Hundreds of chemical weapons found in Iraq: US intelligence

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions "in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for."

The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155 millimeter artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.

"We're destroying them where we find them in the normal manner," the official said.

In 2004, the US army said it had found a shell containing sarin gas and another shell containing mustard gas, and a Pentagon official said at the time the discovery showed there were likely more.

Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq

WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

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"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.

Documents Support Saddam-Taliban Connection

In this second of a three-part examination of a newly-released document captured in Iraq, Robison offers further evidence that in 1999 the Taliban welcomed "Islamic relations with Iraq" to mediate among the Taliban, the Northern Alliance and Russia, and that the Taliban reciprocated with an invitation to Iraqi officials to visit Afghanistan.

The document appears to be a notebook kept by an Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) agent, and apparently captured in 2003. The translation is provided by Robison's associate, known here as "Sammi." The notebook deals extensively with the meetings between a prominent Taliban supporter and former Saddam regime officials.

It is highly probable that the man in this meeting is Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani cleric described in an article from the BBC Profile: Maulana Fazlur Rahman as "A pro-Taliban cleric in Pakistan... one of the two main contenders for the post of the country's prime minister." The BBC also said "Maulana Fazlur Rahman... is known for his close ties to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime."