Posted on 06/23/2006 1:37:58 PM PDT by musicman
Our story starts 90 years ago. The Great War claimed over 15 million lives and focused on a narrow strip of land in Belgium and France.
This intense trench warfare led to constant shelling by both sides, but not every bomb fired exploded. Hundreds of thousands failed to detonate.
Today the remains of the Belgian front line can still be seen - some trenches are still visible, and visitors can walk past the barbed wire and inspect the rusting military hardware left behind.
And it is those shells that are now resurfacing and presenting a new threat.
* Every year more than 30 people are killed on the battlefields of Europe after disturbing or picking up unexploded bombs and shells.
* It's estimated that three Titanics worth of unexploded bombs still litter the fields of France and Belgium, left over from World War 1.
* Some of these shells contain deadly Mustard Gas and Phosgene. Chemical shells left over from World War 1 that are still as deadly as the day they were fired.
* The Belgian Bomb Disposal Team brings back two lorry loads of unexploded bombs every day for safe destruction.
* Inside the high security chemical warfare lab, bomb teams work four hour shifts inside special chemical suits as they take the gas shells apart and destroy the chemicals.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Thus dies the Old Media FRAUDcaster's story line that these "old WMD" shells should be considered harmless.
Bin Laden's an "old" man. He's depleted and harmless.
Let's try that excuse the next time the left says "why haven't we found Bin Laden yet?"
this doesn't apply to Saddam's mustard gas. What we found is not old or young enough to be lethal. It's potent enough to be nothing at all.
somebody notify MSM!
How many shells were buried there when the war ended?
So you're saying that non-functioning shells left over from previous wars constitute an ongoing WMD program?
The MSM and Dems of today would have been against WWI and WWII..."unwinnable", "Germany didn't attack us..."
Yeah, I think that's what they're saying.
Which is why the Bush administration isn't pushing this line.
If this is the best Santorum can do, he's doomed. JMHO.
Bump for WMD debate.
What is getting lost in the translation is the difference between a weapon being in a degraded condidtion, and the lethality of the contents.
The shells and rockets that have been found, are in fact degraded in that you could not successfully fire one of those shells in an artillery piece, nor could the rocket be fired, etc. The contents, wheter it be sarin or mustard gas are still extremely dangerous and could be adapted into a chemical IED.
Think about that for a moment.
The US Army is in the process of destroying it's stockpile of chemical weapons out here at the Umatilla Depot in Oregon. It took years to build the special incinerator needed to destroy the still-active and highly dangerous agents.
And most of those arms date from Post WW-II, and the early Cold War years.
All of the "yeah, buts" that we are hearing is mainly from those who simply cannot bring themselves to admit that the Bush Administration really didn't lie about WMDs; namely the Media, DemocRats, entrenched libs at State, CIA, and the Pentagon.
Every couple of years, some French or Belgian farmer plowing his fields gets an ugly surprise when his plow trips some unexploded ordinance from WW1. This is a known fact that was promoted for years by the leftist MSM as an example of why minefields and former warzones were dangerous and we should spend billions to clean them up.
Hadn't heard that much lately, have you?
Does temperature make a difference? If these UXO (unexploded ordnance) have been buried in western European soils, they've probably been at a constant temperature of perhaps 60 degrees F. Chem warfare materiel stored in Iraq, even in an underground bunker, is undoubtedly at a higher temperature.
But a lot of people on our side of the aisle are banging this drum as loudly as possible. It comes off as desperate, people aren't stupid and they know that this wasn't the sort of thing that the president was talking about when he referred to Iraq's WMD stockpile.
We're doing just fine with the "Dems want to cut and run/Kicking terrorist ass" line on Iraq, trying to throw these old shells into the mix is just weak and dishonest.
The British dumped thousands of tons into the sea, it's
there now waiting.
The idea that somehow old gas shells aren't dangerous is
insane.
I seem to remember a munitions ship that sank near the mouth of the Thames, it's now too dangerous to try and remove and it's too much to try and blow in place.
I'm saying anyone that says "There were no WMDs" are wrong. The status of any ongoing program to build new ones is a separate issue. But the fact he had WMDs is a fact. It's also a fact that he thumbed his nose at inspections. It's also a fact he tried to assassinate a US President, Bush's father. Put all this together and it's clear Saddam had to go. Any rational government would have done what we did.
So why are you asking about "non functioning shells"? Certainly you can get your fill of such over at DU or Bartcop.
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