recycling chemical horror stories
The coalition has destroyed a massive terrorist facility! Calloo! Callay!

Reuters gives details:

AS SAYLIYA CAMP: The United States said today that US-led forces had destroyed "a massive terrorist facility" in northern Iraq which could have been used by al Qaeda to make chemical weapons.

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, told CNN the site in northeast Iraq could have been a training ground and may have produced the lethal poison ricin that was found in a London flat in January.

"We attacked and now have gone in on the ground into a site in northeast Iraq where Ansar al-Islam and al Qaeda had been working on poisons," Myers said.

"It's from this site where people were trained and where poisons were developed that migrated into Europe. We think that's probably where the ricin found in London probably came."

Um, sadly we've been down this road before. At Secretary of State Powell's last appearance before the UN on 6 February he told a shocked (but not yet awed) world about a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory' making ricin.

Mr Powell cited the presence of the extremist Ansar al-Islam near the Iranian border in Iraq as further evidence of the link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Whitehall sources suggest that though he might have sent an agent to penetrate the group, there was all the difference between that and being in a position to control or direct the Ansar al-Islam group.

"Baghdad's writ genuinely does not run there," said a senior Whitehall source who described the camp as a "little node of Islamic extremism". Earlier this week Mullah Krekar, leader of Ansar al-Islam, said that far from promoting links with the Iraqi regime, he wanted to see the end of it. "I am against Saddam Hussein. I want [Iraq] to change into an Islamic regime", he told the Guardian.

But, wait!

If Colin Powell were to visit the shabby military compound at the foot of a large snow-covered mountain, he might be in for an unpleasant surprise. The US Secretary of State last week confidently described the compound in north-eastern Iraq - run by an Islamic terrorist group Ansar al-Islam - as a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory.'

Yesterday, however, it emerged that the terrorist factory was nothing of the kind - more a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. Behind the barbed wire, and a courtyard strewn with broken rocket parts, are a few empty concrete houses. There is a bakery. There is no sign of chemical weapons anywhere - only the smell of paraffin and vegetable ghee used for cooking.

I guess we should congratulate Ansar al-Islam. Between 9 February and 30 March they managed to progress from crude cyanide to ricin and from a 'dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings' to a 'terrorist chemicals and poisons factory'.

I suppose without more detail there is a remote chance that the Ansar pocket contained two massive terrorist facilities, but I doubt it. Oh well, anyone know how many times Nasirirya has fallen to the coalition today?