Replies

Warsaw decided to take part in the war with Iraq on grounds of untrue information which it received from the US administration - former President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski has told a German daily. In an interview for "Der Tagesspiegel" Mr. Kwasniewski said that he heard about Iraq's mass destruction weapons from then US State Secretary Colin Powell himself. He added that now he would treat information supplied by intelligence "with more caution".

That's funny. What about this story from summer 2004?

WARSAW, Poland — Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin (search) that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.

Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's (search) war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.

"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."

Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.