Posted on 07/06/2004 3:04:18 PM PDT by swilhelm73
WARSAW, Poland -- Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday.
Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw.
"We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads."
Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.
In May, a booby-trapped artillery shell apparently filled with the sarin nerve agent exploded alongside a Baghdad road but caused no serious injuries to the U.S. forces who discovered it. At the time, officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam's regime.
The warheads all contained cyclosarin, multinational force commander Polish Gen. Mieczyslaw Bieniek said.
"Laboratory tests showed the presence in them of cyclosarin, a very toxic gas, five times stronger than sarin and five times more durable," Bieniek told Poland's TVN24 at the force's Camp Babylon headquarters.
"If these warheads, which were still usable, were used on a military base like Camp Babylon, they would have caused unforeseeable damage."
The tests were done by U.S. experts, who were conducting more.
The munitions were found in a bunker in the Polish sector, but Polish officials refused to be more specific.
Nothing to see here, as usual. .....move right along. </ sarc>
it has been already posted many times.
Cyclosarin is chemo, not bio.
19 munitions containing cyclosarin ....Hmmmm, does that constitute a "stockpile"? How long will it be possible to maintain the myth that WMD's did not exist?
And CENTCOM has already since said none of the weapons contained usable chems.
I know, however I also heard different opinions.
That phenomenon has been with us since the beginning. Do you remember early on during the war, we'd read all sorts of stories about how WMD had been found, and then each one would eventually be discredited? But people who read a "WMD found" piece of news did not always read the "WMD not actually found" news article (or see it on TV or whatever), so they went around believing WMD had been found. Eventually, we did find a few isolated shells, some warehouses containing pesticides (which are close to nerve gas), and a reference strain of Botulinum bacteria (which was a big deal), and lots of other technical violations of the UN Resolutions, but not much else in the way of WMD.
i think ill agree with centcom.
Unless and until all WMDs are found in a single cache they will not exist to the Demonrats and the lib media.
And a single large cache if found will "have been planted".
I'm still waiting for the article blaming bush for the rise in sunspots lately.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.