Iraq War Pre-Surge: Chemical Weapons & WMD

[December 19, 2025] My friends and I had long conversations about Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein and his role in the Iran-Iraq War. The debate over whether he was an evil dictator or a grandfatherly figure protecting his country raged on and off, even after he used chemical weapons to attack Kurdish civilians in 1988. Known as the Halabja Massacre, the attack on 16 March of that year killed thousands of Kurds in a large-scale Iraqi Army chemical attack. Following the massacre, the United Nations investigated the attack and concluded that mustard gas, along with unidentified nerve agents, had been used against civilians. This is, of course, well documented, and 15 years before we rolled into Baghdad in the Iraq War to once-and-for-all topple Saddam and his government. What we did not expect was that Coalition Forces would once again come into contact with even more weaponized and stored CWs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Many well-meaning “experts” say that Saddam never possessed, researched, or used WMDs during his reign. This fantasy continues to this day, mostly spread through blatant lies – or just voluntary stupidity (I don’t know which) – in the mass media, and fueled by those who still love Saddam and totalitarian governments.

Back in OIF2, during my first combat tour on 4 May 2004, we received word that several of our Soldiers had suffered “chemical burns” from what was probably Sarin (a nerve agent) or Mustard Gas.  There is no secret to anybody with a brain cell that Saddam Hussein used CWs on both Iranian soldiers and his own civilians in northern Iraq, along the border with Iran.  We asked ourselves whether these weapons were still hidden somewhere after all these years; hint, they were still there.  It had long been known to us that Saddam and his senior military leaders had no idea where all their weapons were located, or even if they possessed certain types of weapons.  I had the good fortune to still be in contact with many senior Iraqi military officers who had served under Saddam, and our conversations were invaluable.  That network of insiders, many of whom had immigrated out of the country, gave me invaluable insights into Middle Eastern culture and Iraqi military capabilities.  What I learned was that authoritarian-run countries place their militaries at the disposal of the dumbest elements of their populations.  This explains, in part, their quick collapse during our initial OIF1 attacks in April of 2003.  We simply walked over them, destroying everything in sight, gutting a military that had taken decades to train, arm, and maintain.  It seemed to many of us that Saddam possessed CWs to both deter unfriendly regional adversaries like Kuwait, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and to keep his own Kurdish and Shia populations in line.

During this part of the war, OIF 06-08, we were about to re-engage with these CWs, the largest of which were located mostly north of Baghdad.  That is why, in May, I was in contact with U.S. Army Engineer LTC Jeff Eckstein, who was working in the northern part of the country.  Somehow, he had been given responsibility for overseeing the containment of these chemical weapons.  Jeff was an exceptional engineer who would later become the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi, retiring as a Colonel.  I had limited contact with our green-suited Engineers as part of MND-N, but fortunately, Jeff was a highly motivated go-getter who required little guidance or technical assistance.  Our relationship was primarily him keeping me informed about the “Muthanna Bunkers.”  These bunkers were not a single location but many scattered throughout a large part of the country.  One piece of information I was able to provide to him was that there was a CW training facility outside his area and in MND-B at Camp Taji.  His task of containing these weapons was daunting.  I believe he might have been involved later in the incineration of these chemical weapons, or at least in the planning for it.

Iraq was one of the most prolific manufacturers in the developing world. The Iraqi-designated name of the large Samarra CW production facility is al-Muthanna State Establishment. The Muthanna State Establishment was Iraq’s primary facility for CW research, development, and production. This 5 km by 5 km facility operated continuously from 1983 to 1991, producing thousands of tons of precursors, nerve agents, and mustard gas. Chemical agents included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX. Iraqis refer to the Samarra facility as the al-Muthanna facility, the State Enterprise for Pesticide Production, and the Samarra Drying Industries Plant. The Iraqi CW infrastructure consisted of ten CW agent production plants with a combined production capacity of 2,500 to 3,000 metric tons per year. Additionally, there were three munitions filling lines at Samarra, three precursor plants at Habbaniyah, and thirty storage bunkers scattered throughout the country. In about 1975, construction of two CW facilities began near Samarra and Salmon Pak. The Salman Pak facility (located 35 km southeast of Baghdad) was a pilot-plant operation, whereas Samarra was an extensive, integrated chemical weapons production facility. The Samarra facility was Iraq’s primary CW agent production facility and probably the largest Iraqi rear-area storage facility for CW agent munitions. As a result of Operation Desert Storm, most of the production buildings in this facility were damaged or destroyed, yet they still stood. The CIA investigated these facilities after our invasion and determined that our bombings released many dangerous chemicals, but fortunately, they were many miles from any Coalition base. Additionally, the hot and arid environment of Iraq contributed to the degradation of the chemicals.

The Iraq War was a highly complex environment, marked by unexpected problems, a host of Coalition restrictions on use of their troops (none could help us with the CW finds), major issues that went wrong or were going wrong (such as erosion of the Mosul Dam foundation), and attacks on us using large Russian-made mortars (the PM-43 120mm mortar) and small tactical battlefield rockets launched in salvos.  And of course, the discovery of live CWs, often improperly stored and highly unstable.  Many of these bunker sites had been looted, so we were never able to determine the fate of many of the CW rounds.  Some made it into IEDs, and that is how we became aware of them in 2004.  But most simply disappeared, perhaps to be discovered many years from now when they are used to attack Western nations or unexpectedly turn up in the basement of someone’s home.  Wherever they are, these weapons will be found for many decades to come, perhaps for centuries, like the artillery shells from World War I and II.  They lie in wait, hidden to maim and kill at an unknown future date.

NOTE: I still plan to continue this short series of articles on the Iraq War, mainly in late 2006 through mid-2007.  Perhaps this is an exercise in remembering what I did and why, or maybe it’s just my way of coming to grips with my time in Iraq as we prepared for the Surge.

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Please read my books:

1. “55 Rules for a Good Life,” on Amazon (link here).
2. “Our Longest Year in Iraq,” on Amazon (link here).