ISIL militants seize Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons stockpile

Not US President but Sunni militants from jihadists outfit -The Islamic State of Iraq and levant  captured  Saddam Hussein's former chemical weapons stockpile.


President George W. Bush back in November 2003 declared that the invasion of Iraq was important  to fight terrorists  who possessed weapons of mass destruction  but turned out to be false and now  Sunni extremists have captured.


Sunni radicals in Iraq, who have overrun a swathe of territory north of Baghdad in a lightning offensive, have taken control of one of Saddam Hussein's former chemical weapons factories, a US official has said.

 "We are aware the that the ISIL has occupied the Al Muthanna complex," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Eighty-five to 90 percent of the world’s Muslims are Sunnis but in Iraq only 9 percent of the population are Sunnis.Saudi Arabia has warned against Western or regional intervention in Iraq ,  and is in favour of installing new government in Baghdad.

Sunni Arab minority dominated the Shiite Iraq since independence in 1932 until Saddam Hussein was overthrown in the US invasion of 2003.Meanwhile, leading Shiite clerics have reacted to the Sunni offensive by making a call to arms, raising fears of all-out civil war.

But she said she didn't think the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants would be able to produce usable chemical weapons there, because any materials remaining are old and unwieldy.

 The complex, located just 72 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, began producing mustard gas and other nerve agents,including Sarin, in the early 1980s soon after Hussein took power, according to a CIA factsheet.

 The program expanded to its height during the Iran-Iraq war later that decade, and produced 209 and 394 tons of Sarin in 1987 and 1988 respectively.  But the CIA writes that the facility shut down after the first Gulf war, when UN resolutions "proscribed Iraq's abilityto produce chemical weapons."

In the early 1990s, the site was used to oversee efforts to destroy Iraq's chemical weapons stockpile. Psaki said "We remain concerned about the seizure of any military site by the ISIL."

 However, she said, "we do not believe that the complex contains (chemical weapons) materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible to safely move the materials."