Bomb Expert: Chemical Weapons Are Not WMDs

I remember the last time I handled a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). It was in 2003, not long after the invasion of Iraq. I was serving as a bomb-disposal officer in the British armed forces. I was dressed in a full protective suit and gas mask, and a boffin from Porton Down stood next to me, likewise clad.

The hot sun glared down on us, and the wind blew the sandy local soil around. There it lay at our feet; a battlefield chemical weapon as ever was, in this case an artillery shell filled with deadly phosgene gas. Neither of us had any doubt. The very thing that the British and US invasion forces, the Iraq Survey Group, Hans Blix and everyone else had been searching for, and here it was.

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I don't know about the chap from Porton Down, but it gave me a severe feeling of unreality. Because the sun, while hot, was not all that hot. The sandy soil was that of Britain, not Iraq. And this was the twentieth chemical weapon discovered at that one location in 2003 alone. Several others lay next to it, too. It was the third time I'd been there; that shell must have been at least my fortieth WMD. My unit had sent teams there scores of times, accounting for hundreds of weapons.

Lest anyone think the UK was hit by an enemy chemical bombardment a few years back without it making the press, I should point out that these WMDs were British. The place where I was standing was a test range, long ago. Boffins working on UK chemical weapons programmes fired thousands of gas shells into the area, showing the gay disregard for safety cases, compensation culture, and the Geneva Protocols so characteristic of the era.