Samples from a 55-gallon drum-one of several such containers found here–initially turned up conflicting positive results for a mixture of mustard and cyclosarin agents, a lethal cocktail similar to that used in the notorious 1988 attack that killed thousands in the Kurdish city of Halabjah. Now, it looks like the suspect substance was just rocket fuel (which is not a banned substance). “Is it frustrating?” asked Capt. Jon Harvey, a chemical officer for the 1-8 Infantry battalion. “Yeah.” Frustration was more apparent in another Army chemical officer upon learning of the negative result. “I thought that was the whole reason we came to invade Iraq,” the officer said.
The Army’s expectations rose Saturday when an Army chemical-radiological reconnaissance “Fox team” got positive results from drums sitting near warheads and missiles east of the industrial town of Ba’iji. Hopes were raised further Sunday when Johnson’s team moved in to take a second series of samples. As rain fell and a herd of sheep strolled by, Johnson was confident enough with preliminary analyses that he recommended bringing in the special Mobile Exploitation Team Bravo (MET-Bravo), the U.S. government’s last word in testing. They arrived from Baghdad in the afternoon via Chinook helicopter.
At first, Army officers were cautiously optimistic that their find was significant. “Finding some [chemical weapons] obviously brings us some excitement,” Lt. Col. Valentin Novikov, the division’s chemical officer, said at the site on Sunday. “One of the reasons we labeled this country an enemy was that it was brutal to its people. The other was finding chemicals like this, so they don’t fall into terrorists’ hands.” Then, like a version of the film “Groundhog Day”–in which a sarcastic weather man finds himself trapped in the worst day of his life–Monday spiraled into a series of setbacks.
MET Bravo’s preliminary test results indicated that the liquid in the drums was more than likely rocket fuel. Time and again, substances have climbed through two levels of screening only to be shot down by MET Bravo’s final analysis. For reasons political and practical, the military has been tipping off journalists to potential chem-bio sites with the hope of relieving international pressure on themselves and their bosses in the U.S. government to produce the unconventional munitions cited by the Bush administration as the reason for the war.
This time, the site was a picturesque pitch of sand overlooking the verdant Tigris River Valley, discovered by Green Berets acting on a tip from local farmers. “It wasn’t on anyone’s radar,” Novikov said. Set in a lunar landscape of dusty hills lined with sheep paths, in the shadow of the Jabal Hamrin mountain range, it had all the earmarks of a hastily-assembled weapons depot. The looted hulls of two green mobile labs, still stocked with Russian charts, sat near at least 14 beige 55-gallon drums. Located nearby: a few medium range, surface-to-surface Frog-7 missiles. Their warheads were detached and placed in yet another location (officials did not know whether they were capable of carrying chemical munitions). Gas masks were found in a nearby barracks. It was hard to argue with Johnson’s initial assessment. “It’s unique that you have all the components here,” he said. But Iraq is so littered with ammo and weapons caches that soldiers joke of worrying about lighting cigarettes. Potential chem-bio sites seem to be everywhere.
The soldiers were always aware that this could be another false alarm. Initially, when the Fox team arrived, their first reading was negative. Then, lacking a good tool to open the drums, they donned protective garb and used a pick ax to puncture one. Lt. Valerie Phipps, of Arkansas, turned the test paper pink when she touched it with the liquid, indicating a positive reading. It was a rare “Eureka” moment for one of the 80-some Fox teams ricocheting around the country. “Wow,” Phipps, 27, told her colleagues. “Maybe this is it. Maybe we found it.” They turned up two positive tests for blister and nerve agents–one of which scored seven out of nine bars. “That’s pretty big,” said Capt. Harvey, of the 1-8 Infantry battalion. But, Harvey cautioned from the first, they’d been down the road that far before only to find a dead end. “There is a possibility that it’s just rocket fuel,” he said initially. Pesticides could also produce a similar false-positive test result.
The stakes are high. The discovery of a definitive, positive test result would confirm the basis of the U.S. invasion of Iraq–and indicate who taught Iraq how to make the weapon. Chemical and biological weapons have tags that indicate their authors’ fingerprints and can also trace birth lines. Saddam Hussein’s liability would be less surprising than an American failure to find the goods on him. “No WMD?” one Army officer said with a little self-deprecation recently. “Just kidding.” “Whoops,” another officer laughed. “Um, Saddam, you can come back now.”
Saddam is certainly familiar with the forbidden weapons. In the 1980s, Iraq used chemical weapons during its eight-year war with Iran with devastating effect. Cyclosarin is a favored chemical because it’s more persistent than the better-known sarin. It takes cyclosarin 20 times longer to evaporate than sarin, leaving it lingering dangerously in the air for a longer period. Mixed correctly, the cyclosarin-mustard gas cocktail is sinister. Within seconds of raining down in big droplets, the mustard agent’s symptoms kick in–sudden vomiting, respiratory problems and vision blurred to the point of blindness. But while that gas causes horrible suffering, it doesn’t always kill. It’s the nerve agent cyclosarin that finishes them off. Little wonder, then, that the pursuit presents the Fox teams with a Catch-22. A find would be a feather in an officer’s cap–but it would also bring the risk of exposure to the deadly substances.
