Posted on 01/11/2004 11:56:36 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
Mulitple tests conducted in Iraq by Danish and British experts indicate that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction have finally been discovered, but mainstream news editors either ignored the story Sunday morning or are furiously spinning the news as inconsequential. More than 12 hours after the Fox News Channel, Reuters and the Associated Press carried reports that preliminary tests showed Iraqi mortar shells discovered near Basra contain a deadly liquid blister agent, the New York Times had yet to report the bombshell find on the main page of its Web site or anywhere in its Sunday morning print edition. The Washington Post's Web site also chose not to cover the blockbuster news, which ABC News military analyst Tony Cordesman said Saturday would be "the first real confirmation that Iraq actually had deployed chemical weapons and was prepared to use them" if tests confirmed the find. Saturday night the Fox News Channel revealed that initial tests had indeed confirmed the blockbuster discovery. "Danish troops are in charge of that area around the village of Al Quarnah, and they have found what they believe are, according to this official, two hundred shells," reported FNC's Greg Palkrow. Palkrow said the Danish official told him: "They've run four different tests on that liquid inside those shells. And all those tests do indicate that there is blister gas that's a deadly chemical weapon - inside of those shells." The AP said that a statement released by Danish officials cited British experts, who had also confirmed that the shells contained "blister gas." Before the war the Bush administration had alleged that Baghdad was stockpiling blister gas in liquid form. Both reports noted that the find had yet to be confirmed by the U.S. team in Iraq assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction. But according to the London Sunday Telegraph, Ali Nimir, a former colonel in an Iraqi Republican Guard artillery unit, had also confirmed the find. "I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years ago," Nimir said. "We were told that they were chemical weapons." "They were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places about a year before the war," he explained. "I never saw them again." Still, despite the staggering political consequences of the bombshell discovery news that could mean total vindication for President Bush against Democrat charges that he "lied" about Iraq's WMDs mainstream reports consistently downplayed the story. The New York Daily News, for instance, covered the news on page 24 of its Sunday edition, and then only under a headline that obscured the potential impact of the story: "Old Iraqi Gas Shells." New York's Newsday echoed the same theme with its page 20 headline, "Weapons Found, but Likely Old" as if the vintage of Saddam's WMDs somehow mitigated genuine proof of their existence after months of media claims to the contrary. The only news outlet to refer to weapons of mass destruction in its headline was the New York Post, which labeled its page 2 report: "WMD Gas Shells Dug Up in Iraq." News of the WMD find was not discussed on the Sunday morning news shows.
Before this year is out, I fully expect a liberal to go on TV and say -- straight-faced, mind you -- "Well, yes we found a tactical nuclear weapon from Russia in Saddam's basement, but where are the WMD's????"
And the point?
We expected to find them in unusual places and I don't see how finding them buried on a riverbank has any bearing on the fact that the mortar shells do in fact contain a WMD. After all, Saddam had several yrs to decide where to hide them.
Mustard gas is a particularly nasty agent. Thousands of WWI vets came back home suffering burns, internal and external only to die in agony.
No, the various paraphrases of the reports on FR have claimed they were exactly 10 years old. Here's the original report:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Danish and Icelandic troops have uncovered a cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert, and preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent, the Danish military said Saturday.
The 120mm mortar shells were thought to be leftovers from the eight-year war between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988, said U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
The shells were found by Danish engineering troops and Icelandic de-miners near Al Quarnah, north of the city of Basra where Denmark's 410 troops are based, the Danish Army Operational Command said in a written statement.
The shells were wrapped in plastic but had been damaged, and they appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the statement said.
What's that?
What about a suicide watch for Ed Asner, Babs, Sean Penn, .....
who cares.
The facts of the matter are fairly plain - Saddam did have chemical weapons (ask the Iranians) and he did play games with the UN inspectors. My point is the inevitability of an endless series of "this isn't enough" responses. At some point (say, December 2004?) they'll cease because they will no longer be useful and they'll already patently untrue.
Who started using the term "blister agent", which sounds about as lethal as sunscreen? Why didn't our military people begin by referring to these WMDs as "mustard gas", which term has been around a long time, is more widely understood and has far more powerful connotations. And if the media scum persist in treating the discovery of these mustard gas munitions like a church social, then we should take a dozen or so of them, strip them down to their skivvies and give them a light misting with the stuff. After a week they will be singing a different tune about "blister agent", aka mustard gas.
Well, on every thread on this on various FR posters twisted the "at least 10 years old" into "10 years old exactly" because that would make them POST GW I.
So everyone is spinning to suit their own ends.
And as to why they were buried, how about burying them to simply dispose of them?
Well, it's less lethal than high explosives or bullets.
Despite being used in a huge % of shells and in vast quantities in WWI, the percentage of deaths caused by chemicals in WWI was remarkably trivial compared to good ol' high explosive, and simply getting shot.
"I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years ago," Nimir said. "We were told that they were chemical weapons."
"They were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places about a year before the war," he explained. "I never saw them again."
If there were armaments at bases two years ago, wonder where those are buried. Even if the shell are 10 years old, think how bad the condition of the metal shell is. Those shells are an accident waiting to happen.
Artillery shells 10+ years old are still all over Iraq and waiting for the housing to rot away and spill their contents, not good.
But I'll wait happily for more information (and not count on the mainstream media to provide it). There is usually some form of lot identifier on ammo this large (and 120 mm is pretty big) if not an outright date of manufacture. And we have lots of old records by now.
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