Drums may hold chemical weapons
By Rick Atkinson and Barton Gellman
Washington Post
CAMP EAGLE THREE, Iraq — The U.S. Army said yesterday it had tentatively identified nerve and other chemical agents in drums discovered at a military compound on the Euphrates River.
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Commanders cautioned that positive identification of the chemicals by special Fox detection vehicles must be confirmed by more sophisticated analysis. A scientific "mobile exploitation team," or MET, based at Udairi air field in northern Kuwait was ordered to the suspicious site, but bad weather grounded the team's aircraft until this morning, Army sources said.
A 101st Airborne Division patrol discovered the chemicals yesterday morning in 11 25-gallon drums and three 55-gallon barrels. After initial field tests indicated toxic chemical agents, two Fox vehicles were dispatched to the compound, which lies on the river east of Karbala. Analysis from both Fox vehicles indicated a high probability of the presence of the nerve agents sarin and tabun and a choking agent believed to be phosgene.
If confirmed, the discovery would provide the first tangible evidence to substantiate Bush administration allegations that Iraq has secretly hidden caches of chemical weapons proscribed under terms imposed after the Persian Gulf War of 1991. But commanders at the 101st headquarters, south of Karbala, cautioned against a rush to judgment.
Several purported discoveries in the past several weeks have proved to be false alarms. On Sunday, several soldiers close to yesterday's site grew nauseous from a substance initially reported as nerve agents; further analysis determined that the suspicious drum contained a weak form of tear gas.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld echoed the skepticism of his field commanders by telling reporters, "Let the thing play itself out."
The scientific team is expected to arrive in two CH-47 Chinook helicopters. Procedures call for the team to cordon off the area, conduct field tests, and extract samples.
"We're waiting for the MET team, the real experts, to confirm or refute this," a senior officer said last night.
The chemicals discovered yesterday were not in warheads or in any obvious weapon form, Army sources said.
The six-wheeled Fox vehicle is a rolling laboratory that tests air, water and ground samples for biological, chemical or radiological hazard. It is not intended to provide definitive answers, but to help combat units avoid and decontaminate hazards on the battlefield. Though its instruments are effective, and its crew of three or four soldiers is trained to operate them, experts said the Fox is not a substitute for laboratory gear operated by scientists.
Inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, destroyed about 76 tons of Iraqi tabun and 40 tons of sarin in the 1990s. But UNSCOM reported in 1999 that it could not account for all the known nerve agent Iraq, nor for all the thousands of 122 mm rockets known to have been filled with sarin.
