Early Tests Show Chemical Shells Found in Iraq

Danish and Icelandic troops in Iraq have unearthed 36 mortar shells that tested positive in preliminary tests for blister agent, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 9).

The cache of 120 mm shells was found near the town of al-Quarnah in southern Iraq, according to AP. The shells are believed to have been left over from the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday.

According to the Danish Army Operational Command, the shells were found wrapped in plastic and damaged, and appeared to have been buried for at least a decade. The command also said that British experts conducted a preliminary test on the shells, which detected “blister gas.”

“We’re doing some preliminary tests to ensure that if they do contain any kind of blister agent that we can dispose of them properly,” Kimmitt said.

More definitive test results were expected this week (Robert Reid, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 11).

Meanwhile, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has said that U.S. President George W. Bush began planning the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein soon after Bush took office.

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, aired yesterday, to promote a new book.

According to O’Neill, who was dismissed from the White House more than a year ago, Iraq was discussed at the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, Jan.12).

Describing early NSC meetings, O’Neill said, “It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this’” (Associated Press/CBSNews.com, Jan. 12).

“For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap,” he said.

In an interview with Time, O’Neill said that he never saw any evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction,” O’Neill said. “There were allegations and assertions by people. But I’ve been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions,” he added.

A White House spokesman refused to comment on O’Neill’s comments, saying that the Bush administration “simply is not in the business of doing book reviews” (Stevenson, New York Times).

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