Иракское оружие массового поражения: история и обвинения.

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Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Council. In the early 2000s, U. S. President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair both asserted that Saddam Hussein's weapons programs were still actively building weapons and that large stockpiles of WMDs were hidden in Iraq. Inspections by the UN to resolve the status of unresolved disarmament questions restarted between November 2002 and March 2003, under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441, which demanded Hussein give "immediate, unconditional and active cooperation" with UN and IAEA inspections. The United States asserted that Hussein's frequent lack of cooperation was a breach of Resolution 1441, but failed to convince the United Nations Security Council to pass a new resolution authorizing the use of force. Despite this, Bush asserted peaceful measures could not disarm Iraq of the weapons that he alleged it possessed and he launched a second Gulf War instead. A year later, the United States Senate officially released the Senate Report of Pre war Intelligence on Iraq which concluded that many of the Bush Administration's pre war statements about Iraqi WMD were misleading and not supported by the underlying intelligence. United States–led inspections later found that Iraq had earlier ceased active WMD production and stockpiling; the war was called by many, including 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, a "mistake", while others have argued the false allegations of weapons were used as a deliberate pretext for war. Iraq signed the Geneva Protocol in 1931, the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1969, and the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972 but did not ratify it until June 11, 1991. Iraq ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in January 2009, with its entry into force for Iraq coming a month later on February 12.

1959 August 17 USSR and Iraq signed an agreement for the USSR to build a nuclear power plant and established a nuclear program as part of their mutual understanding. 1968 a Soviet supplied IRT 2000 research reactor together with a number of other facilities that could be used for radioisotope production was built close to Baghdad. 1975 Saddam Hussein arrived in Moscow and asked about building an advanced model of an atomic power station. Moscow would approve only if the station was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but Iraq refused. However, an agreement of co operation was signed on April 15, which superseded the one of 1959. After 6 months France agreed to sell 72 kg of 93% uranium and built a nuclear power plant without IAEA control at a price of $3 billion. In the early 1970s, Saddam Hussein ordered the creation of a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs were assisted by a wide variety of firms and governments in the 1970s and 1980s. As part of Project 922, Iraq built chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. Five other German firms supplied equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin for germ warfare. In 1988, German engineers presented centrifuge data that helped Iraq expand its nuclear weapons program. Laboratory equipment and other information was provided, involving many German engineers. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. The State Establishment for Pesticide Production (SEPP) ordered culture media and incubators from Germany's Water Engineering Trading.

The United States supported Iraq during the Iran–Iraq war with over $500 million worth of dual use equipment that were approved by the Commerce department. Among them were advanced computers, some of which were used in Iraq's nuclear program. The non profit American Type Culture Collection and the Centers for Disease Control sold or sent biological samples of anthrax, West Nile virus and botulism to Iraq up until 1989, which Iraq claimed it needed for medical research. A number of these materials were used for Iraq's biological weapons research program, while others were used for vaccine development. For example, the Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive anthrax strain for use as a biological weapon, according to Charles Duelfer. The United States government invited a delegation of Iraqi weapons scientists to an August 1989 "detonation conference" in Portland, Oregon. The U. S. Department of Defense and the U. S. Department of Energy conference featured experts that explained to the Iraqis and other attendees how to generate shock waves in any needed configuration. The conference included lectures on HMX, a powerful explosive generally preferred for nuclear detonation, and on flyer plates, which are devices for generating the specific type of shock waves necessary for nuclear bomb ignition. Both HMX and flyer plates were in fact later found at Iraqi nuclear research sites by United Nations weapons inspectors.

In the late 1980s, the British government secretly gave the arms company Matrix Churchill permission to supply parts for Saddam Hussein's weapons program, while British Industry supplied Gerald Bull as he developed the Iraqi supergun. In March 1990, a case of nuclear triggers bound for Iraq was seized at Heathrow Airport. The Scott Report uncovered much of the secrecy that had surrounded the Arms to Iraq affair when it became known. The British government also financed a chlorine factory that was intended to be used for manufacturing mustard gas. Iraq's nuclear weapons program suffered a serious setback in 1981 when the Osiraq reactor, which would have been capable of breeding weapons usable nuclear material, was bombed by Israel before it could be commissioned.

In 1980, the U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency filed a report stating that Iraq had been actively acquiring chemical weapons capacities for several years, which later proved to be accurate. In November 1980, two months into the Iran–Iraq War, the first reported use of chemical weapons took place when Tehran radio reported a poison gas attack on Susangerd by Iraqi forces. The United Nations reported many similar attacks occurred the following year, leading Iran to develop and deploy a mustard gas capability. By 1984, Iraq was using poison gas with great effectiveness against Iranian "human wave" attacks. Chemical weapons were used extensively against Iran during the Iran–Iraq War. On January 14, 1991, the Defense Intelligence Agency said an Iraqi agent described, in medically accurate terms, military smallpox casualties he said he saw in 1985 or 1986. Two weeks later, the Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center reported that eight of 69 Iraqi prisoners of war whose blood was tested showed an immunity to smallpox, which had not occurred naturally in Iraq since 1971; the same prisoners had also been inoculated for anthrax. The assumption being that Iraq used both smallpox and anthrax during this war. The Washington Post reported that in 1984 the CIA secretly started providing intelligence to the Iraqi army during the Iran Iraq War. This included information to target chemical weapons strikes. The same year it was confirmed beyond doubt by European doctors and UN expert missions that Iraq was employing chemical weapons against the Iranians. Most of these occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, but chemical weapons were used at least once against the Shia popular uprising in southern Iraq in 1991. Iran today is the world's second most afflicted country by weapons of mass destruction, only after Japan. The official estimate does not include the civilian population contaminated in bordering towns or the children and relatives of veterans, many of whom have developed blood, lung and skin complications, according to the Organization for Veterans. Nerve gas agents killed about 20,000 Iranian soldiers immediately, according to official reports. Of the 90,000 survivors, some 5,000 seek medical treatment regularly and about 1,000 are still hospitalized with severe, chronic conditions. Many others were affected by mustard gas. There is deep resentment and anger in Iran that it was Western nations that helped Iraq develop and direct its chemical weapons arsenal in the first place and that the world did nothing to punish Iraq for its use of chemical weapons throughout the war. For example, the United States and the UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority to condemn this use. On March 21, 1986, the United Nation Security Council recognized that "chemical weapons on many occasions have been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian forces"; this statement was opposed by the United States, the sole country to vote against it in the Security Council (the UK abstained). On March 23, 1988, western media sources reported from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, that several days before Iraq had launched a large scale chemical assault on the town. Later estimates were that 7,000 people had been killed and 20,000 wounded. The Halabja poison gas attack caused an international outcry against the Iraqis. Later that year the U. S. Senate proposed the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, cutting off all U. S. assistance to Iraq and stopping U. S. imports of Iraqi oil. The Reagan administration opposed the bill, calling it premature, and eventually prevented it from taking effect, partly due to a mistaken DIA assessment which blamed Iran for the attack. At the time of the attack the town was held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas allied with Tehran. The Iraqis blamed the Halabja attack on Iranian forces. On August 21, 2006, the trial of Saddam Hussein and six codefendants, including Hassan al Majid ("Chemical Ali"), opened on charges of genocide against the Kurds. While this trial does not cover the Halabja attack, it does cover attacks on other villages during the Iraqi "Anfal" operation alleged to have included bombing with chemical weapons.

The United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) was set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities. It was headed first by Rolf Ekéus and later by Richard Butler. During several visits to Iraq by UNSCOM, weapons inspectors interviewed British educated Iraqi biologist Rihab Rashid Taha. According to a 1999 report from the U. S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the normally mild mannered Taha exploded into violent rages whenever UNSCOM questioned her about al Hakam, shouting, screaming and, on one occasion, smashing a chair, while insisting that al Hakam was a chicken feed plant. "There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal feed production plant", Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it." The facility was destroyed by UNSCOM in 1996. In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector, Rod Barton from Australia, showed Taha documents obtained by UNSCOM that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium from a British company called Oxoid. Growth media is a mixture of sugars, proteins and minerals that provides nutrients for microorganisms to grow. It can be used in hospitals and microbiology/molecular biology research laboratories. In hospitals, swabs from patients are placed in dishes containing growth medium for diagnostic purposes. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U. S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq had a smallpox outbreak in 1971 and the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) believed the Iraqi government retained contaminated material. Iraqi opposition groups say that scientists sprayed the prisoners with anthrax, though no evidence was produced to support these allegations. During one experiment, the inspectors were told, 12 prisoners were tied to posts while shells loaded with anthrax were blown up nearby. Ritter's team demanded to see documents from Abu Ghraib prison showing a prisoner count. Ritter writes that they discovered the records for July and August 1995 were missing. Asked to explain the missing documents, the Iraqi government charged that Ritter was working for the CIA and refused UNSCOM access to certain sites like Baath Party headquarters. Although Ekéus has said that he resisted attempts at such espionage, many allegations have since been made against the agency commission under Butler, charges which Butler has denied. In April 1991 Iraq provided its first of what would be several declarations of its chemical weapons programs. Subsequent declarations submitted by Iraq in June 1992, March 1995, June 1996 came only after pressure from UNSCOM. In June 1999, Ritter responded to an interviewer, saying: "When you ask the question, 'Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?' the answer is no! It is a resounding NO. Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale? No! Ballistic missiles? No! It is 'no' across the board. So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed." Ritter later accused some UNSCOM personnel of spying, and he strongly criticized the Bill Clinton administration for misusing the commission's resources to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military. According to Ritter: "Iraq today (1999) possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction capability." In June 2000, Ritter penned a piece for Arms Control Today entitled The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament. 2001 saw the theatrical release of his documentary on the UNSCOM weapons inspections in Iraq, In Shifting Sands: The Truth About Unscom and the Disarming of Iraq. The film was funded by an Iraqi American businessman who, unknown to Ritter, had received Oil for Food coupons from the Iraqi administration. In 2002, Scott Ritter stated that, by 1998, 90–95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities, and long range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, said Ritter, not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq' had preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never existed. Many people were surprised by Ritter's turnaround in his view of Iraq during a period when no inspections were made. During the 2002–2003 build up to war, Ritter criticized the Bush administration and maintained that it had provided no credible evidence that Iraq had reconstituted a significant WMD capability. In an interview with Time in September 2002 Ritter said there were attempts to use UNSCOM for spying on Iraq. According to the New York Times and Washington Post media of Jan. 8, 1999, "In March [1998], in a last ditch attempt to uncover Saddam Hussein's covert weapons and intelligence networks, the United States used the United Nations inspection team to send an American spy into
Baghdad to install a highly sophisticated electronic eavesdropping system." UNSCOM encountered various difficulties and a lack of cooperation from the Iraqi government. In 1998, UNSCOM was withdrawn at the request of the United States before Operation Desert Fox. Despite this, UNSCOM's own estimate was that 90–95% of Iraqi WMDs had been successfully destroyed before its 1998 withdrawal. After that, for four years (from 1998 to 2002) Iraq remained without any outside weapons inspectors. During this time speculations arose that Iraq had actively resumed its WMD programs. In particular, various figures in the George W. Bush administration, as well as Congress, went so far as to express concern about nuclear weapons. There is a dispute about whether Iraq still had WMD programs after 1998 and whether its cooperation with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was complete. Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said in January 2003 that "access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect" and Iraq had "cooperated rather well" in that regard, although "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance of the disarmament." On March 7, in an address to the Security Council, Hans Blix stated: "Against this background, the question is now asked whether Iraq has cooperated "immediately, unconditionally and actively" with UNMOVIC, as is required under paragraph 9 of resolution 1441 (2002) while the numerous initiatives, which are now taken by the Iraqi side with a view to resolving some long standing open disarmament issues, can be seen as "active", or even "proactive", these initiatives 3–4 months into the new resolution cannot be said to constitute "immediate" cooperation. Nor do they necessarily cover all areas of relevance." Some U. S. officials understood this contradictory statement as a declaration of noncompliance. There were no weapon inspections in Iraq for nearly four years after the UN departed from Iraq in 1998, and Iraq asserted that they would never be invited back. In addition, Saddam had issued a "secret order" that Iraq did not have to abide by any UN Resolution since in his view "the United States had broken international law". In 2001, Saddam stated: "we are not at all seeking to build up weapons or look for the most harmful weapons . however, we will never hesitate to possess the weapons to defend Iraq and the Arab nation". The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in Britain published in September 2002 a review of Iraq's military capability, and concluded that Iraq could assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained. However, IISS also concluded that without such foreign sources, it would take years at a bare minimum. Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who created Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program that had successfully enriched uranium to weapons grade before the 1991 Gulf War, stated in an op ed in The New York Times that although Iraqi scientists possessed the knowledge to restart the nuclear program, by 2002 the idea had become "a vague dream from another era."

Possession of WMDs was cited by the United States as the primary motivation instigating the Iraq War.

On May 30, 2003, the U. S. Department of Defense briefed the media that it was ready to formally begin the work of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), a fact finding mission from the coalition of the Iraq occupation into the WMD programs developed by Iraq, taking over from the British American 75th Exploitation Task Force. Various nuclear facilities, including the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility and Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, were found looted in the month following the invasion. (Gellman, May 3, 2003) On June 20, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that tons of uranium, as well as other radioactive materials such as thorium, had been recovered and that the vast majority had remained on site. There were several reports of radiation sickness in the area. It has been suggested that the documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned in Iraq by looters in the final days of the war. On September 30, 2004, the U. S. Iraq Survey Group issued its Final Report. Among its key findings were:

"Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted." "The former Regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policy makers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from their long association with Saddam and his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them." No senior Iraqi official interviewed by the ISG believed that Saddam had forsaken WMD forever. On October 6, 2004, the head of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), Charles Duelfer, announced to the U. S. Senate Armed Services Committee that the group found no evidence that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had produced and stockpiled any weapons of mass destruction since 1991, when UN sanctions were imposed. After he began cooperating with U. S. forces in Baghdad in 2003, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who ran Saddam's nuclear centrifuge program until 1997, handed over blueprints for a nuclear centrifuge along with some actual centrifuge components, stored at his home buried in the front yard awaiting orders from Baghdad to proceed. He said, "I had to maintain the program to the bitter end." In his book The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind, the Iraqi nuclear engineer explains that his nuclear stash was the key that could have unlocked and restarted Saddam's bombmaking program. However, it would require a massive investment and a re creation of thousands of centrifuges in order to reconstitute a full centrifugal enrichment program. In a January 26, 2004, interview with Tom Brokaw of NBC news, Kay described Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs as being in a "rudimentary" stage. He also stated that "What we did find, and as others are investigating it, we found a lot of terrorist groups and individuals that passed through Iraq." In responding to a question by Brokaw as to whether Iraq was a "gathering threat" as President Bush had asserted before the invasion, Kay answered:

Tom, an imminent threat is a political judgment. It's not a technical judgment. I think Baghdad was actually becoming more dangerous in the last two years than even we realized. Saddam was not controlling the society any longer. In the marketplace of terrorism and of WMD, Iraq well could have been that supplier if the war had not intervened. In June 2004, the United States removed 2 tons of low enriched uranium from Iraq, sufficient raw material for a single nuclear weapon. Demetrius Perricos, then head of UNMOVIC, stated that the Kay report contained little information not already known by UNMOVIC. Many organizations, such as the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, have claimed that Kay's report is a "worst case analysis".

Operation Iraqi Freedom documents refers to some 48,000 boxes of documents, audiotapes and videotapes that were captured by the U. S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many of these documents seem to make clear that Saddam's regime had given up on seeking a WMD capability by the mid 1990s. Associated Press reported, "Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear bomb program, which had never produced a weapon." At one 1996 presidential meeting, top weapons program official Amer Mohammed Rashid describes his conversation with UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus: "We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details." At another meeting, Saddam told his deputies, "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify). Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD. We have nothing." U. S. Congressman Peter Hoekstra called for the U. S. government to put the remaining documents on the Internet so Arabic speakers around the world can help translate the documents.

Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, several reported finds of chemical weapons were announced, including half a dozen incidents during the invasion itself. In April 2003, US Marines stumbled across a number of buildings which emitted unusual levels of radiation. Upon close inspection the troops uncovered "many, many drums" containing low grade uranium, also known as yellowcake. According to an expert familiar with UN nuclear inspections, US troops had arrived at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center and the material under investigation had been documented, stored in sealed containers and subject to supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1991. The material was transported out of Iraq in July 2008 and sold to Canadian uranium producer Cameco Corp., in a transaction described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A 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, subsequent analysis by American and Danish experts showed that no chemical agent was present. On May 2, 2004, a shell containing mustard gas was found in the middle of a street west of Baghdad. The Iraq Survey Group investigation reported that it had been previously "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. On May 16, 2004, a 152 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 dilated pupils). 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). It is likely that the insurgents who planted the bomb did not know it contained sarin, according to Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, and another U. S. official confirmed that the shell did not have the markings of a chemical agent. but it turned out that the warheads did not in fact contain sarin gas but "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals"—and it transpired that the Poles had bought the shells for $5,000 each. In 2004, hundreds of chemical warheads were recovered from the desert close to the Iran–Iraq border. According to The Washington Post, the munitions "had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight year war with Iran". Officials did not consider the discovery as evidence of an ongoing weapons program that was believed to be in existence before the invasion began. The Iraqi government informed the United Nations in 2014 that insurgents affiliated with the Islamic State terror group had seized control of the Muthana State Establishment, including a chemical weapons depot northwest of Baghdad. The facility was partially destroyed and placed under the supervision of UNSCOM following the 1991 Gulf War. It housed some 2,500 sarin filled rockets at the time of their departure in 1999. The U. N. said that the munitions were of "poor quality" and "would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there."

In 2005, the CIA collaborated with the Army Intelligence Corps in contacting an unnamed Iraqi individual who had knowledge and possession of remnant chemical weapon stockpiles and munitions in Iraq dating to its abandoned weapons program. Foreign materials exploitation specialists from the 203rd Military Intelligence Battalion as well as chemical specialists and ordnance disposal units were assigned the task of aiding the destruction of recovered weapons; ultimately, at least 400 Borak rockets were acquired and destroyed. The declassified summary stated that "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent", that chemical munitions "are assessed to still exist" and that they "could be sold on the black market". All weapons were thought to be manufactured in the 1980s and date to Iraq's war with Iran. During a House Armed Services Committee meeting convened to discuss the topic, the center's commander, Army Colonel John Chiu, elaborated that the munitions are "badly corroded in most cases [and] some were deliberately dismantled, if you will, to prevent them from being used." Nonetheless, in response to a question from committee member Rep. Curt Weldon (R Pennsylvania), Col. Chui agreed that the munitions met the technical definition of weapons of mass destruction. "These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention and yes, sir, they do constitute weapons of mass destruction." Weapons expert David Kay, who also appeared before the committee, disagreed with the assessment, contending that any chemical weapon produced by Iraq in the 1980s would not remain a viable weapon of mass destruction today. Kay said the chemical agent, though hazardous, is "less toxic than most things Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point". In September of the same year, the report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Postwar Findings stated that such discoveries were consistent with the ISG assessment that "Iraq and Coalition Forces will continue to discover small numbers of degraded chemical weapons, which the former Regime mislaid or improperly destroyed prior to 1991. The ISG believes the bulk of these weapons were likely abandoned, forgotten and lost during the Iran Iraq war because tens of thousands of CW munitions were forward deployed along the frequently and rapidly shifting battle front."

In October 2014, The New York Times reported that the total number of munitions discovered since 2003 had climbed to 4,990, and that U. S. servicemen had been exposed and injured during the disposal and destruction process. US soldiers reporting exposure to mustard gas and sarin allege they were required to keep their exposure secret, sometimes declined admission to hospital and evacuation home despite the request of their commanders. "We were absolutely told not to talk about it" by a colonel, a former sergeant said. No plans were announced at that time for the destruction of the material, although it was noted that the bunkers were damaged in the 2003 war and even inspection of the site must be carefully planned. The declaration contained no surprises, OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan indicated. The production facilities were "put out of commission" by airstrikes during the 1991 conflict, while United Nations personnel afterward secured the chemical munitions in the bunkers. Luhan stated at the time: "These are legacy weapons, remnants." He declined to discuss how many weapons were stored in the bunkers or what materials they contained. The weapons were not believed to be in a usable state.