This is an excellent interview with someone who actually knows something about chemical weapons.

Iraq and chemical weapons: a view from the inside
In both the United States and Britain, there is passionate contest over the legitimacy and honesty of government attempts to justify war with Iraq – especially claims of the existence of active Iraqi chemical weapons programmes. In an interview of profound insight, the man responsible for chemical weapons destruction operations in Iraq from 1991-94 talks to Anthony Barnett and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy about the true extent of Iraq’s capacity to produce, store and deliver weapons of mass destruction.

openDemocracy: The British government’s assessment refers to intelligence findings that such processes were being revived – for, example at the Ibn Sina company at Tarmiyah, and at the al-Qa’qa’ complex south of Baghdad.

Ron Manley: It does. But the sites you mention were visited both by UN inspectors, immediately before the war and subsequently by the US military; neither found evidence that any production had taken place.

The point is that production of these materials on a large scale really is not something you can easily hide. You could hide the individual items of equipment or the raw materials in, say, Saddam’s massive palace complexes. But when you actually start to build a plant and manufacture chemical agents it’s a whole different story.

My view has been all along that they didn’t retain any militarily significant quantities of chemical weapons. A terrorist attack – the ability to fire the odd al-Hussein missile at Saudi Arabia, say – would be a different matter. They could probably have done that. I must admit I am amazed that they haven’t yet come across the odd CW-related item because I find it incredible that none of the programme was left.
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