Posted on 03/09/2004 1:08:37 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
U.S. Army troops operating at a former Iraqi air base recently made a startling discovery: Russian-made missiles marked with radioactive warning signs. Army bomb disposal troops confirmed using Geiger counters that the missiles are indeed radioactive. The discovery is not, however, considered the long-sought "smoking gun" of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The missiles appear to be part of a cache of weapons supplied to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War. The Russian-made R-60, NATO code name AA-8 Aphid, air-to-air missiles are part of a huge stockpile of former Iraqi Air Force munitions uncovered in over a dozen concrete bunkers. The Russian-made missiles are more than 6 feet long. Each carries 1.6 kilograms or about 3.5 pounds of radioactive uranium wrapped around a high explosive warhead. The uranium is not pure enough nor in large enough quantity to be a nuclear warhead but it is dangerous enough, as you can see from the label: U.S. bomb experts noted the R-60 warheads are similar in design and content to a so-called "dirty bomb" that could contaminate a small area with radioactive materials. Difficult Disposal The discovery of the uranium-laced R-60 missiles illustrates the difficulty that coalition troops have in trying to dispose of the billons of dollars of Iraqi weapons left behind after the second war. The R-60 missiles cannot simply be destroyed because the uranium-laced warheads could pose a health hazard to coalition troops and Iraqi civilians. Army bomb-disposal experts have gathered up all the R-60 missiles found at the site and quarantined them at a single, heavily guarded location. The R-60 has a very small 6-kilogram (13.2-pound) explosive warhead. The R-60 missiles supplied to Iraq by Russia contained uranium in their warheads to assist the small explosive charge in destroying targeted aircraft. Russian weapons designers added the uranium belt to the missile in order to knock-out western aircraft using the dense metal as a way to punch through heavily armored sections of U.S. made jets. U.S. troops also found a small number of advanced R-60M warheads at the site. The R-60M missiles are equipped with an advanced laser destruct system that detonates the warhead when it passes close to a target aircraft. More Russian Missiles In addition, U.S. troops uncovered several large air-to-surface Kh-28 missiles, NATO code-named AS-9 Kyle. The Kh-28 is a Russian-made, anti-radar, air-to-surface missile with a top speed of more than 2,000 miles an hour. The missile is approximately 19.5 feet long, 17 inches in diameter, has a wingspan of 5.5 feet and weighs more than 1,500 pounds. It carries a conventional 340-pound high-explosive warhead and has a range of 54 miles. U.S weapons experts are also handling the Kh-28 missiles carefully, but not because of its electronic radar-seeking warhead. The Kh-28 is powered by a liquid-propellant propulsion system that consists of a fuel tank and an oxidizer tank. The oxidizer is a dangerous chemical known as "red fuming nitric acid" or IRFNA. Each missile carries approximately 20 gallons of IRFNA. The oxidizer is considered to be highly dangerous and a possible carcinogen. U.S. Air Force disposal squads dismantled a Kh-28 found after the 1991 Gulf War using full Hazmat suits and special anti-chemical gear. Again, U.S. forces are taking great care in the disposal of the missiles for fear of exposing coalition troops and local civilians to hazardous chemicals such as the oxidizer found in the Kh-28 missiles.
Because it's not a WMD. As other posters have already pointed out, the uranium in question is depleted. It may emit enough radiation to register on a sensitive Geiger counter, but that's about all. The radioactivity wouldn't kill anyone, and it certainly would cause any "mass destruction".
Too many ignorant people get all hysterical over anything which is the slightest bit radioactive, irrespective of the true danger or lack thereof. Let's not encourage such hysteria by deliberately mislabeling things.
Why isn't this leading story on all the news channels?
Because it's not overly newsworthy.
Why don't we see the Dems apologizing to Bush???
In this case they have nothing to apologize for.
Yes, these were just rhetorical questions.
Not really, since the implication in each case is that your answers are wrong.
The Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt.
Mmmmmm....whata plane!
Part of the cache they claimed to have destroyed right Blix?
I wonder how many of our enemies Russia is arming, and has. We might need to "look inside their soul" a little closer.
There is nothing the left would agree is a WMD, except Bush.
Its good to get these weapons off the street, and it puts another star on President Bush's resume.
Voting to Defeat democrats will be sweet come November.
1. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq was in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?
2. Was Iraq in violation of UN Resolution 1441 and related resolutions?
3. Did intelligence at the time of the war indicate that Iraq had "WMD" according to some consistent definition of that term?
4. Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war according to that definition?
5. Was it legally justified to invade Iraq?
6. Was it right (all things considered) to invade Iraq?
As near as I can figure, here are the answers as of now.
1. YES. Bush's critics spent a lot of time arguing that he "doesn't have WMD" or that it "wasn't enough" but nobody argued that he wasn't in violation of 1441, just that it wasn't "enough" to warrant war.
2. YES. In point of fact, Hussein's regime was in absolute violation of 1441. This is not even arguable. Even Hans Blix himself proved this by finding a banned drone which had not been declared. BOOM. That placed Iraq in violation, end of story.
3. Probably, but arguable. Yes, it seems like all major intelligence agencies at the time "thought" that Hussein had some kind of "WMD", but lefties are now saying that this or that aspect of the intelligence was trumped-up. Okay, fine. That is possible to some extent or another, of course. Nevertheless all pre-war discussions did tend to take it for granted that Saddam had something, the question was "how much" and "how bad" and what to do about it, so the lefties' complaint along these lines only goes so far. Rightly or wrongly, most tended to believe that Saddam had something.
4. Unknown. We just do not know at this point. Of course by a "weak" definition of "WMD" (like, if a bag of cyanide or the botulism toxin precursor - or whatever it was - if those things count), then the answer is yes. But by "moderate" or "strong" definitions the answer is unknown, and it's also only fair to say there is no positive evidence indicating that he had "WMD". (At the same time it's necessary to remember that this doesn't mean he didn't.)
5. Yes, of course. Congressional resolution gave wide scope to Bush, it's not clear he even had to go to the UN at all.
6. Well, this is where the disagreement really is, isn't it? All these other little arguments about "WMD" and "lies" and "smoking guns" and such are really just little proxy attempts to chip away at one side's position on #6.
In this context I'm not even sure what "smoking gun" is supposed to mean. Who needs it? Help me out, a "smoking gun" is something which would change the answer to #4 from "Unknown" to "Yes", right? And that's it. Big deal! After all,
-It can't change the answers to #1, #2, and #5, because those answers are ALREADY "Yes".
-It can't change the answer to #3 because it is a historical statement, unaffected by later events.
-It can't change the answer to #6 unless there are people out there who believe that the ENTIRE "case for war" (tm) stands or falls with whether we find "WMD" later. Which would be a weird thing to believe, and I'm not sure how much attention ought to be paid to such people, if there are any.
So we're left with #4, a "smoking gun" is something which changes the answer to the question "Did Iraq have "WMD" at the time of the war?" from "Unknown" to "Yes".
I have one last response to this. It is that it's quite possible that Iraq did have "WMD" at the time of the war (according to whatever definition you like), but that there are no "smoking guns" remaining in Iraq to be found. This is related to the equally-true fact that failure to find a "smoking gun" is NOT a reason to believe that #4 is False.
The simple reason for this is as follows: Objects may be moved from one place to another. Whatever these "WMD" are, they are not features of the landscape, but physical objects. Their presence at a place at time T1 does NOT mean they will be present at the same place, at some later time T2. Conversely, their absence at time T2 does NOT prove that they were absent at time T1.
Objects can be moved from one place to another. Remember that.
Of course, the entire above discussion changes significantly if you believe, as many leftists apparently do or pretend to, that objects CANNOT be moved from one place to another. According to that belief, if we haven't found a "smoking gun" (after looking in all places thought to contain them), this is proof that #4 is False. In other words, from the lefty point of view a "smoking gun" is something which would change #4 not from "Unknown" to "True" but from "False" to "True".
What that means is that this whole "smoking gun" thing is far more crucial to the anti-war side than to the pro-war side. There is little reason for pro-war types to fuss too much over whether there's been a "smoking gun" in the first place, because the only effect will be to change #4 from "Unknown" to "True". #1, #2, #3, and #5 will all remain just as True as ever, regardless of whether or not a "smoking gun" is ever found.
I've no idea why I chose this particular thread to type this all up but I had to get it out sometime. Perhaps I'll cut 'n paste it to all future such threads.....
That's because NewsMax is doing Big Media's work.
The article didn't say DU because this is NewsMax, and depleted uranium would not have made for a sensational enough story. There's zero chance that the material is enriched uranium, since what would be the point of putting a sub-critical mass of such an enormously expensive material in a tiny air-to-air missile? I suppose it could be natural uranium, but why waste natural uranium which the Russians could have processed for the U-235? So that leaves DU. Nothing else makes much sense.
In the absence of something substantial to the contrary, it's not a WMD and it's not big news. NewsMax is trying to puff up their "scoop" into something much more than it really is.
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