(Wall Street Journal) - Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz Will Coalition troops find caches of poison gas, or even be hit by it on the battlefield? If so, German and French companies will be mainly to blame. In the 1980s, the German firm Karl Kolb and the French firm Protec combined to furnish millions of dollars worth of sensitive equipment to six separate plants for making mustard gas and nerve agents, with a capacity of hundreds of tons of nerve agents per year. Iraq admits that in the 1980s it bought more than 3,000 chemical-ready aerial bombs from Spain, more than 8,000 chemical-ready artillery shells from Italy and Spain, and more than 12,000 chemical-ready rocket warheads from Italy and Egypt. Most of these munitions remain unaccounted for. There are also some Scud-type missiles left over from the first Gulf War. Our friends the Russians sold Iraq 819 of these missiles, but the Iraqis soon discovered they didn't fly far enough. Their range had to be increased. The Germans were only too happy to provide what was needed to make the missiles more lethal. And anthrax? Botulinum? Most of the strains to make these deadly agents came from an outfit in Maryland - the American Type Culture Collection. France's Pasteur Institute also sold some.
2003-03-31 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive