ISIS in Iraq Occupy Hussein’s Chemical Weapons Facility – anyone concerned?

This story has been puzzling me for about a week. Alas, apparently I am one of a handful that has given any thought to this. We all know the drill. No “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were found which caused Bush , Cheney, et al to bear the burden of “The Bad War.” Iraq. We do know that Sadam blasted the Kurds with WMD’s with the estimated deaths of over 50,000. So then Iraq did have a Chemical factory? So page forward. No weapons were found, but oh shucks, we have a few bunkers with “unstable” chemical weapons that we are assured are just too dangerous to handle. So not to worry. All is well in the parallel universe. Earth to fellow humans: Am I the only one questioning this whole story line? Must be that darn tin foil.

Washington (WSJ)WSJ— Sunni extremists in Iraq have occupied what was once Saddam Hussein’s premier chemical-weapons production facility, a complex that still contains a stockpile of old weapons, State Department and other U.S. government officials said.

U.S. officials don’t believe the Sunni militants will be able to create a functional chemical weapon from the material. The weapons stockpiled at the Al Muthanna complex are old, contaminated and hard to move, officials said.

Nonetheless, the capture of the chemical-weapon stockpile by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS or ISIL, the militant group that is seizing territory in the country, has grabbed the attention of the U.S.

“We remain concerned about the seizure of any military site by the ISIL,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a written statement. “We do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible to safely move the materials.”

The takeover underscores the chaos gripping Iraq and the prospect that the growing Sunni rebellion could further destabilize the Middle East. Not lost on U.S. government and military officials is the irony that the latest chapter in a war designed to strip Iraq of chemical weapons could see radical Sunni extremists take control of that same stockpile.

Military officials said the U.S. was well aware of the Muthanna stockpile and wouldn’t have left it there if it posed a military threat. Still, when the U.S. pulled out of Iraq, it didn’t anticipate a large swath of the country, including numerous military bases, would be overrun by radical Sunni militants. One defense official said that if the U.S. had known the Iraqi government would lose control so soon, it might not have left the old chemical weapons in place.

 

The rise of ISIS has reignited the debate about the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration and the 2011 decision by the Obama administration to withdraw remaining military forces from the country. The takeover of a chemical weapons stockpile-even if the weapons are useless-seems likely to further intensify those debates.

Nonetheless, the capture of the chemical-weapon stockpile by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, known as ISIS or ISIL, the militant group that is seizing territory in the country, has grabbed the attention of the U.S. ED( Sorry, not a whole lot)

I’m sure that people who regularly blow themselves up and have their own divine deaths drilled into their heads since birth are worried about moving some dangerous chemicals to a point where they can be deadly and take out some infidels along with some Shi’ites.

Here is a bit of history, believe what you think reasonable.