My conclusion after reading thousands of Iraqi documents is that Saddam regime opted to produce the precursors(ingredients) required to make Chemical Weapons and not the final weapon itself. There are two reasons for this. First they would always claim that the precursors were for civilian as these are dual use materials i.e. can be used for civilian and military purposes. Second, the shelf life of the precursors is longer than that of the final chemical weapon. It only take few weeks and in some cases few days to produce a chemical weapon once the precursors are ready.
I believe that many of these precursors to make WMD were buried in the Western desert, the Anbar province. In fact I read many top secret documents where Saddam regime top official, including Saddam himself, discussing the finding of burial place for what they called chemical waste. These documents specify the towns and locations where these materials should be buried and they were written from the year 1999-2003. At the surface these documents sound harmless but a deeper analysis reveal a more dangerous thing. Why is Saddam Hussein himself heavily involved in a trivial matter such as finding a burial place for chemical waste? Why are the Iraqis suddenly looking for places to bury their chemical waste? Where did they bury them before when Iraq had a larger civilian chemical industry? The documents make it sound that the Iraqis never buried their chemical waste before which does not make sense. All this led me to believe that these are more then regular chemical waste burial places and they involved the burial of the precursors to make chemical weapons and the equipment required to make it.
It is important to note that Saddam regime rarely name Chemical Weapons or materials related to it with its real name even in top secret documents and even before the first Gulf war, they were very aware that they should not mention directly this type of information even in their top secret documents for fear of leaking the info to the West.
Merry Christmas and God bless.
This Loftus report mentions phosphorus pentasulfate, which could be Phosphorus Pentasulfide you have posted about below.
2002 Document: Request for Precursor That Can Be Used To Make VX Nerve Gas (Translation)
BTTT!
You mean to tell me that all of those thousands of drums labeled “insecticide” could conceivably have some other, more sinister, purpose? SURLY you jest! < /sarcasm >
Oh come on JV, Saddam was just keeping his country prepared for the “Mother of all Cockroach Invasions”... that’s why he kept all that “insecticide” laying around...
THANK YOU so much, for all your hard work. And, most of all.. for breaking down this highly complex issue into bite-sized, understandable language. You are a FR treasure.... and, one of this lurkers favorites.
I think you are right about Anbar Province. In the spring of 2005 we flew over a site in Anbar Province that was thought to be where the WMD or their precursers were located before being spirited into Syria