[dep]

whoa, everybody. this story is just plain off the map. cyanide salts have emormous industrial uses, from use in metal plating to film processing. i used to have a five-pound jar of a cyanide compound for use in bringing up thin negatives, which was purchased at a plain old photo supply store for not much money. that there would be seven pounds of a cyanide salt someplace in iraq means absolutely nothing.

[Dog]

Except this was found in a safe house of a known terrorist who specializes in chemical and bio weapons...

Not the same as finding it in your garage.

[grimalkin]

...seven pounds of a cyanide salt someplace in iraq means absolutely nothing.

Except for the fact that it was found in a believed safe house for Abu Musab Zarqawi. Somehow, I don't believe this guy was using it for processing family pictures.

[InvisibleChurch]

it must be the image of a poisonous salt lick that people walk up to, lick, then die

[jude24]

I think a lot of people are seeing "cyanide" and in their minds, it conjures up images of the Holocaust and rat poison, but they don't realize that there are hundreds of industrial reactions catalyzed by the SCN- group. Having 7 lbs of cyanide is nothing, and even reasonable.

This is what you get when you have journalists have little or no technical training.

[EricT.]

I repeat, while Cyanide salts are a common industrial compound, the fact that our troops found it in an Iraqi safe house of Al Qaeda's poisons expert is significant.