[fintstone]

Don't look now, but looks like another county's WMD are being destroyed on GW's watch (just like Libya). You cannot argue with success. It it also makes it clear how easy it is to hide WMD stockpiles. These were hidden so well that they could not find them themselves...for decades.

Washington Post
January 10, 2005
Pg. 1
Albania's Chemical Cache Raises Fears About Others
Long-Forgotten Arms Had Little or No Security
By Joby Warrick, Washington Post Staff Writer

TIRANA, Albania -- Near the end of his 40 years in power, Enver Hoxha
prepared his tiny country for an invasion he warned was sure to come. The
Marxist dictator built 750,000 concrete bunkers in the 1970s and 1980s and
imported large quantities of weapons to repel an expected attack by
Americans, Soviets, Yugoslavs or perhaps all three at once.
But his most prized weapons acquisition was a state secret known only to the
Albanian leader and his closest advisers -- a secret that only now is coming
fully to light.
In the mid-1970s, U.S. and Albanian officials now believe, Hoxha arranged
the purchase of several hundred canisters of lethal military chemicals to be
used in weapons against invading armies. The chemicals included yperite, or
sulfur mustard, one of the chemicals used by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to
slaughter thousands of Kurdish civilians in the 1980s, as well as lewisite
and adamsite, which are based on arsenic.
This deadly stockpile was hidden in one of Hoxha's bunkers, then forgotten
after Hoxha died in 1985. The communist regime fell in 1991. The current
Albanian government's surprise discovery of the canisters, acknowledged to
U.S. and U.N. officials several months ago, has also led to the disclosure
of the country that apparently supplied the chemicals: China.
Albanian officials recently allowed a reporter from The Washington Post to
view the stockpile, a move that comes as there are ongoing efforts by the
fledgling democracy to renounce the country's past and bolster its
international standing. While the stockpile is small compared with the vast
chemical weapons holdings of Russia and the United States, it is worrisome
to U.S. officials because of what it represents: one of scores of
undocumented or poorly secured weapons caches worldwide that could be
exploited by terrorists with deadly effect.
"The threats turn up in the darndest places," said Joseph Cirincione, a
weapons expert and director of the Non-proliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. "It illustrates the problem we face with
Cold War arsenals, which are still deadly and still large. Just as you have
to worry about what a crazy man is thinking in a cave in Afghanistan, you
also have to worry about what happens to these weapons in places like
Albania and North Korea. It's not that the Albanians would use them, but a
terrorist group could learn of them and then try to pick the low-hanging
fruit."
Although Albania moved quickly to secure the stockpile after its discovery,
the chemicals had little or no protection for more than a decade, at a time
when the country was roiled by social and economic upheaval internally and
civil war across the border in Kosovo, U.S. officials in Washington said.
The 16 tons of chemicals theoretically contain enough poison for millions of
lethal doses. In practical terms, casualties from an attack using mustard or
lewisite would greatly depend on how and where the chemicals were dispersed.
Weapons experts say a well-designed release of chemicals in a crowded,
indoor setting could potentially kill hundreds or perhaps thousands of
people.
The discovery also is significant because it appears to confirm something
that U.S. intelligence analysts have long suspected: China's past role as a
purveyor of chemical weapons technology. While China is believed to have
halted such exports long ago, the discovery of Chinese-made yperite in
Albania has fueled concerns about the possible existence of similar
forgotten or abandoned stockpiles in other countries.
U.S. officials note that China also provided military aid to Romania, to
what was then Yugoslavia and to several Middle Eastern countries in the
1970s and 1980s. China has never acknowledged transferring military
chemicals abroad, and no stockpiles traced to China are known to have turned
up until now. If they existed in the past, U.S. intelligence analysts say,
the chemicals might have been destroyed, hidden away or -- as in the case of
Albania -- forgotten.
It is theoretically possible, intelligence analysts say, that more
undiscovered chemicals could yet be found in Albania. However, Albanian
defense officials, who now are preparing to destroy the yperite with help
from U.S. and U.N. agencies, say they are confident that all of Hoxha's
canisters are safely locked away.
"We have searched everywhere, and I can declare to you that Albania has no
more such weapons," said Albanian Lt. Col. Muharrim Alba, a senior arms
control specialist with the Albanian Defense Ministry.
But Alba also acknowledged that Albania had been unable to find a shred of
documentation describing the original purchase by Hoxha three decades ago.
The investigation has turned up no letters, receipts or inventories, or even
a single officer of the former government who is willing or able to recall
how the chemicals were obtained.
"It was the height of the Cold War," said Alba, shrugging. "Communist
countries helped each other. And they didn't always leave documents to show
what they did."
'Ready to Be Used'
The small army outpost that serves as a holding cell for Albania's chemical
stockpile is less than 25 miles from Tirana, the dusty capital of this
mountainous country of 3.4 million people. But reaching it requires a
treacherous journey over steep mountain roads better suited for goats than
the four-wheel drive vehicles and ancient microbuses that regularly ply
them.
Asphalt quickly gives way to narrow dirt trails hewn into the sides of the
scrub-covered hills. Finally, a rutted path branches sharply to the right to
reveal a cluster of bunkers, some of them cut into the mountain itself. The
largest bunker, a flat-roofed brick structure no bigger than a volleyball
court, is surrounded by a double curtain of wire fences, the inner one newly
installed with U.S. aid and festooned with various sensors and cameras. It
is here that Hoxha's chemicals are stored.
On a recent afternoon, a small cluster of young army guards, wearing green
fatigues and toting Kalashnikov rifles, kept a wary eye on visitors to the
compound while some of their comrades scoured the brush for firewood to ward
off the December chill. Standing just outside the largest bunker, Albanian

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