ISIS Now Alleged to Have Chemical Weapons — But Who Did They Get Them From?

By Janet Phelan

Following the ISIS attack in Paris, France, the US and its allies are making further and more dramatic claims concerning ISIS’s capability to strike with deadly force. According to France, the US and others, ISIS is developing chemical weapons.

Unnamed US official sources were quoted extensively in a recent AP article, stating that ISIS was known to be developing chemical weapons.

And on November 19, the Prime Minister of France issued this warning. “We must not rule anything out,” said Prime Minister Manuel Valls. “I say it with all the precautions needed. But we know and bear in mind that there is also a risk of chemical or bacteriological weapons.”

These claims must be looked at very carefully. The US has previously made a number of claims that countries on its target list have BW or CW capabilities. Such claims, now discredited as false, were launched by President George W. Bush in order to gain support for the invasion of Iraq. Similar claims were made in August of 2013 against Syria’s President Assad, claims which were used by President Obama as justification to authorize a military strike against Syria. President Putin’s diplomatic solution to this crisis—bringing Syria in to join the international treaty organization, the Chemical Weapons Convention—derailed this stated intent by Obama to make war on Syria and effectively stalled the US’s intended invasion of Syria.

As it turned out, many questions have been posed about the alleged gas attack in Damascus in August of 2013. A report by a former UN weapons inspector, Richard Lloyd, and an MIT professor, Ted Postol, raises questions about the conclusions that the gas attack was launched by Syrian forces. According to their report, the munitions had a range of about two kilometers and therefore “could not possibly have been fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart,” or from the Eastern edge, of the Syrian government controlled area shown in the intelligence map published by the White House on August 30. 2013.”

Following the release of hacked emails from members of the US military, further questions arose as to whether the gas attack was in fact staged by US forces.

Hakim al-Zamili, the head of Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee, was quoted in the AP article as stating that ISIS’ chemical labs were recently moved from Iraq to “secured locations” inside Syria. According to the Guardian, ISIS is thought to have deployed mustard gas in Aleppo and elsewhere.

Firstly, the US’s allegations that the Islamic State is preparing to use chemical weapons must be looked at in light of the US’s incredibly limp-handed offensive against ISIS. Not only have the US’s so- called bombing attacks on the Islamic State been shockingly ineffective, but now that Russia has begun her own bombing of ISIS, the US has gotten hopping mad.

As revealed here, the US has been behind ISIS for some time now. So if ISIS is now deploying chemical weapons, one must ask if the US is also behind this development.

The US’s repeated claims that other countries are using BW and CW must be viewed in the perspective of its own activities. When the US changed its domestic legislation to give itself immunity from violating its own biological weapons laws, it was done so apparently to grant itself leeway to deploy a country-wide bio/chem attack, via this delivery system.

The US has now been caught red-handed in another covert program, facilitated by a secret handshake with selected pharmaceutical companies, to supply pre-determined targets with “imposter pharmaceuticals.” These imposter pharmaceuticals, which come in the same packaging as ordinary pills, will cause heart attacks/strokes in those who unwittingly consume them.

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Recently, this reporter contacted the Chemical Weapons Convention at The Hague. The communication, sent to the media contact at the CWC, is herein duplicated in full:

To: [email protected]

Greetings,

I am contacting you with information that will best go to the leadership at the Chemical Weapons Convention.

I have in my possess a covert chemical weapon, which has been placed into what appears to be a normal pharmaceutical, an antibiotic manufactured by a subsidiary of a US pharmaceutical company. Upon ingestion, an individual would likely experience a heart attack or stroke. Not the usual effect of an antibiotic…

As a reporter, I have covered extensively issues related to violations by the United States of the Biological Weapons Convention. I also participated in the BWC Review Conference which took place in Geneva in 2011. What I have in my possession points to a violation by the US of the CWC. It is my understanding that such imposter pharmaceuticals have been used to terminate the lives of a number of vulnerable individuals in nursing homes and that these pills are also occasionally deployed in a covert program to eliminate political targets.

I currently write for New Eastern Outlook and am based in Latin America. I am desirous of getting to you the sealed container of these pills, as proof of my allegations.

I will look forward to your prompt reply.

Janet Phelan

Of late, the UN’s response to allegations that the US is involved in treaty violations has been tepid, to say the least. Given all the finger-pointing on BW and CW issues, one can hope that the folks at the Chemical Weapons Convention will respond to this communication with appropriate alacrity. After all, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon has called for the end of all chemical warfare, stating: “As I have said many times, the use of chemical weapons by any side under any circumstances would constitute an outrageous crime with dire consequences, and a crime against humanity.” US Secretary of State John Kerry called the use of chemical weapons “a moral obscenity.”

Let’s see if the same standard applies at home as well as abroad.

Image Credit

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.