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WASHINGTON - Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of the chemical weapon sarin in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, a defense official said Tuesday. The determination, made by a laboratory in the United States that the official would not identify, verifies what earlier, less-thorough field tests had found: the bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the deadly nerve agent on the battlefield. The origin of the shell remains unclear, and finding that out is a priority for the U.S. military, the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity....

Terence Walker is one of the lucky ones. On 19 January 1991 he was with 6000 British troops at Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia, as the first Gulf war was beginning. At around 3am there were loud bangs and flashes, and troops scrambled into gas masks as chemical detector alarms sounded. Some detectors in the area registered the nerve gas sarin, but the UK’s Ministry of Defence later said that these alerts were false alarms. Since Walker returned home he has suffered from chronic diarrhoea, sweating, insomnia, muscle and stomach pain, fatigue, loss of memory and arthritis. That does not...

An Iraqi defector has told Sky News that Saddam Hussein will use chemical weapons if the country is invaded. In an exclusive interview, the man said the use of such weapons against British and US soldiers was "100% guaranteed". The 26-year-old soldier, who is an officer, defected 10 days ago near the city of Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq. He is being guarded in a safe house and is said to have provided valuable intelligence information to authorities. "A chemical attack is guaranteed," he warned. "We have been fully provided with complete protection gear, gas masks, first aid kit, injections." In...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Multinational forces in Iraq (news - web sites) said that more than a dozen missile warheads said to contain mustard gas or sarin have tested negative for chemical agents. Washington had announced the find by Polish troops on Thursday, which was later confirmed by Warsaw. The head of Poland's military intelligence service also said on Friday that "terrorist" groups were seeking to acquire the weapons. But the 122mm warheads, found in late June, have been found not to contain the deadly chemicals, a statement from multinational forces here said. "Those 16 rounds were all empty and tested...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin 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 war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw. "We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for...

excerpt - Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Roger Hedgecock, Newsradio 600 KOGO Q: Secretary Don Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. A couple of other issues I want to get to were weapons of mass destruction and the Supreme Court rulings. And so quickly, on the weapons of mass destruction, obviously, the opposition to the administration says we should never have invaded. The Bush administration lied about the WMD, never found any, never were any, etcetera, etcetera. Now, I’m reading recent reports in fairly easily accessible published accounts that Syria is holding the weapons of mass destruction or some of them, that...

WASHINGTON (AP) - An artillery shell containing the deadly nerve agent sarin, found in the remains of a roadside bomb in Iraq, was made before the 1991 Gulf War, a senior military official said Wednesday. Laboratory tests have confirmed that the chemical weapon sarin was in the remains of the bomb found in Baghdad on May 15, government officials said. The confirmation came at a U.S. lab that officials declined to identify. At the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the 155-millimeter artillery shell was made by the Iraqis...

Journalists want to talk about “news,” not “olds.” If a story broke two days ago, it’s not likely to get coverage today unless there’s a new angle to discuss. And that’s a shame sometimes, because when a story has been insufficiently covered, you wish they’d revisit it. For example, on May 15, insurgents attacked an American military convoy. No, that’s not really news. But the fact that they used a shell containing the nerve gas sarin should have been. Sarin is so powerful that just a tiny amount can kill instantly. But this discovery didn’t fit the media template that...

<p>You would have thought the discovery of an actual weapon of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq would be big news, especially since it was aimed at American soldiers.</p> <p>But apparently not in the eyes of most U.S. newspaper editors and network television producers, who largely ignored one of the major stories from Iraq this week.</p>

<p>A spokesman for al Qaeda has told an Arabic-language newsmagazine that the terror group will try to use poisons to attack the United States, specifically threatening to contaminate the nation's water supply.</p> <p>Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj told the London-based al-Majallah magazine that "al Qaeda [does not rule out] using sarin gas and poisoning drinking water in U.S. and Western cities."</p>

Toxic Tugs - Public Poisons by J.B. Stone - 04/17/02 What do Maryland, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Johnston Atoll, and the Marshall Islands have in common? BioChemical warfare tests were conducted in all of them behind a blinding haze of Cold War secrecy. And hardly a word of warning was ever issued, before during, or afterward the test conductors, subjects, or citizens living in surrounding areas. Marine jets and Army artillery sprayed "harmless simulants" and live biological and chemical agents on unsuspecting citizens for 15 years on land and sea during Operation Deseret. The randomly selected human test rats onboard ships...

David Blunkett came under fire today over a blunder which spread unnecessary alarm over the threat of a terror attack on London and the rest of Britain. An inquest was under way at the Home Office into how officials came to release a report in which the Home Secretary claimed that al Qaeda could strike with poison gas or a "dirty" radioactive bomb. ...In London, there are fears that terrorists might be planning an attack on the Tube involving Sarin, the poison gas used by religious fanatics in 1995 on Tokyo subway.