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PENTAGON: U.S. Finds Iraqi Mobile Germ Warfare Lab

Wednesday, May 7, 2003
(4:55 PM)
By Charles Aldinger & Will Dunham
Reuters Writers

Aboard the trailer was equipment that can be used to make biological weapons -- living microorganisms or biological toxins used deliberately to spread disease -- including a fermenter that could help produce germ warfare agents, Stephen Cambone said.

Members of a mobile exploitation team examine a suspected mobile biological weapons facility that was recovered by U.S. Forces in northern Iraq in late April, 2003. American forces in Iraq are doing tests on the trailer that matches the description of a mobile biological weapons lab given by various sources including defectors, the Pentagon said Wednesday, May 7, 2003. It was the first time the Defense Department has announced it might have evidence of the sort of prohibited unconventional weapons program that it said justified forcibly disarming Saddam Hussein.
Image Credit: AP / Dept. of Defense

WASHINGTON -- Reuters
U.S. forces in Iraq have found a trailer built by the toppled government of President Saddam Hussein as a mobile biological weapons laboratory, the United States said on Wednesday.

Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone stopped short of calling the big truck a 'smoking gun' proving U.S. charges that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction, telling reporters that sophisticated production equipment had been found inside the vehicle but no germ agents.

It was the first time U.S. officials have said they have found firm evidence of such an Iraqi weapons program, which was cited before the war as a justification for the invasion to oust Saddam.

The trailer was found on April 19 in northern Iraq and will soon be taken apart and minutely examined in Baghdad, Cambone told a Pentagon briefing.

“While some of the equipment on the trailer could have been for purposes other than biological weapons agent production, U.S. and U.K. tactical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond ... the production of biological agents,” he said.

Cambone said the 'mobile production facility,' painted military green, was similar to 18 that the United States believes the former Iraqi government built.

He said the vehicle was taken over by U.S. forces at a Kurdish checkpoint near the town of Tall Kayf. It was found on a heavy-equipment transporter typically used for carrying tanks, he said.

* THREE DEADLY AGENTS
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