It was one of the main reasons cited for the war: to find and destroy abundant anthrax, mustard gas and the like that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was said to have stashed, as well as missiles he might use to deliver deadly packages to his neighbours.
Some questions and answers about the weapons US soldiers are looking for, and what they’ve found so far:
Q: What type of chemical weapons is Saddam alleged to have had?
A: According to the United States, Saddam had 20 or 30 Scud missiles capable of carrying chemical or biological weapons. And officials say Saddam’s military may have had 550 artillery shells containing mustard gas, other precursors that could have brought his stockpile up to 455 tons of chemical agents, and 6 500 bombs left over from Iraq’s war with Iran.
The United States says Iraq never accounted for these weapons.
Aside from that, officials contend the Iraqi government had at least seven mobile biological weapons labs mounted on road trailers and railroad cars. These facilities, they argue, could have been used to produce, in one month, enough of a dry biological agent such as anthrax or botulinum toxin to kill thousands.
Last month, in the days before the fighting began, Iraq destroyed at least 70 banned Al Samoud 2 missiles, and handed over to UN inspectors videotapes of mobile biological weapons labs. It also submitted a report containing results from soil samples taken from an area where it claimed to have destroyed its stocks of VX
nerve gas in 1991.
Q: What have U.S. soldiers found so far?
A: They have found several suspected chemical or biological weapons sites, but testing revealed those sites were used for other purposes, such as explosives, pesticides or agricultural products.
Not all the tests results are in, though. On Monday, US Army troops located 11 buried shipping containers filled with laboratory equipment and 450 kilograms of Iraqi documents — which were determined on Tuesday not to be part of a chemical or biological weapons lab, according to CNN’s Web site. And on Tuesday, US Special Forces searching a house in north Baghdad on a tip found a weapons cache with a
sizable laboratory. They also found documents they described as papers on making chemical and biological weapons.
”We’ve not been loud and boisterous about every find that occurs because we have a structure for getting a very deliberate read and being conscious about it,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks of US.
Central Command in Qatar. ”Nevertheless, we remain convinced that we’re going to find something as time goes on.”
Q: What do U.S. commanders have to say about the fact that Saddam didn’t use chemical weapons against US troops as they thought he would?
”The fact that they’ve not been used yet is a success story.
It’s not the story of failure by any means,” Brooks said on Tuesday.
”Now the work of removing the weapons of mass destruction can begin in earnest.”
Q: What happens if troops find suspected dangerous weapons?
A: They use detectors and monitoring equipment to determine if they are chemical or radiological, Brooks said. After that, military units that can examine the weapons in greater detail are brought in. The weapons may be taken away for further testing and confirmation.
Q: Where have U.S. forces been searching?
A: U.S. Marines last week secured the Iraqi nuclear complex at Tuwaitha, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad. Rumors that they found plutonium there turned out to be false; UN officials who had monitored the storage until recently said they doubted the United States would find any banned materials there.
Troops searching the Qaa Qaa military complex south of Baghdad two weeks ago found boxes of a white powder that turned out to be explosives. Before the war, UN weapons inspectors repeatedly visited the complex – which had been home to some of Iraq’s nuclear bomb design work before the 1991 Gulf War — but did not report finding anything.
The US military also has sent experts to a facility near Qaim, a town near the Syrian border where Iraqi holdouts battled American forces for nearly a week. After the 1991 war, Iraq built new facilities at a phosphate processing center near Qaim that had been used to refine uranium. US and British officials said the new buildings could have been related to chemical or nuclear weapons programs, but UN inspectors visited the site twice before the latest war.
Q: How else does the United States hope to locate Iraqi weapons now that Saddam is gone?
A: US defence officials said on Tuesday they are offering rewards ranging from $2 500 up to $200 ,000 for this information, and US soldiers also will provide food or other necessities to encourage Iraqi citizens to share what they may know. – Sapa-AP