Iraqi Chemical Stash Uncovered

Post-Invasion Cache Could Have Been For Use in Weapons

BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday.

Monday's early morning raid found 11 precursor agents, "some of them quite dangerous by themselves," a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, said in Baghdad.

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Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

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U.S. military photos of the alleged lab showed a bare concrete-walled room scattered with stacks of plastic containers, coiled tubing, hoses and a stand holding a large metal device that looked like a distillery. Black rubber boots lay among the gear.

The suspected chemical weapons lab was the biggest found so far in Iraq, Boylan said. A lab discovered last year in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah contained a how-to book on chemical weapons and an unspecified amount of chemicals.

Chemical weapons are divided into the categories of "persistent" agents, which wreak damage for hours, such as blistering agents or the oily VX nerve agent, and "nonpersistent" ones, which dissipate quickly, such as chlorine gas or sarin nerve gas.