Posted on 05/17/2004 8:12:35 AM PDT by XHogPilot
A roadside bomb containing sarin exploded near a US military convoy today exposing two soldiers to the deadly nerve agent.
The bomb, which was placed in a 155mm artillery round, slightly injured the soldiers from the explosive ordanance team trying to defuse it.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a US military spokesman, pointed out that Iraq claimed to have destroyed all its stocks of sarin gas before the 1991 Gulf War. At one stage it had stockpiled 870 tonnes of sarin agent.
"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," he said.
"The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a US force convoy.
"A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent," he said.
The Iraqi Survey Group, which was sent to the country to look for weapons of mass destruction confirmed that the gas released was sarin.
Developed in the mid-1930s by Nazi scientists, a single drop of sarin can cause quick, agonising choking death.
In 1995, Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult unleashed sarin gas in Tokyo’s subways, killing 12 people and sickening thousands.
In February of this year, Japanese courts convicted Shoko Asahara, the cult’s former leader, and sentence him to be executed.
Nerve gases work by inhibiting key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their transmission. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered quickly.
Antidotes to nerve gases similar to sarin are so effective that top poison gas researchers predict they eventually will cease to be a war threat.
Here we go.
Http://www.timesonline.co.uk
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WMD found, being used by Al Qaeda and former regime elements co-operating with eachother.
How will NPR play this one?
Do I have the coming reaction about right? Me tink so.....
That's about what CNN said.
WMD bump
Well so much for the "No evidence of WMD" cry from the RATS.
I'm surprised that this hasn't happened sooner. I jsut hope that people have started wearing their pro masks on their gear again. We'd gotten lazy about it while I was there and it seems that the bad guys have taken notice.
Seems identical to AP report just spied on NY Times website.
I wonder how long it will take one of the lefty politicans to intimate that Bush planted this bomb?
The Iraq Army probably repainted all their chemical artillery rounds to conceal their identities from inspectors.
If they are going to try and gas us...then there goes any impetus for Moores "Farenheit 911" to do well anywhere.
Bush didn't lie...I hope Rove et al gets that out there real quick!
Where you there last summer?
If so, did you have to work in the horrendous heat with your suit on?
FOX NEWS is reporting that another shell with Mustard as has been discovered
Mustard Gas
?....U.S.A. ports...?
/scarism
Thanks for the ping!
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