Smoking Gun?
So George was right, the subhuman Iraqi leadership does have WMD after all. Bush has been saying they had irrefutable evidence that they did. The liberal, anti-American lickknobs can shutup and sit down now and let the real Americans take care of the country.
'Huge' Chemical Weapons Plant Found in Iraq
By Fox News
Fox News | March 24, 2003
A senior pentagon official has confirmed to Fox News on Sunday that coalition forces have discovered a "huge" suspected chemical weapons factory near the Iraqi city of An Najaf, which is situated some 90 miles south of Baghdad.
Coalition troops are also said to be holding the general in charge of the facility.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the war in Iraq, said in a statement that troops were examining several "sites of interest," but said it was premature to call the Najaf site a chemical weapons factory.
The Jerusalem Post ran a story earlier Sunday that was written by a journalist on-hand with the U.S. unit -- the 1st Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division -- that took the plant.
The article states that one soldier was lightly wounded when a booby-trapped explosive was triggered as he was "clearing the sheet metal-lined chemical weapons production facility."
The chemical plant is described as a "100-acre complex," surrounded by an electrical fence. The plant was also apparently camouflaged to avoid aerial photos being taken.
It is not yet known what chemicals were being produced at the plant.
Asked at a news conference in Qatar Sunday about reports of the chemical plant, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid of U.S. Central Command declined comment. He said top Iraqi officers have been questioned about chemical weapons.
"We have an Iraqi general officer, two Iraqi general officers that we have taken prisoner, and they are providing us with information," Abizaid said.
The Jerusalem Post report also states that immediately following coalition entry into the camp, at least 30 Iraqi soldiers and their commanding officer fully obeyed instructions given by U.S. soldiers by lying down and surrendering.
U.S. forces are checking other sites based on leads from captured Iraqis and documents -- but officials cautioned it was premature to conclude any forbidden weapons had been located.
Coalition military leaders were keenly interested in the site they took control of in Najaf, and were interviewing two captured Iraqi generals for information about Saddam's suspected biological and chemical weapons.
American special operations forces found documents in western Iraq that also could lead to chemical or biological weapons facilities, said Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Myers said U.S. commandos found the papers along with a cache of millions of rounds of ammunition after a firefight on Saturday, and the discovery "might save thousands of lives if we can find out exactly where and what they have."
"I just know that they have some papers that they want to exploit as quickly as possible, and we're going to do that, of course," Myers said.
President Bush and other U.S. officials say ridding Saddam's regime of chemical and biological weapons is the main objective of the war. Finding such weapons would be a huge boost for Bush, since much of the international criticism of the U.S.-led war has focused on the fact that United Nations inspectors had not found any banned weapons in Iraq.
Saddam's government denies it has any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or programs to produce them.
If the plant is confirmed as a chemical weapons factory, it would be the first find by the U.S.-led invasion force validating U.S. allegations that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.
Iraqi officials have insisted that they destroyed all of the chemical and biological weapons they made after the 1991 Persian Gulf War -- a claim U.N. weapons inspectors have questioned.
U.N. weapons inspectors are not aware of any large-scale chemical sites which could be used to make chemical weapons in Najaf, said Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the inspectors. However, there are many such dual-use sites in other parts of the country because of Iraq's petrochemical industry.
U.N. inspectors visited a cement plant in Najaf earlier this year but did not report finding anything |
