Americans Concealed Finding Warehouse of Chemical Weapons in Iraq

Are Islamic State fighters using chemical weapons in their fight with the Kurds? They could have taken the weapons from Saddam Hussein’s old ammunition warehouse that Americans found, but were too ashamed to admit finding because the discovery dated back before 1991 while the West was helping to produce them.

The chemical weapons were supposed to be used in Kobani, the Kurdish town in Syria that is close to the Turkish border and whose siege is organized by radicals of the Islamic State. At least this is what its supporters suspect. We don’t have the modern equipment needed to carry out a detailed inspection, but we are convinced that some of these chemicals are being used against us. This can be proved by strange burns and white spots on the bodies of dead Kurdish fighters, according to one of the doctors from Kobani. Although it was suspected a few weeks ago that chemical weapons were being used, it is only now that Arab and Kurdish media are writing about them.

But it doesn’t mean that the Islamic State group soldiers of the caliphate, as they call their country, are using chemical weapons extensively or “professionally.” The issue is more about the “dirty chemical bomb” or some number of such bombs that the Islamic State group could produce from the old and abandoned arms depots of Saddam Hussein. The Islamic State group controls the region of Samarra, where one can find the material used in producing Iraqi chemical weapons in the 1980s.

In June, when the fanatics took over the sites containing the material, the Iraqi government warned that the Islamic State group could use the contents for reprehensible purposes. Iraq even observed Islamic State group fighters scouting the magazines on industrial cameras before they were switched off. Still, the United States tried to calm concerns by saying that the risks were very low and that the only people who would likely be harmed by these chemical materials would be those who tried to use or move them. “It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely use this for military purposes or, frankly, to move it,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Yesterday’s New York Times revealed that the American government is not entirely truthful about Saddam’s chemical weapons. It concealed the fact that between 2004 and 2011, when Americans occupied Iraq, around 5,000 chemical warheads and shells with old chemicals were found. American soldiers were wounded a couple of times, when they detonated old unexploded bombs without realizing that they contained mustard gas or sarin.

Keeping it all secret seems ironic, when one is reminded that the main cause of the invasion was supposed to be the destruction of Saddam’s alleged chemical weapons. It would appear that President George W. Bush could have convened a press conference in Washington to state with smile, “I told you so …”

Yet, there is nothing strange about the discovery because Americans found unexploded chemical bombs on a mass scale which had been produced in the 1980s before Saddam promised to dismantle his program for production of weapons of mass destruction in 1991. Moreover, the old Iraqi chemical weapons were produced with help of the United States and Europe. At that time, Saddam was still an ally of the West as he waged war on a Shiite Iran that was considered to be a serious threat after the Islamic Revolution in Tehran.

In five of the six cases described by The New York Times in which American soldiers were harmed by Saddam’s chemical weapons, it turned out that the warheads were designed in the United States, produced in Europe and filled with deadly chemicals that were delivered to Iraqi factories. Among them was the complex in Samarra that is currently controlled by the Islamic State group fighters.

It was built by the Germans in the 1980s. Thiodiglycol, a compound that yields mustard gas, was delivered to the factory by Americans. As a carrier of the deadly chemicals, Saddam’s army was using warheads that were bought in Spain and manufactured under American license.

Thus, it can be understood why Americans were silent – there was nothing to boast about. Moreover, they didn’t want to call attention to the chemical weapons in order to prevent Iraqi terrorists (then al-Qaida) from looking for those unexploded bombs and filling roadside bombs with chemicals that they could later detonate on the tracks of American patrols.

Now, it seems that the threat is being carried out, but the Kurds are the victims.