SO MUCH FOR “BUSH LIED”: C.I.A. Is Said to Have Bought and Destroyed Iraqi Chemical Weapons.

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Every now and then I come across some article suggesting that there were indeed weapons of the sort the Bush administration said were in Iraq. (Whether any of that plays into a justification for war is a question I won’t pursue here.) This article is quite clear, referring to “chemical weapons . . . not accounted for by United Nations inspections.” An obvious question is why the Bush administration neglect to divulge information about such weapons after the invasion. I haven’t seen the press pursue this question, though.