Iraq:

United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq recently discovered a new variety of rocket seemingly configured to strew bomblets filled with chemical or biological agents over large areas, United States officials say.

The U.S.:

U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf may be armed with radioactive bombs and missiles hundreds of times more potent than similar weapons used during the Gulf War and the U.N. military campaign in Bosnia.

Iraq:

The reconfigured rocket warheads appear to be cobbled together from Iraq's stockpiles of imported or home-built weapons, some [of] which Iraq had used with both conventional and chemical warheads.

The U.S.:

[British researcher Dai] Williams and others also claim that patents covering conversion or modification of earlier generation bombs for use as bunker-busters indicate that depleted uranium is being used in these weapons.

Iraq:

At first, [an American official] said, Iraq told the inspectors that it was designed as a conventional cluster bomb, which would scatter explosive submunitions over its target, and not as a chemical weapon. A few days later, he said, the Iraqis conceded that some might have been configured as chemical weapons.

The U.S.:

The Pentagon has not confirmed the use of uranium or depleted uranium in the bunker-busters, and it has refused to identify the composition of the dense-metal warheads that enable the missiles to penetrate structures deeply buried under earth, steel and reinforced concrete.

Iraq:

The distinctive appearance of the rockets' cluster munitions, heavy metal balls with holes in them, suggested their use as a way to disperse chemical or biological weapons, said the official. "If you take the kinds of fuses we know they have, and you screw them in there, when these things come out from the main frame and they explode inward, chemical agents come out," [the American official] said.

"These can be used for biological weapons, too," he said.

The U.S.:

...critics such as British researcher Dai Williams contend that only uranium -- in one form or another -- possesses the density and other characteristics necessary to achieve the penetration levels attributed to such weapons as the 2,000-pound AGM 130C air-to-ground cruise missile, and the guided bomb unit, or GBU, series of laser-guided hard-target penetrators intended to pierce bunkers and other reinforced structures.

Iraq:

"... they found Iraq could manufacture these indigenously, so who knows how many they have?"

The U.S.:

Depleted uranium ... is dirt cheap. Tons of it, over 500 million pounds the last time anyone counted, is lying around in various states of nuclear "decay" at government repositories throughout the country.

Iraq:

"When you look at page after page of what the Iraqis have done over the years to hide, to deceive, to cheat, to keep information away from the inspectors, to change facts to fit the latest issue, and once they put that set of facts before you, when you find you those facts are false, they come up with a new set of facts — it's a constant pattern," [Secretary of State Colin Powell] said on "Fox News Sunday."

The U.S.:

The Pentagon has not confirmed the use of uranium or depleted uranium in the bunker-busters, and it has refused to identify the composition of the dense-metal warheads that enable the missiles to penetrate structures deeply buried under earth, steel and reinforced concrete.

...the patent application for a narrow-profile version of the BLU-109B bomb (which is delivered by a GBU-24) specifically refers to penetrating bodies made of tungsten or depleted uranium.

"If they're really using tungsten, why keep it classified?" Williams said.

(Iraq rocket story: New York Times, 3/10/03. U.S. bomb story: Wired, 3/10/03. Thanks to BuzzFlash for the Wired link.)