Reports of chemical weapons finds since 2003
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several reported finds of chemical weapons were announced. During the invasion itself, there were half a dozen incidents in which the US military announced that it had found chemical weapons. All of these claims were based on field reports, and were later retracted. After the war, many cases — most notably on April 7, 2003 when several large drums tested positive — continued to be reported in the same way.
Another such post-war case occurred on January 9, 2004, when Icelandic munitions experts and Danish military engineers discovered 36 120-mm mortar rounds containing liquid buried in Southern Iraq. While initial tests suggested that the rounds contained a blister agent, a chemical weapon banned by the Geneva Convention, [23] subsequent analysis by American and Danish experts showed that no chemical agent was present. [24] It appears that the rounds have been buried, and most probably forgotten, since the Iran-Iraq war. Some of the munitions were in an advanced state of decay and most of the weaponry would likely have been unusable.
The reason for the high false positive rates is that field tests using the ICAM (Improved Chemical Agent Monitor) are very inaccurate, and even the more time consuming field tests have shown themselves to be poor at determining whether something is a chemical weapon. According to Donald Rumsfeld, ""Almost all first reports we get turn out to be wrong," he said. "We don't do first reports and we don't speculate." [25]. Many chemicals used in explosives, such as phosphorus, show up as blister agents. Other chemicals, such as pesticides (especially organophosphates such as malathion), routinely show up as nerve agents. Chemically, they are quite similar — the main difference is that some organophosphates kill only insects, and are consequently used as insecticides.
On May 2, 2004 a shell containing mustard gas, was found in the middle of street west of Baghdad. The Iraq Survey Group investigation reported that it had been "stored improperly", and thus the gas was "ineffective" as a useful chemical agent. Officials from the Defense Department commented that they were not certain if use was to be made of the device as a bomb.[26]
On May 15, 2004 a 155-mm artillery shell was used as an improvised bomb. The shell exploded and two U.S. soldiers were treated for minor exposure to a nerve agent (nausea and dialated pupils).[27] [28] On May 18 it was reported by U.S. Department of Defense intelligence officials that tests showed the two-chambered shell contained the chemical agent sarin, the shell being "likely" to have contained three to four liters of the substance (in the form of its two unmixed precursor chemicals prior to the aforementioned explosion that had not effectively mixed them). [29].
The US abandoned its search for WMDs in Iraq on 2005 January 12.
The U.S. Iraq Survey Group Final Report
On September 30, 2004, the U.S. Iraq Survey Group Final Report concluded that, "ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn (sic) possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation—including detainee interviews and document exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability."
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