I assure youthat we could not find any WMDs at the U.N.
Posted on 09/01/2007 9:48:48 AM PDT by knighthawk
Okay, you can come out from under the bed now. The United Nations says the nerve gas stored - unmarked and unidentified - in one of its offices for about 10 years posed "no immediate risk or danger." Neither were "toxic vapors" found in the air. Is this not completely reassuring?
No one seems to know why the stuff - believed to be phosgene, which killed a lot of folks back in World War I and, due to Saddam Hussein, more recently in Kurdish villages - was at UN headquarters instead of locked away in a lab. Apparently it had been brought back from Iraq by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, whose name is significantly bigger than its brain.
In the same offices were glass tubes containing "nuclear magnetic resonance materials." No threat there, for sure.
That the organization managed after days and days to ID the chemicals - only a file number was on the containers, and there are billions of UN file numbers - and to notify the U.S. government of possible hazards in the city's midst is likewise comforting. You agree, we're sure.
Ping
Have we been told EXACTLY WHERE in the UN building it was located??
Phosgene is not nerve gas, is it?
BTW, I guess this is why Bill Clinton was so admant that Saddam’s WMD program needed to be taken out (though Clintoon hismelf was much too ball-less to take on any real enemy).
-—Phosgene is not nerve gas, is it?-—
It’s a choking agent that goes back to WWI.
I hate to think what we’d find in the filing cabinets at the IAEA.
No it isn't. Reporters are no more knowledgeable about these weapons than they are about firearms.
L
This isn't nerve gas either. NMR tubes contain water.
At the end of WW I A Hitler spent some considerable time in hospital recovering from a gassing in the trenches where he was a message runner. It might have been phosgene. He nearly didn’t make it. Tragic.
Let me get this straight: the UN was in charge of finding Saddam’s WMDs? Maybe HE put them in the UN Building!
Phosgene gas is what you get when you mix Ammonia and Chlorine.
Common household chemicals. Don’t mix them together to clean the toilet. It doesn’t help clean and if you stay near, you die.
P.S. (why do you think they don’t want everyone pissin in the pool? It’s not just for hygiene’s sake)
It wasn’t in the main headquarters building. They rent office space in another building (I believe it is on 48th Street). Their offices are on the 3rd and 6th floors.
It that what we called “blister agents” about 30 years ago?
Mustard gas is a blistering agent.
Yep! Army?
No. Blister agents are the mustard gases. Phosgene is a 'choking' agent. Excess exposure to phosgene and related compounds cause the lungs to fill with fluid and lead to what is known as 'dry land drowning'.
Not a pleasant way to go.
L
Wonder if the geniuses that thought having the UN in NYC ever considered that diplomatic immunity was just like a Trojan horse? Our enemies can slowly bring their soldiers and weapons into this country and there’s not much we can do about it. In the meantime I can’t take a bottle of water or shampoo into an airport. Go figure.
Ammonia and chlorine can't produce phosgene gas - phosgene contains an oxygen atom, and neither ammonia nor chlorine contain oxygen.
If you meant "household ammonia" and "chlorine bleach", that might possibly produce phosgene, since that combination contains oxygen atoms, but I suspect that what you would primarily get is chlorine gas - still nothing to sneeze at.
Phosgene is primarily manufactured by passing purified carbon monoxide and chlorine gas through a bed of highly porous carbon. It can also by produced by heating carbon tetrachloride in the atmosphere.
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