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.
I would have referred to them as his fatherless detractors.
It's unexpended ordnance....it hasn't been used on the Kurds or anyone else, plus it was found a long way from Kurdistan.
That depends. While a well aimed bullet or HE may inflict significant damage or death to a bad guy, mustard gas, or blister agent in the current parlance is potentially MUCH more lethal than either. The largest factor is the prevailing weather during the deployment of the gas. Deploying and agent such as this on a dry, calm day on a target that is suitably grouped (e.g. a command element, massed troops, or an encampment can be much more deadly than the equivalent number of HE rounds.
As a former 0341 (USMC Mortar MOS), a 120mm mortar is a large round. The contents of this type of round are dispersed in a fairly compact area, but mortars are typically employed as a group of tubes firing multiple rounds - one after another. Although more difficult to do with 120mm mortars due to their size and weight, a reasonably proficient mortarman could have four or five rounds in the air before the first hit.
So, if the Iraqis deployed a typical mortar platoon of 8 guns, they could have had approximately 40 rounds hit the target in a very short time. And that, my friend is a GREAT deal of blister agent.
As a Marine, I attended several NBC (Nuclear, Biological & Chemical) Defense and decontamination classes. As part of the training we got to see video of some Australian prisoners who took part in a test of blister agent and its effects on the human body (one would assume that they got some sort of commutation in return, but I am not certain of that fact). One test that was performed was to take a straight pin, dip it into the liquid blister agent and then apply it to the skin of the prisoner. The "contents" of that small pin was enough to cause the persons entire forearm to turn into a huge blister. Imagine inhaling this stuff - death is caused by the person actually drowning in their own fluids.
Look, anyway you slice it these are not "trivial" weapons by any stretch of the imagination. Deployed in ideal circumstances, round for round, they can seriously impact much larger groups of people than either HE or smal arms fire.
Of course, if we were to actually find a working nuclear bomb, the media would say that the U.S. planted it there.
Pray for W and Our Troops
How does one determine length of shell burial? What are the criteria used to distinguish between1,3,7 or 10 years?
To have some reporter say "they appeared to be" buried for 10 years is a pretty weak statement. especially given the bias of the press.
Leave it to Newsmax to imply that ALL of the WMD have finally been found.
I think this is a significant discovery, but Newsmax is sooo over the top.
I've worked in the MidEast, although not in Iraq.
WMDs could be buried for a long time in the desert and still be serviceable.
I still think there are thousands of WMDs we have not found and probably will never find.
Exactly. There's not a chance that this 36 - 200 shells containing blistering agent were the only chem/bio weapons hidden in the entire country of Iraq, and we just happened upon them. This is the tip of the iceberg, and likely no matter how much we eventually find, we will never find all of them.
sundayherald.com says:
"Icelandic bomb specialists working with the Danish soldiers said the rounds had been found buried in a road construction, 45 miles south of Amara, north of Basra, and that a mobile US chemical research laboratory has been sent to help." Shells were NOT found by any WMD search team, but by a road construction crew! And did you know there were Icelandic troops in the "unilateral" Iraq operation?
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