicated one drum might contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be mustard gas. Tests later showed the barrel's contents were not chemical weapons.

Tom Daschle: "But, but, but, 36 of these weapons hardy equal a threat

Howard Dean: "There is an interesting theory out there that I find interesting, It's said that Bush planted those 36 120mm mortar rounds filled with blister agent when he was in Iraq for Thanksgiving"

John Kerry: "George W. Bush should have been in Iraq looking for these WMD's instead of landing on that Carrier, And I know something about landing on Carriers. When I was in Vietnam, I saw those Carries from the Swift Boat I served on. The fact is, George W. Bush rushed to war, we could have dug those 120mm mortar's up anytime"

Richard Gephardt: "This is just another example why George W. Bush is a miserable failure, we had no plan, we should have built a real coalition instead of a fraudulent one. In this struggle for our survival, we need to (as a Nation) get on our knee's and beg the U'N. to join us, we need to surrender our sovereignty for the sake of not being viewed as unilateralist

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