Sarin and mustard gas found in Iraq

I wouldn't be surprised if they found it months ago... We are just closer to the election, so we find out about it now...

Thanks for sharing.

BAM!!!

Even the Fox News article you link to it says:
"If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war."

We are just closer to the election, so we find out about it now...

Muggaz - Thats beneath you. Leave that sort of tripe to WA and that ilk. You are capable of a much better retort.

Frankly I don't think the conservative branches of media who have been touting this all day (Hannity you oughta know better) are not doing anyone on that sid of he fence a favor. 2 shells is significant from an intel standpoint but it will take a bi more to sway the electorate. Don't bother beating the drum too loudly until you really have something. Crying wolf and all that.

heres a thought, if these two shells are considered by the left circumstantial, how much more must be found or exploded on our troops before its considered evidence? frankly using hyper-left calculations, 20 tons would be enough before they say...gee maybe the coalition was right....> what happens god forbid if a dirty bomb is exploded near our troops, will that be considered circumstantial as well?

Couch - while I agree with your assessment, at this point the people who are vaguely dissatisfied about the lack of WMD's need to be shown the actual stockpile and not the calculations that show that they must exist. Proof is in the pudding, not the pudding recipe and not in the residue of pudding in the pot (to stretch the analogy beyond the breaking point)

Yeah - Sorry Greywar... Brad just brings out the worst in me...

It's probably nothing anyway, the last time the boys cried wolf, it was proven to be nothing as well... another one of those time will tell pieces.

BAM!!!

It's funny, I see lots of voices from the right spinning this story as justification for the war, but nothing from the good president Bush, and no signs from God, as of yet. This just demonstrates that the right has some freudian sexual fantasy about submitting itself before the large human phallus that is Bush. They don't want to be convinced of the failures of Bush's intelligence, because they already know that Bush is their tough daddy who will protect them from the liberals.

But back to the subject at hand:

From what I've heard, it was possible that this weapon was an unmarked prototype that did not emerge from a large stockpile. The specific device involved is not one that Saddam Hussein is believed to have produced in massive numbers. I want to find out exactly where this weapon originated, and what else was with it. As an isolated occurence, it is largely meaningless.

Saint Ying, I think Bush et al are a bit more cautious these days. The administration got badly burned by the two 'mobile WMD factories' which turned out to just produce hydrogen for weather balloons. I think they are a bit more wary these days. One shell, as you say, is meaningless particularly after 13 months of searching. We shall see what else turns up.

Draginol, remember how you jumped on the Drudge Report on Kerry's intern? It remained on the "featured article" list quite awhile. I do hope you will remove this one more quickly.

Was Hussein allowed to produce prototypes of banned weapons? If not, then I must say that it doesn't sound that meaningless.

As for the validity of the claim, is it just me, or is assuming the whole thing's fake as bad as assuming the whole thing's real?

One shell is not meaningless.

Lets be honest, Saddam was suppossed to have destroyed all such warheads in 1991 as part of UN sanctions. Furthermore it was a binary agent shell and not just mustard gas. This is a far more dangerous type, though only effective when fired from artillery when the components will mix.

How many more shells are there? Is this part of a stockpile? Is this just some shell that an individual kept from the destruction process? The fact taht it was left as a roadside bomb where the chemicals would never combine and so of no value as a chemicla warhead is interesting. It suggests that either the people planting the bomb had no idea what it was, or they knew it was a chemical warhead but had no idea how to use it. Either case suggests that this was an isolated shell and not part of some stockpile. If isolated then it is almost meaningless as it shows no stockpile and no indication that Saddam knew of it's existance..

Time will tell though.

Paul.

I have found the double standard imposed on Bush throughout his Presidency humorous. On the one hand he is a bumbling idiot that can't get anything right, and on the other he is some insidious monster with the ability to make immense conspiracies happen with a mere thought.

If Bush were the sort of person who would hold a single shell until closer to election time, he would have had Halliburton ship in a few hundred tons of the stuff and then conveinently "find" them. Please. The Bush administration has caught hell when it would be insanely easy to manipulate data or outright fake something.

The UN weapons inspectors have said time and again that tons of this stuff was unaccounted for, and the nation is comepletely full of armament that we can't seem to track down. Is the idea we missed a few hundred, or even a few thousand, shells so implausible?

I have just heard that the shell in question was left over from the Iran/Iraq war i.e. back from the 1980's so it still is no evidence of a WMD program as claimed before the war.

BakerStreet,
ignoring the extreme hyperbole of your reply....I do not think George Bush is very bright but I there are people behind him (Cheney et al) who are bright and I believe they are the ones making the decisions....No doubt this will be put down to conspiracy theory but what else can I think of a man who, by his own admission, only reads the sports section of the newspaper.

Much as I do not like this administration, I do not believe that they would fabricate evidence. They have had plenty of opportunity before now to do this. As I said above I believe that, after the mobile chemical labs which were found to be nothing but hydrogen generators for weather balloons. I also do not believe that they would hold serious evidence back until just before the election....lets face it they need the help now.

Not manufacturing evidence is different from covering up evidence as appears to have happened in the case of Abu Ghraib. Though this administration is not in isolation there.

That should read....
"As I said above I believe that, after the mobile chemical labs which were found to be nothing but hydrogen generators for weather balloons that they are now wary about rushing out new finds until they have been further investigated."

what else can I think of a man who, by his own admission, only reads the sports section of the newspaper.

I'm from the UK, and after the whole shocking realisation that the Daily Mirror here printed a completely false claim about abuse of prisoners in Iraq and put thousands of lives at risk to sell newspapers, I'm hapy to admit that I too only read certain parts of my own newspaper. Do you really think someone like the President of the USA would need to read a newspaper to know what was going on? Would you rather believe a tabloid newspaper, or your own Government reports?

Newspapers are sensationalist garbage most of the time, and the best part about mine is the Dilbert strip

If it was in Iraq, and it contains Sarin, then it was an "illegal" bomb.  It doesn't matter how long it has been there as they were supposed to remove all weapons of that nature.

I think it should also be noted that Brad pointed out that they are "starting" to find this stuff.  Maybe they are just now getting deep enough to find the chemicals.

Reply #9 By: stevendedalus - 5/17/2004 11:43:42 PM Draginol, remember how you jumped on the Drudge Report on Kerry's intern? It remained on the "featured article" list quite awhile. I do hope you will remove this one more quickly.

Why should he remove it?  Can you prove that the bomb did not contain Sarin, or that there is not mustard gas in Iraq?  Can you prove that this is only one and that they will start to find more?

 

It seems logical to me that if we've been in the country for over a year, put out rewards for information, and talked to every competent scientist in the nation and most important army officers, and we haven't come up with a significant stockpile, then it's highly unlikely that a significant stockpile exists. Maybe there are occasional old small shells buried here and there, left over from the first Gulf War and since forgotten by everyone, but it seems very implausible to me to think that there's anything major.

Yes, it is far more likely to be located in Syria IMHO.

I have found the double standard imposed on Bush throughout his Presidency humorous. On the one hand he is a bumbling idiot that can't get anything right, and on the other he is some insidious monster with the ability to make immense conspiracies happen with a mere thought.

Cool comeback BakerStreet!! Gotta remember that.

I don't remove featured articles.

Secondly, this article was from the front page of Fox News as well as many other news sources.  Just because something doesn't match your left leaning sympathies doens't make it invalid. I suspect you would have no problem if I featured one of Wakhkonta's kooky conspiracy articles. I read one recently where he was claiming that Bush stated that US troops would begin pulling out of Iraq on June 30. I suspect if I had featured that you wouldn't be complaining.

Third, as I indicated at the beginning of this article - Sarin gas and mustard gas were never the primary reason for the US to remove Saddam. There are idealogues on the right who will use this as some sort of justification but they're just being idealogues. There are also idealogues on the left who were clinging to the lack of finding stockpiles of this junk to argue that the whole point of invading Saddam was based on a false premise. Neither are correct.

If anyone from either side thinks that the reason the US spent billions in blood and treasure to remove Saddam was becaue of canisters of mustard gas and Sarin (or worse, oil) all I can say is I have pity for their lack of understanding of the issues.

As for the oil issue, apparently we have done a very poor job of raping Iraq for oil. It certainly has not shown up at the pumps!

Reply #21 By: greywar - 5/18/2004 12:12:17 PM As for the oil issue, apparently we have done a very poor job of raping Iraq for oil. It certainly has not shown up at the pumps!

Amen to that...... 

Yeah. I heard it'll be 3 bucks per gallon soon. Certainly not a war for oil.

Man I think it's time top move to alternative fuel.

Anyway, it may depend on how it was found by Iraqi. They may have lost track of some of those, or it could be a hidden cache.

I seriously doubt the validity of such claims at this point in time. If there were things to find, they would have found them already. I think your first response was the most accurate, a political election. Pay particular attention this fall as I am certain the threat level will be elevated once again in the sept-oct months. Loss in polls = crisis event.

JakeD - lol, if they wanted to plant evidence they could do so easily and by the bushel. They would have *buried* Kerry with it already. Next tell me about how they are holding Bin Laden in a secret safehouse until October! You guys crack me up:)