Scripps Howard News Service May 17, 2004
Sarin found in Iraq could mean changes for military
By Lance Gay
- The discovery of an improvised bomb containing sarin on a highway near Baghdad could have serious repercussions on how the U.S. military and U.S. contractors operate in Iraq.
It could mean moon suits for GIs and civilian contractors in the desert heat and slow down the entire reconstruction effort, experts said.
"This is not the stuff you mess around with," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington think tank tracking U.S. military operations in Iraq.
Pike said it's too early to know if the discovery of one howitzer shell containing sarin is an isolated case, or if there is some new tactic hatched in the war.
"We have to be worried about it," he said. "If all our troops and all the coalition forces with us and all of the contractors have to put on moon suits, it would be a problem."
Sarin is a man-made nerve agent first manufactured by the Nazis in 1938 and is part of the organophosphorus family of chemicals commonly used as pesticides. It is colorless, odorless and tasteless and is absorbed through the lungs or the skin, causing people to choke to death.
It's not difficult to make with access to the right chemicals; recipes for sarin have been posted on the Internet. The Japanese cult group Aum Shinrikyo killed 12 people and injured nearly 6,000 by releasing homemade sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system in 1995.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday the Army is putting the exploded shell through more extensive testing to determine where it came from. "It's going to take some time," he said.
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters the 155-millimeter artillery round was found along the highway near Baghdad and detonated before an explosive ordnance team could disarm it. He said it released a small amount of sarin gas.
Kimmit said that because the shell was rigged to explode like a roadside bomb rather than being fired by an artillery piece, the two chemicals inside did not mix properly to make much sarin gas. "It's virtually ineffective as a chemical weapon," he said.
The type of round was a "binary chemical projectile" that has two chambers containing chemicals, which is a type of artillery shell Iraq's Army manufactured in the late 1980s. When fired by a canon, the rotation of the shell through the air causes the chemicals to mix, making the gas.
In declarations made to the United Nations after the first Persian Gulf war, Saddam Hussein admitted he produced between 790 and 812 tons of sarin. But much of the early production of the chemical was contaminated and incapable of being stored for long periods. The United Nations destroyed 70 tons of Iraq's sarin stockpile from 1992 to 1994.
Hans Blix and David Kay, two former United Nations weapons inspectors, suggested Monday the shell the Army discovered was likely to be a stray scavenged by militants from a weapons dump.
At GlobalSecurity.org, Pike noted U.S. troops last year discovered stray mustard gas rockets, so the discovery of a stray sarin shell would not be unprecedented.
But during Saddam's regime, Pike said chemical weapons were probably under the close control of Saddam's elite Special Security Organization or the Special Republican Guards who now are among the militants continuing the fight against U.S. forces.
Pike said that if there are further cases found of roadside chemical bombs, it would certainly raise a question whether high level officials made off with some chemical bombs as Saddam's regime collapsed.
On the Net: www.globalsecurity.org
© Copyright 2004, Scripps Howard News Service
