Jacques Chiraq, Hans Blix, Martin and Charlie Sheen, George Clooney, Barbra Streissand, Mike Farrell and the whole bunch of cowardly idiots who have disputed any connection whatsoever between Hussein's Iraq and the terrorists who have attacked our nation and England have been saying that they would change their tunes should we discover any connection whatsoever to those groups and Hussein. Here it is.

Myers says U.S. controls Iraqi compound, source of London ricin

By MATT KELLEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, March 30 — American forces are searching a terrorist compound in northeastern Iraq that was probably the site where militants made a biological toxin, traces of which were later found by police in London, the Pentagon's top general said Sunday.

U.S. and British forces now control the compound, which belongs to the group Ansar al-Islam, said Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describing it as a site ''where Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaida had been working on poisons.''

''We think that's probably (from) where the ricin that was found in London came,'' he told CNN's ''Late Edition.'' ''At least the operatives and maybe some of the formulas came from this site.''

British police raided a London apartment in January and found traces of ricin, a powerful poison made from the beans of the castor plant. U.S. officials have said since shortly after that raid that they believed the poison and those arrested were linked to Ansar, which operated in a small enclave inside territory controlled by autonomous Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.

U.S. officials said before the war that they had evidence that Ansar had tested chemical and biological weapons on livestock and possibly on people at the site.

U.S. and British aircraft and missiles pounded the Ansar compound for days, and U.S. AC-130 gunships also attacked before coalition and Kurdish ground forces went in, Myers said. The site has many underground tunnels to search ''and it may take us a week to exploit that,'' he said.

Myers said officials were examining laptop computers and documents found there.

Ricin is relatively easy to make from castor beans and highly deadly in small quantities. There is no treatment or antidote for the poison, which can take days to kill.

© 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Chiraq and de Villepin have said they would immediately join our coalition of now 49 nations if such proof were discovered. Now that it has we desperately need all the troops France can muster to report immediately to the Iraqi Republican Guard. They should be able to teach them how to surrender effectively within a matter of a few hours. They do have so much experience at that.