Posted on 04/10/2006 11:17:03 AM PDT by jveritas
Saddam Chemical Weapons training.
I'm surprised anthrax isn't listed here. Thanks for the hard work, jveritas!
I believe critics would answer your question by stating that the training was defensive in nature because they expected an enemy to use the weapons against their own troops.
Was there anything in the documents to point towards protecting their own troops from the effect of their own use of those weapons?
Anthrax will fall under the Biological Weapons Programs.
Oh, thanks for that explanation, jveritas. I never can keep the diff. between chemical and biological straight.
They also had chemical warfare training classes at Habaniyah and I'll bet you can guess why I know this as a fact with no uncertainty.
Training documents THAT I HAVE SEEN showed how to deploy chemical weapons.
Please keep in mind that Iraq was absolutely prohibited from having any Chemical Weapons Agents no matter how small the quantity is and no matter whether it was for defensive or offensive purposes.
Key word here are "in the laboratory". If there were no active WMD programs why would they be worried about "laboratories"?
What language were those in?
Arabic. But the pictures didn't need translation.
What kind of "chemical training" were they obsessed about? I mean, the U.S. military has chemical platoons and conducts chemical training even though we no longer plan to use them ourselves. I can't recall the number of times I had to go into the ol' gas chamber to swallow my fill of CS. So I guess the question is whether the training you describe is for protection/detection/decontamination, or for delivery.
I'm not saying that I disagree with your overall conclusion, because I don't. I just want to make sure we don't overstate the case in a few instances, because we know the MSM will focus on those few overstatements as a way to discredit what otherwise is a valid conclusion.
This appears to be the key to me. While it's true that chemical units do decontamination work, that is not all that this says.
A "practical training schedule" means that they are going ou to do some actual detecting. To do actual detecting, they must have the chemicals on hand for the troops to practice on.
That means, at a minimum, that they had small quantitities for training their troops.
Such small quantities would be deadly in the hands of a terrorist delivery system.
(T6 will correct me if I'm wrong.)
I wasn't questioning your contention that they weren't allowed any chemical weapons nor was I questioning your statement that this is a violation, just your statement that practicing with these weapons implied an offensive intent.
You're doing great work! Thanks for your efforts.
They do training tournament every three months or so and each tournament last for three to four weeks. That is a lot of training for a country that is supposed not to have anything related to Chemical Warfare.
That is absolutely correct XZINS. The Applied training means exactly that they were physically detecting these Chemical Weapon Agents since they do have “Theoretical training” as well where they prepare their troops to do the “Applied Training” with real Chemical Weapon Agent.
I haven't looked at this in detail, but this could well be defensive in nature. In other words, training to detect chemical agents dispersed by an enemy (e.g., Iran or the US). Can you point me to a clearly offensive training operation?
Exactly right.
1999 Document Chemical Platoons Applied Training In Chemical Lab to Detect Nerve Agents, VX Agents..,
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Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents
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