Posted on 05/17/2004 1:35:31 PM PDT by hc87
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul was sworn in Monday to replace the assassinated leader of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council....
(snip-- skip to paragraph 20)...
"The general said the Iraqi Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer, would determine if the shell's discovery indicated Saddam possessed chemical weapons before the U.S. invasion last year. Officials in Washington said another shell -- this one containing mustard gas -- was found 10 days ago in Iraq."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Anyone care to speculate on whether this is deliberate use by the bad guys or some dope unknowingly tapping into a secret cache of WMDs?
Deliberate. More will be found in the next two months. The Dems will look foolish. Syria and Lebanon will be implicated. Pressure will mount on them to give it up. If Bush is re-elected they will. If Kerry is elected, Syria will remain defiant knowing the US will really do nothing.
Agreed, if Bush is reelected terrorist will shudder and many more will meet allah. If Kerry is elected Terrorists will breath a sigh of relief and they will be allowed the opportunity to regroup, reorganize and resume their attacks on the US homeland.
They'll take a year off, regroup and refresh and resurge into the middle east taking back the states they lost. They'll also plan their US attack and quickly embark on making it happen.
He's a brave fellow.
I go with the second. They accidentally got their hands on it thinking it was just like any other artillery shell otherwise they would have extracted the binary compounds for use in a much more lethal manner.
P.S. Or they simply didn't know how to extract it safely without killing themselves so they just blew it up and hoped for the best.
Officials in Washington said another shell -- this one containing mustard gas -- was found 10 days ago in Iraq.
No other evidence of possible chemical weapons has been found in Iraq. The Bush administration cited weapons of mass destruction as a key reason for its invasion.
SOURCE: CNN.COM
"Then after a decent interval we lose a city or two and Kerry and the crats in congress start throwing everything we have. By then the war will be going hot throughout the western hemisphere."
And they will have yet another conspiratorial Senate commission blaming Bush.
Even if all they ever find is two teaspoonfuls of sarin, the fact remains. Chemical weapons exist where none were supposed to exist.
I don't give a good expletive deleted what CNN says, the stuff is there.
Or it's sitting safe and sound somewhere else. I wonder where that somewhere else is? Aren't you the least bit curious about who is sitting on 8,000 liters of Anthrax?
Weapons of Mass Destruction breaking out all over...
The contrast between CNN's and Fox's internet headlines on this story is amazing.
I think your PS is reasonable.
I doubt sincerely that the average al-Queda or al-Sadr lacky has any idea how to use chemical weapons beyond just trying to get them to spread. If they had more knowledge they would have been manufacturing and using their own supply for the last few years.
It could very well happen that these are the WMD's that Bush was talking about before the war. The thing that is amazing is that the insurgents planting them are not using protective suits. This would immediately draw the attention of American troops.
Maybe the WMD's that we were looking for will break open and leak into the atmosphere. That would be an embarrassment to the U.N..
If that happens, lets see how the U.N. inspectors explain that one.
Deliberate and damaging. Start this stuff now as the temps climb to 100 F and you will have GIs and marines travelling around the country in MOPP suits in summer heat. Debilitating enough without the agents. Pop one of these every week or two in different parts of Iraq and it will create problems. I'd say we're dealing with some very clever people. More clever than some second tier Baathist thugs.
More likely. You have to remember these aren't crack troops that we are fighting. They are mean and can do a lot of damage but they aren't that well trained.
There is also the fact that during the first part of the war we found lots of equipment for handling this stuff. Just maybe, when they hid it, they forgot to hide the proper safety equipment with it.
This man, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar, must be one of the most courageous people on the face of the earth.
I pray that he dies of old age a very, very long time from now.
Certainly his predecessor, Izzedine Salim, knew full well the risks he faced, and he faced them anyway, and died.
Lest we forget, these men, and all members of the IGC (I have not forgotten Aquila al-Hashimi, either), are the very definition of patriots, willing to give their lives for their people and their nation. God bless them.
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