Sarin in Iraq

A U.S. military convoy was attacked with an explosive device containing an artillery shell filed with sarin - the very kind of shell the Iraqis said they destroyed before the first Gulf War:

A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday. Two people were treated for "minor exposure," but no serious injuries were reported.

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy.

"A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent," he said.

The Iraqi Survey Group is a U.S. organization whose task was to search for weapons of mass destruction after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in last year's invasion.

"The round was an old binary-type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced," Kimmitt said. "The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece."

He said the dispersal of the nerve agent from a device such as the homemade bomb is "limited."

"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," Kimmitt said. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."

Before anyone gets too excited, there's no evidence that this shell was built by the Iraqis. For that matter, considering the "false positives" which have been reported as banned weapons in Iraq, I'm waiting for confirmation that this really was sarin.

But the WMD issue - which even I had pretty much conceded was dead, and an embarassing mistake by U.S. intelligence (and British intelligence, and French intelligence, and German intelligence, and UN intelligence, and...) - probably shouldn't be dismissed just yet.

Update: likely responses here.

Posted by damian at May 17, 2004 11:36 AM