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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: eims2000 who wrote (9271)	4/7/2003 2:15:58 PM
From: Bald Eagle	Respond to of 21614

Preliminary Tests Show Chemical Weapons at Iraqi Site Monday, April 07, 2003 KARBALA, Iraq — U.S. forces may have found banned chemical weapons stored in huge drums at a military training camp in Central Iraq, Fox News has confirmed. Pentagon sources said a prisoner of war led U.S. forces to a specific site near Karbala, near a camp described as a military facility, and that preliminary field tests on substances found at the site suggest they contain several banned chemical weapons, including deadly nerve agents. Maj. Michael Hamlet of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division said the nerve agents sarin and tabun and the blister agent lewisite appeared to be present at the site, Reuters reported. A team of experts would carry out further tests as early as Tuesday, Hamlet said. The chemicals were found at the camp in Albu Mahawish, between the central Iraqi cities of Karbala and Hilla, Reuters reported. "If tests from our experts confirm this, this could be the smoking gun. It would prove [Saddam Hussein] has the weapons we have said he has all along," Hamlet said. "But right now we just don't know." Former U.N. weapons inspector Tim Trevan told Fox News that it would be no surprise if final testing did in fact conclude the substances were banned chemical agents. "Obviously, they have the wherewithal to produce this stuff," Trevan said, but cautioned that more definitive testing needed to be done. "These are all agents which we know they produced in the past, it's associated with a munition which we know they've used for sarin and tabun in the past … and also it's in the area we were expected to find it," he said, referring to the so-called "red zone" -- the 50-mile perimeter around Baghdad where coalition military officials think Saddam may have authorized the use of chemical weapons. Retired U.S. Army Cmdr. Sgt. Steve Greer said he is "cautiously optimistic" that this may be the smoking gun needed to prove to the international community that Iraq does, in fact, have banned weapons of mass destruction. Sarin is a colorless and odorless gas and is lethal in doses as small as half a milligram. Death may occur within one to 10 minutes of inhalation exposure to even a small amount of sarin. Iraq began producing sarin in 1984 and admitted to possessing 790 tons of it in 1995. Sarin is most known for the March 1995 terrorist attack by the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, when members released the gas at several points in the Tokyo subway system, killing 11 and injuring more than 5,500. Tabun is a clear, colorless and tasteless liquid with a slightly fruity odor, and is lethal, although only about half as toxic as sarin. Lethal respiratory dosages kill in one to 10 minutes, and liquid in the eye kills almost as rapidly. If skin absorption is great enough, death may occur in one to two minutes, or it may be delayed for one to two hours.