Did Saddam Have WMDs After All: ISIS Overruns Iraq Chemical Weapons 'Mega-Facility'

zero hedge ^ | 6/19/14 | Tyler Durden

[Nachum]

With all eyes firmly focused on what really matters (the oil refineries), The Telegraph reports that ISIS has over-run a Saddam Hussein-era chemical weapons (CW) complex. The al-Muhanna 'mega-facility', about 60 miles south of Baghdad, gives the jihadists access to disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin. The US state department is 'concerned' but "do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value." However, as a former commander of Britain's chemical weapons regiment warned, "we have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before and has carried out experiments in Syria." This is likely great for ISIS 2014 Annual Report; but, of course, the other awkward question is: does this mean Saddam did have WMDs (and ISIS found them) after all?

As The Telegraph reports, the jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein chemical weapons complex on Thursday...

Isis invaded the al-Muthanna mega-facility 60 miles north of Baghdad in a rapid takeover that the US government said was a matter of concern.

The facility was notorious in the 1980s and 1990s as the locus of Saddam’s industrial scale efforts to develop a chemical weapons development programme.

During its peak in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Iraq produced bunkers full of chemical munitions.

A CIA report on the facility said that 150 tons of mustard were produced each year at the peak from 1983 and pilot-scale production of Sarin began in 1984.

Its most recent description of al-Muthanna in 2007 paints a disturbing picture of chemicals strewn throughout the area.

“Two wars, sanctions and UN oversight reduced Iraqi’s premier production facility to a stockpile of old damaged and contaminated chemical munitions (sealed in bunkers), a wasteland full

[silverleaf]

Saddam’s former Baathist military officers who are helping to run this campaign know where all the skeletons are buried, so to speak

I believe one of them will emerge to be Iraq’s new military dictator

[NKP_Vet]

You mean the same Megyn Kerry that supporter queer “marriage”, saying it’s a “civil right”. During that interview with Cheney she showed the world just how much she has in common with liberals on MSNBC. She’s no different than Rachel Madcow, just better looking. If she ever gets tired of Fox, she has a job waiting for her at MSNBC.

[Chode]

'Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.' But time and time again, history has proven that you got it wrong as well, sir.

questions? i don't see a question in there anywhere...

[KSCITYBOY]

btt

[EBH]

I wonder how many of the ISIS army are actually old Saddam Baathist’s who knew exactly what and where their leader had hidden them...or at least the one’s they were to take care of? ISIS has insider intelligence to stockpiles/facilities that were never found.

Just because we thing we got them all, doesn’t mean we got them all. Ever have a glass shatter on carpet? You clean it up, vacuum it up, and “know” you got all the shards...only to slice your heel the next morning as you walk across the carpet in bare feet?

[Gene Eric]

Norm Lenhart?

[BwanaNdege]

Now THAT is an outstanding analogy!

May the “first cup of ISIS freshly brewed coffee” be spilled at the next posh gathering of the movers & shakers of the MSM.

[Norm Lenhart]

HA! Love it! I was thinking “No Sxit” ;)

[UCANSEE2]

It’s a really big facility.

[UCANSEE2]

The pictures I saw of the rebels in Syria had something resembling the photo on the right, but with a ballistic nose and a propellant/engine of some kind on the other end.

Here are some other pictures with similar shaped items.

[justa-hairyape]

Those look like gunpowder IED devices ? Or did you see them with a chemical weapons rocket ?

[Dajjal]

jihad bump

[piasa]

There is a large facility to the south but it is al Tuwaitha, not al Muthanna.