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Via Greg Hengler. Like former NYT chief Bill Keller, I can’t see any pitfalls ahead from the White House being at odds with the UN on WMD while it plans war against a Middle Eastern regime. Further to Ed’s post this morning, here’s a crafty theory I saw floated somewhere on Twitter last night to possibly explain why the rebels, rather than Assad, are suddenly tossing chemical weapons at their enemies: What if an Assad ally, like Iran or Russia, gave it to them? The longer the war drags on, the greater the risk of western intervention; if, like Moscow...

One of the lead United Nations investigators probing human rights abuses in Syria said Sunday that testimony from victims and field medical staff indicates that Syrian opposition forces -- and not the regime of Bashar al Assad -- may have deployed sarin gas.

(Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

Testimony from victims of the Syrian conflict suggests rebels have used the nerve agent sarin, according to a leading United Nations investigator. Carla del Ponte told Swiss TV there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof". However, she said her panel had not yet seen evidence of government forces using chemical weapons. Syria has recently come under growing Western pressure over the alleged use of such weapons. Ms del Ponte, who serves on the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said in an interview with Swiss-Italian TV: "Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims,...

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday the U.S. intelligence community believes the Syrian regime used the chemical weapon sarin, a revelation that immediately raised the question of whether a "red line" had been crossed in the country's civil war. Hagel confirmed the intelligence assessment, which was detailed in a letter to select members of Congress, while speaking to reporters on a visit to Abu Dhabi. The administration swiftly released those letters, which said U.S. intelligence determined with varying degrees of confidence that "the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."...

As the Syrian civil way went into its third year this week, signs abounded of increasing readiness for the use of chemical weapons on both sides of the conflict. Since February, the US, Israel, Ankara and Amman have been aware of Bashar Assad’s resolve to override their threats and resort to deadly poison gas if the rebels closed in on the heart of Damascus. On April 3, an unnamed Syrian army officer made the warning clear. By continuing to advancie on Damascus, he said, “the rebels and their leaders” were assured of “certain death.” At about the same time, debkafile...

As Israel considers allowing Egypt to control the critical Philadelphi corridor along Israel’s border, startling revelations about Egyptian chemical weapons proliferation are coming to light. Egypt secretly helped former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his chemical weapons program, according to a CIA report. The report, authored by the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, says that Egypt sent specialists to Iraq in the 1980s to help him manufacture poison gas. Iraq later used the gas against Iranian citizens as well as Iraqi Kurds. The report says that the Iraqi government paid Egypt $12 million, "in return for assistance with production and storage...

Opposition activists have posted several videos they say show Syria is currently using chemical weapons. For the past week, Western governments have expressed concern that the regime is covertly mixing chemicals used for nerve agents. U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.S. President Barack Obama have both indicated that Syria would be crossing a line if it used chemical weapons and foreign intervention in the civil war may follow. Hague said at a security conference in Bahrain that the use of chemical weapons would mark a “major change” in the 20-month conflict that has killed tens of thousands, according to...

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq. King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida. "One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he...

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday. The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said. As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded...

Brief thoughts/quotes from the last 11 years. "Looking away, not caring, or hoping for the best are not viable options in fighting terrorism (in general) and the global jihad (specifically). Terrorism must be fought head on 24/7 and preventing terrorism is far better than just reacting to one terror-related event after another." -Cindy (July 1, 2011) ~ "WHAT DID I LEARN from the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001? OPINION: I have learned that more Americans love America than the lame-stream media will ever let on. I have learned that America's military is the finest in the world. I have...

Syria has begun moving parts of its vast arsenal of chemical weapons out of storage facilities, U.S. officials said, in a development that has alarmed many in Washington. The country's undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials and their allies in the region, who have watched anxiously amid the conflict in Syria for any change in the status or location of the weapons.

Katsuya Takahashi, a former Aum Supreme Truth cult member sought over the March 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway system, was arrested Friday in Tokyo after 17 years on the run.... The arrest of the last Aum member on a special wanted list marks a new chapter in the investigation of a series of crimes allegedly committed by the cult that shocked and horrified the nation, including sarin gas attacks in Tokyo and Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and the sending of a parcel bomb addressed to the then Tokyo governor.

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SNIPPET: "The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa stated, citing a Sunni Ahwazi organization opposed to the Iranian regime, that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has equipped Russian SS-4 missiles with chemical warheads – mustard gas, sarin, and cyanide – and that they are aimed at the Gulf countries and other Arab countries. The SS-4 has a range of about 2,000 km. According to the report, the IRGC has stepped up research of biological weapons research..."

China detects deadly nerve gas at border with NKorea: report 1 hr 51 mins ago TOKYO (AFP) – China has detected deadly nerve gas at its border with North Korea and suspects an accidental release inside the secretive state, a Japanese news report said Friday. The Chinese military is strengthening its surveillance activities after detecting the highly virulent sarin gas in November last year and in February in Liaoning province, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing anonymous sources from the Chinese military.

SNIPPET: "Fourteen years ago today Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway." SNIPPET: "A final note - Aum Shinrikyo operatives, on the order of the cult's leader, underwent flight training in Florida. There is no evidence that they made any attempts to use this training. It is just an odd, disturbing coincidence."

The enzyme DFPase from the squid Loligo vulgaris, is able to rapidly and efficiently detoxify chemical warfare agents such as Sarin, which was used in the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995. A detailed understanding of the mechanism by which enzymes catalyze chemical reactions is necessary for efforts aiming to improve their properties. A group of researchers at the University of Frankfurt, the Bundeswehr Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology in Munich, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, have successfully determined the structure of DFPase using neutron diffraction. The team used the neutron source at Los Alamos National Laboratory,...

Why has the statement that WMDS weren't found in Iraq now accepted as a truth? Especially in light of so much physical evidence, it looks as though the democratic Party and all to the left of them have convinced the world along with some Republicans that WMDS were never found. Looks like they took a move out of Joseph Goebbels playbook Wmd's were found in Iraq, I will give a few examples. 2003- UN Inspectors found 11 empty chemical warheads in excellent condition prior to the invasion. They were illegal and supposed to be destroyed (http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/01/16/sproject.irq.wrap/index.html) USA Today- Marines Reported...

An explosion at a Syrian military complex in July which killed 15 soldiers was a bid to arm a chemical warhead and was not caused by a heatwave as Damascus said, according to Jane's Defence Weekly. Syria had said temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing the soldiers and wounding another 50. But Jane's Defence, quoting Syrian defence sources, said the blast occurred as Syrian weapons experts, with Iranian backing, were attempting to activate a 500-km-range (300-mile-range) "Scud C" missile with a mustard gas warhead. "The explosion occurred when fuel caught alight...

<p>Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.</p>

WASHINGTON, May 16 — Scientists working with the Defense Department have found evidence that a low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas — the kind experienced by more than 100,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 — could have caused lasting brain deficits in former service members. Though the results are preliminary, the study is notable for being financed by the federal government and for being the first to make use of a detailed analysis of sarin exposure performed by the Pentagon, based on wind patterns and plume size. The report, to be published in the June issue...

Attention is paid to hair. In our culture the hair industry is huge — shampoos, conditioners, coloring, cutting, shaping, styling. For “hair-loss treatment” alone, Google conjures up 749,000 references. Some people undergo surgical procedures, sometimes uncomfortable and expensive, to implant hair. Total hair loss is often an unfortunate and undesirable complication of the agents used to treat and cure cancer. Yet baldness — the hairless look — can for some represent spirituality and religion, or for others may suggest that they are athletic, smart, cool, reeking of testosterone. Depending on where you are in your life, what you are doing,...

AL-QAEDA plotted to murder the entire Australian cricket team in their change rooms during last year's Ashes tour of Britain using sarin nerve gas sprayed by the men who bombed the London Underground. A friend of one of the four bombers who killed 52 people when they bombed trains and buses in the British capital on July 7 last year told The Sunday Times newspaper that the al-Qaeda cell was initially ordered to kill the England and Australian cricket teams during the Edgbaston Test in Birmingham. The claim was made by a family friend of bus bomber Hasib Hussain, who...

Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - An Alzheimer's pill that helps slow the brain damage caused by the disease may also protect against the effects of nerve gases and pesticides, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. They said the drug, marketed under the name Reminyl and Razadyne, completely protected guinea pigs against the nerve agents soman and sarin, as well as toxic amounts of pesticides. They gave the animals high doses of the poisons and treated them with Reminyl, known generically as galantamine, along with atropine, often given as an antidote for organophospate pesticides such as paraoxon. "To...

An Alzheimer's pill that helps slow the brain damage caused by the disease may also protect against the effects of nerve gases and pesticides, US researchers reported today. They said the drug, marketed under the name Reminyl and Razadyne, completely protected guinea pigs against the nerve agents soman and sarin, as well as toxic amounts of pesticides. They gave the animals high doses of the poisons and treated them with Reminyl, known generically as galantamine, along with atropine, often given as an antidote for organophosphate pesticides such as paraoxon. "To our amazement, the animals treated with galantamine behaved as if...

I asked me that question yesterday after listening to the speech of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah. A few summaries: "Israel doesn't know our capabilities on every level," Nasrallah said. "The Zionist enemy has not succeeded in infiltrating our group,"(...) "The enemy doesn't know our capabilities or what we have."(...) "(...)If you think Hizbullah cannot stand firm in this confrontation, then your government and army are deceiving you,"(...) We know, that Syria and Iran equipped Hezbollah with all kinds of military things. Thousands of rockets, even longer-range rockets as we know now, and other stuff. The Haifa rocket that killed 8 people...

.....Believe it: Iraq had WMDs and terrorist tiesPosted: June 23, 20061:00 a.m. Eastern© 2006 WorldNetDaily.comI'm returning from my first personal vacation in the past two years, listening to news media reports on the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and noting that the anti-war crowd is apoplectic. It seems that those who want to see America lose the war against terrorism cannot accept the truth that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a safe haven for terrorism, rife with chemical and biological weapons. I wonder … if the new al-Qaida in Iraq leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, were to order the...

Q Mr. Secretary, there's been a lot made on Capitol Hill about the chemical weapons that were found and may be quite old. But do you have a real concern of these weapons from Saddam's past perhaps having an impact on U.S. troops who are on the ground in Iraq right now? SEC. RUMSFELD: Certainly. What's been announced is accurate, that there have been hundreds of canisters or weapons of various types found that either currently have sarin in them or had sarin in them. And sarin's dangerous. And it's dangerous to our forces and it's a concern. So, obviously,...

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...

The infamous Sarin gas possesses a variety of names...Sarin like most other nerve agents,is colorless,odorless,tasteless and diffuses very rapidly into the human skin due to its high volatility....Sarin is known to vapourise 36 times more rapidly than Tabun, is 26 times more deadly than cyanide, 21 times more lethal than potassium cyanide and all it takes is 0.01 mg for every 1kg of body mass for it to be fatal for a human....Remember that Sarin is a gas and it is also colorless and odorless, making it even more difficult to be sensed by human beings;And even if the person...

On Fox right now

Apognosis - Iraq WMD Evidence "...How can anyone ignore the evidence cited by a senior counter-proliferation official that meetings did in fact occur between Niger officials and would-be buyers from Iraq, North Korea and three other countries, and that the uranium was to be mined from abandoned - and hence unregulated and unmonitored - uranium mines in Niger?" "...The US Army bomb team that investigated the device said it looked like all the other conventional munitions rigged as roadside IEDs, it bore only the markings of the conventional artillery shells they had been handling on a routine basis. It...

SCOTLAND Yard believes it has thwarted an al-Qaeda nerve gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in the British Parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded emails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 later identified an al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the terror attack. The encrypted emails are said to have been decoded with the assistance of an al-Qaeda "supergrass". By revealing the terrorists' code, he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ - the...

Does anyone know any good books about the 1995 Tokyo sarin attack, conducted by the cult Aum Shinrikyo? I saw a program about it on the History Channel, and I'd like to learn more. If a cult like Aum could produce sarin, obviously it is possible for a well-funded Islamist terrorist group to produce chemical weapons.

A large number of US troops were observed leaving Fallujah on Tuesday, with speculation that the withdrawal was due to Sunday night's attack by Mujahideen who reportedly fired rockets loaded with Sarin gas at a nearby US base. Dozens of US vehicles loaded with American troops were seen leaving Fallujah on Tuesday morning, heading for the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. In a report filed at 4:25pm Mecca time Tuesday afternoon, the correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported from International Highway 1, saying that hat he had witnessed more than 90 US vehicles including tanks, and armored vehicles, being transported on giant...

The Iraqi Survey Group also found that supposed "humanitarian" imports under Oil-for-Food gave Saddam the ability to restart his biological and chemical warfare programs at a moment's notice. Spertzel said what scared him the most in Iraq was the discovery of secret labs to make deadly weapons like the nerve agent, sarin, and the biological poison, ricin, in spray form. "If that were released in a closed [area], such as Madison Square Garden or, even some, some of your smaller closed malls, shopping malls, it would have a devastating effect … killing hundreds or thousands," Spertzel said. But Spertzel believes...

I don't want to do ALL the leg work here. Can you folks help me make a list of the WMD's, precursors and related programs we DID find? thanks ++++ 1.) Well there was this http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123680,00.html Quote: Duelfer also told Fox News that about 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq. ++++++ 2.) and this http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/03/iraq/main576372.shtml Quote: Kay said his team had, however, found "dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002." "We have...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....

On March 16, 1988, 5,000 residents of Halabja, a Kurdish city in eastern Iraq, were killed and 10,000 injured when Saddam Hussein's army attacked with chemical weapons -- perhaps the largest-scale use of such weapons against a civilian population in modern times. That morning, Iraqi Air Force planes bombed the city with a lethal chemical cocktail of mustard gas and sarin, tabun and VX nerve agents. Two days ago, the man accused of overseeing the attack, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, appeared before a judicial tribunal in Baghdad. He is likely to go on trial next...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Boxes of suspected sarin are the second image. Can't link directly because of copyright complaint.

WONDER WHY YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ABOUT THIS? If you use this link [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/phantom_fury/flash.htm ] to visit the USA Today website you will be treated to a flash presentation of several pictures taken during the siege of Fallujah. Picture number two in this presentation shows 40 vials in boxes labeled "Sarin." That's sarin gas, my friends. One drop of this stuff on your skin can kill you. The boxes have Cyrillic and German characters on them, indicating they may have come from our good friends the Russians or the Germans. The caption under the photo reads "Marines discovered 40 vials...

"Wellington once observed that "nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won." Nothing about it is nice; but better them than us."   -- T.C. WretchardAs many of Freepers know, there's a very significant battle going on in Fallujah right now. Want a one-stop shop that will help you keep track of media reports so you know what's going on as things develop, and link you to some of the smartest background analysis around so you understand the why and how, as well as the what? OK, you got it. One power-packed briefing, in depth...

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR IS REPORTING THAT A SOVIET "TEST KIT" WITH SARIN SAMPLES WAS FOUND BY IRAQI ARMY PERSONNELL, BUT THAT MORTARS FOUND NEAR IT SHOWED A POSSIBLE INTENT TO WEAPONIZE IT. !!!! BREAKING NEWS: NPR REPORTS SARIN GAS POSSIBLY FOUND IN FALLUJAH. EMBEDDED NPR REPORTER ANN GARRELS REPORTS A MARINE UNIT IN FALLUJAH FOUND WHAT THEY BELEIVED MAY BE SARIN GAS. GO TO    AGAIN, GARRELLS SAYS THAT THE EXPERTS HAVE NOT EXAMINED THE FIND AS OF YET. WE'LL UPDATE ON THIS AS WE HEAR ANYTHING. New rebel tactics emerge in Fallujah. Marines faced a tough fight...

Why has there been zero follow-up on the NPR report regarding the Marines finding a briefcase filled with sarin gas ampules...at least 40 of them I believe? Are they simply waiting for confirmation? Sorry for the vanity, but if this pans out it should be above the fold in every paper in America! -Toonces

You'll need speakers to hear this. Embedded NPR reporter with Bravo Company, 1st Marine Battalion, 3rd Regiment, found suitcase with Sarin nerve gas. Unclear where it came from. In either case, war is justified because WMD have been found, or if it's Al Qaeda's I'd much rather it brought to Iraq to fight our military than brought to New York. http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=4164561

US in U-turn over Gulf war syndrome 19:00 03 November 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. Terence Walker is one of the lucky ones. On 19 January 1991 he was with 6000 British troops at Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia, as the first Gulf war was beginning. At around 3am there were loud bangs and flashes, and troops scrambled into gas masks as chemical detector alarms sounded. Some detectors in the area registered the nerve gas sarin, but the UK’s Ministry of Defence later said that these alerts were false alarms. Since Walker...

Link to www.brodiejohnson.com to view a screen shot of page 30 from the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD, which states that 41 sarin/cyclosarin-filled 122mm rockets were found in Kahmisiyah, Iraq, in June and July 2004. This is a stockpile of chemical weapons. Do not let MSM get away with the "no WMDs in Iraq" lie - otherwise get used to seeing John Kerry for the next eight years.

"Since May 2004, ISG has recovered a total of 53 chemical weapons from various sources and military units throughout Iraq. A preliminary assessment indicates they are part of Iraq's pre-1991 stockpile. Variations in size, type, and agent fill raise the possibility that other, similar rounds remain at large." - Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD, Volume 3, page 30. Including in Khamisiyah forty-one 122-mm sarin/cyclosarin SAKR=18 rockets!!!!!!!! 4-Jun, 25-Jun, 29 July 2004