Destroying Iraq’s chemical weapons was sometimes a dangerous business. Check out these stories from UNMOVIC’s compendium:

During the inspection two incidents took place, which reminded the team that Al
Muthanna was an extremely hazardous site and that the recovery and destruction of
Iraq’s chemical weapons munitions (and agents) would be a protracted and dangerous
undertaking.

During this destruction work, a supposedly unfilled 122mm rocket warhead burst and a
nearby Iraqi worker was exposed to nerve agent. Owing to the prompt action of a
member of the inspection team the casualty was very quickly taken to the site hospital
where he received appropriate and timely treatment from Iraqi medical personnel. He
recovered over a period of a few days. A separate incident occurred in the case of the 30
chemical-filled ballistic warheads removed to Al Muthanna from Dujayl in two separate
shipments. In the first shipment, 14 warheads stated by the Iraqis to be filled with the
mixture of alcohols, and considered relatively harmless, were moved. Ten were opened,
found to contain the alcohols and were drained preparatory to destruction. At this point
the senior Iraqi official present said that the remaining four were filled with the nerve
agent sarin. Apparently these warheads had been moved during the night prior to
dispatch to Al Muthanna and the sarin-filled warheads had been confused with alcohol filled
ones.

It’ll be interesting to learn the condition of Syria’s stockpile. Lots of opinions without evidence right now.

I can’t vouch for everything in it, but the ICRC’s customary international humanitarian law project has a useful section on chemical weapons.

Perhaps they missed something, but that’s tough to believe.

Here it is. An enterprising linguist ought to compare it to the translation which came out earlier.

I thought it’d be useful to put them all in one place.

France (English and French).

United Kingdom

United States

Geek out with yer beak out.

Here’s the French version. Here’s the English version.

I lack the time to do this very useful document justice. Much of this information does exist in public US intel documents, but it’s a hassle to consolidate it all and there are issues with consistency.

I would point people to the delivery vehicles section…no other public official document has such a list of vehicles, ranges, and CW agents, as far as I know. Ditto for the composition of the Syrian CW agent stockpile. Also notable is that Syria is developing another mustard agent and a nastier form of nerve agent.

Lastly, the report’s observation that the regime “is adapting its tactics and the munitions in its stockpiles to a terror use against civilian population” is perhaps the element with the most far-reaching implications. One wonders if other regimes are getting ideas; governments, including the government of Syria, produced CW arsenals in the past for quite different reasons. There’s a decent amount of detail on that point, so take a look.

I’m late to the party on this, but for the sake of completeness, here it is.

There are at least a couple of noteworthy items…

First, when combined with the UK judgement that “[p]ermission to authorise CW has probably been delegated by President Asad to senior regime commanders,” the US assessment suggests that Asad was not directly responsible for the 8/21 attack. In fact, it seems to suggest that the military stopped using CW in response to an order from higher up:

We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence. On the afternoon of August 21, we have intelligence that Syrian chemical weapons personnel were directed to cease operations.

Second, the assessment describes the government’s use of chemical weapons as a “coordinated rocket and artillery attack.” Most of the public USG assessments describe Syria’s missile forces, but have said next to nothing about delivery via rockets and artillery.

Today’s report from the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, titled SYRIA: REPORTED CHEMICAL WEAPONS USE, may be found here. The report seems to provide a window into US intelligence assessments, stating that the UK agrees with the conclusions of the US intel community.

The report states that the “[t]here is some intelligence to suggest regime culpability in this attack. These factors make it highly likely that the Syrian regime was responsible.”

The report then appears to describe what the JIC means by that:

There is no obvious political or military trigger for regime use of CW on an apparently larger scale now, particularly given the current presence in Syria of the UN investigation team. Permission to authorise CW has probably been delegated by President Asad to senior regime commanders, such as [*], but any deliberate change in the scale and nature of use would require his authorisation.

Lastly, the report tells us that non-state actors are seeking a CW capability:

There is no credible evidence that any opposition group has used CW. A number continue to seek a CW capability, but none currently has the capability to conduct a CW attack on this scale.

Read the whole thing. It’s short.

Given the current UN inspections in Syria and their apparently-forthcoming report, some nerds may want information about the inspectors’ chain of custody procedures. Those may be found in Appendix VII of the UNSG’s Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons. The actual Chain of Custody Form is here.

I mentioned the Mechanism before, but thought this would be a useful addition.

This FP piece linked to some useful intel documents about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during its war with Iran. It didn’t look to me as if the documents contain much that we didn’t know before, but perhaps I missed something.

Anyway, this January 1985 CIA assessment, titled The Iraqi Chemical Weapons Program in Perspective, is useful because it sums up what the CIA knew about Iraq’s chemical weapons program at the time. However, it is also significant because it contains something one doesn’t see all that often: official confirmation that Israel had chemical weapons.

According to page 14 of the assessment, the CIA assessed that Iraq would be “restrained…in using chemical weapons outside its borders, particularly against states such as Israel or Syria, which have chemical weapons stockpiles.”

Read the whole thing.

Following up on this post, the UN team investigating the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria arrived in the country on August 18, according to Reuters.