Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet accused a Dubai-based ferry operator Tuesday of breaking U.N. sanctions by smuggling banned chemicals into Iraq that it said could be used to make high-grade explosives. It said the industrial-grade alcohol and polymers, which can also be used for industrial cleaning agents and cosmetics, could also be used to manufacture chemical weapons agents. Naif Marine Services had been caught shipping the chemicals aboard ferries it operates into Umm Qasr, close to the Kuwaiti border in recent months, said Fifth Fleet public affairs officer Lt. Garret Kaspar. "In the wrong hands, quantity aside,...

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday. In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions. Arthur Ventham, a former Australian army officer and customs officer, joined the operation in 2002 and worked at various sites in Iraq and neighbouring states. He said that at Iskendurun in eastern...