Has Iraq produced mass quantities of chemical and biological weapons?
In his State of the Union address the president cited the large volumes of chemical and biological agents produced by Saddam Hussein and repeatedly declared: “He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.” In fact, substantial amounts of the chemical and biological agents produced by Iraq were accounted for and destroyed by Iraq and UN inspectors during the 1990s.25 • UNSCOM reported in 1997 that “considerable quantities of chemical weapons, their components and chemical weapons-related equipment have been destroyed by Iraq and UNSCOM.”26 • During the 1990s UN inspectors destroyed 480,000 tons of live chemical agent. They also destroyed more than 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals.27 UNSCOM found that 3,915 tons of precursors existed in 1991; it accounted directly for 2,850 tons and confirmed Iraq’s claim that 823 tons were destroyed during the Gulf War.28 • In the 1990s UN inspectors supervised Iraq’s destruction of 12,792 of the 13,000 155m
