Monday, February 16, 2015

CIA Bought Iraqi Chemical Weapons

Aerial view of the Al Muthanna Chemical Weapons Complex after Operation Desert Storm, from a 2004 CIA report, with R&D and laboratory facilities marked out and labelled (stock image) [Picture: CIA]

C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, Houston Chronicle/New York Times: CIA is said to have bought Iraqi chemical weapons

The CIA, working with U.S. troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the U.S. military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led the United States to acquire and destroy at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein's Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by U.N. inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

WNU Editor: I would love to know who was the personi who had these weapons stockpiled. On second .... maybe not .... just be grateful that he sold them to the U.S. and not to someone else.

2 comments:

Nicolas Darkwater said...

Toward the end of the operation, the source threatened to sell the rest of the stockpile to "others". Who is to say that we have all that he had? Once he disappeared, did he go into business with someone else? We know Zarqawi had CW weapons which have disappeared; there is a CW complex in the north that ISIL has exploited; there were convoys of trucks from Iraqi ammo dumps that went to Syria. The story isn't over.

Unknown said...

The transport of WMD from Iraq to Syria was probably one of Russia most profitable maskirovkas of all time.