Chemical weapons in Iraq

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters has been diligently reading translated Iraqi documents, and he has reported on a mound of documents that provide strong circumstantial evidence as to Iraq's pre-war possession of chemical weapons. We are really at a point now where people's minds have clouded over on WMD, though, and it will take a document that clearly slices through the haze. One of the latest documents that he covers comes close.

Exercise: Demonstration of the effect of poisonous chemical agents on living things through the use of the agent CAS [or SAS, but more probably the former]

1 Time of the exercise: 0830
2 Date of the exercise: 4/15/2001
3 Purpose: To acquaint the members of the base with knowledge of the effect of poisonous chemical agents on living things through the use of the agent SAS
4 Participants: All base members
5 Supervision: Lieutenant Colonel `Abdu al-Razzaq Hamad Nayif
6 Positive points: The exercise was carried out successfully.
7 Negative points: None.

Chemical Officer
Lieutenant Colonel
`Abdu al-Razzaq Hamad Nayif

Ed probably says it best at the conclusion of the post:

It looks like Iraq had enough chemical weapons material left at Talib to do some serious training -- and one has to wonder why they would do so much training, unless they intended on deploying WMD during an attack.

I will say this much-it is possible that Iraq trained with chemical weapons out of fear that, say, Iran had a stockpile. It isn't very likely, though, and it doesn't change the fact that Iraq had to possess the very materials they were not allowed to possess in order to carry out these tests.