Ironworks Gaming Forum - Mustard Gas found in Iraq!

<font color="#ff00cc">Story Found here: http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/63758.htm

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MUSTARD GAS IS FOUND IN IRAQ

By DEBORAH ORIN
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POINTED WORDS:
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is pushing chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to take a tougher approach with Iraq and search more than one site at a time.
- AP

December 5, 2002 -- U.N. weapons inspectors found mustard gas yesterday inside Iraqi artillery shells at a military complex north of Baghdad.
The inspectors had already known the gas and shells were stored at the Muthanna military site but hadn't yet been destroyed when the previous inspection team left Iraq in 1998.

Still, it was the first discovery of a chemical weapon since the United Nations returned to the country, inspector Dimitri Perricos said, adding, "Of course we are interested, because it is a good quantity of mustard."

Meanwhile, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has pressed chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix to get more aggressive on Iraq and do multisite inspections, U.S. officials said yesterday.

That revelation about Monday's Blix-Rice meeting in New York came as Iraq bristled over the inspectors' first check at one of Saddam Hussein's lavish palaces - and accused them of spying for the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer made it clear that the inspection that sparked Saddam's ire is nothing compared to the aggressive approach that the White House wants to implement after Iraq files its declaration of all weapons of mass death this weekend.

"Not just the United States, but the international community, wants to make sure that they have sufficient [inspectors], that they are able to do multiple inspections at the same time, that they can have a vigorous inspection regime," Fleischer told reporters.

"We want to make certain [the inspections] are aggressive enough to be able to ascertain the facts in the face of an adversary who in the past did everything in his power to hide the facts."

A U.S. official said Rice made the same point privately to Blix on Monday but not as a demand, since Blix doesn't work for the United States - and U.S. officials have spoken positively about Blix and his team, with one senior official saying it's unfair to criticize him.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters the inspectors have been told to be as aggressive as possible, and U.N. officials in Baghdad said they'll start working with "a multiplicity of teams" as more inspectors arrive this month.

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[ 12-05-2002, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]