"Your story has grown tiresome. Auf Wiedersehen, Hans. Now's the time on Sprockets when we dance."
Posted on 05/17/2004 3:51:52 PM PDT by ambrose
Blix wants more information about sarin-filled roadside bomb
Stockholm, Sweden-AP --
He wants to know more. Former U-N weapons inspector Hans Blix is taking a wait-and-see approach, after news that a roadside bomb containing sarin exploded in Iraq.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt says the explosion occurred a couple of days ago. And he said he believes the insurgents who set the bomb didn't know it contained sarin.But Blix says it's too soon to determine if the shell was from the past or part of a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.Blix reported before the beginning of the war in Iraq that his teams were unable to locate proof of deadly weapons. But his inspectors did find 16 warheads that were tagged as being used for containing sarin. They were empty.
A wait and see approach...how is this different from the manner in which he conducted the original "inspections".
Besides the media, who really cares what Blix has to say?
How many sarin-filled canisters does it take to make it WMD's? OR How many angels can dance simultaneously on the head of a pin? Take your pick Ted Kennedy.
To quote the great Howie Carr, "Hey Blixie ... SCREW!"
>Those made in the future, in the past or whatever time >period will not count EVER to the left or the media.
This is absolutely true. My best friend is pretty far to the left (except anti-abortion and anti-homosexual marraige) and she asked me today, did you see that our government planted a ricin bomb today? I was like, what? She said that she believes our government planted it. I did clarify that it was sarin, not ricin. She said CNN said ricin all day today. Who knows, it doesn't matter what they find, the left will claim our government planted it and if they don't, they will claim Bush Lied. You just can't win with them.
Blix won't believe they've found a WMD unless it goes off in his BVDs.
I thought this little weasel is no longer on the job. It's none of his business anymore.
I sympathize with Hans's curiosity. He should lurk FR.
>Blix says it's too soon to determine if the shell was from >the past or part of a stockpile of weapons of mass >destruction.
Ooohhh, I get it now! I didn't realize that WMD were only bad if they came from a STOCKPILE!!
Jeez, so now the left with say, so what he had WMD, he didn't have them STOCKPILED. Next it will be, well, he might have had stockpiles, but he wasn't intending on USING THEM. You just can't win.
1) "It was confirmed to contain sarin gas by members of the Iraqi Survey Group, the US team searching for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction"
This is precisely the same agency that has made several such claims during the past year, but which, after a few weeks have passed, has, in every previous instance, reported that further testing had contradicted the initial claims.
2) "This caused a very small dispersal of agent", "the amount of nerve gas generated by the improvised device was very limited", "It was virtually ineffective as a chemical weapon" and "the attackers probably did not even know what the shell contained."
Blix was no doubt trying to point out, as did the wire services that reported Kimmitts's announcement to-day, that it was, at the very least, suspect that:
1) "Monday's announcement came after US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday the Central Intelligence Agency and other US government bodies were at times deliberately misled about such weapons in the run-up to the war."
2) "Powell's comments Sunday in an interview with NBC television were the first official admission that the US government had been fed disinformation about Saddam's suspected arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and relayed it to the world community without seriously questioning it."
3) "It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading, and for that I am disappointed, and I regret it."
All things considered, the coincidence of Monday's announcement, in conjunction with the track record of the Iraqi Servey Group, under its present leader, who has made it clear from the outset that he intends to mitigate the findings made by David Kay, suggest that Blix was simply pointing out the obvious in respect to Powell's pronouncements on Sunday.
The bottom-line good news is that there is no conclusive evidence, verified by any but the highly suspect ISG, that U.S. troops are, to-day, at any more risk of being assaulted by sarin than they were at anytime during the past year. The Monday announcement by the Pentagon would seem, most likely, to have been timed by the Pentagon to counteract the Secretary of State's unprecedented statements of the day earlier, and it will be interesting to watch for any Pentagon or ISG response to Blix's request for additional information.
He couldn't know any less.
Earlier this month, some trace residue of mustard agent, an older type of chemical weapon, was detected in an artillery shell found in a Baghdad street, a U.S. official said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. The shell was believed to be from one of Saddam's old stockpiles and was not regarded as evidence of recent weapons of mass destruction production in Iraq. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cautioned that the sarin results were from a field test, which can be imperfect and more analysis needed to be done. "We have to be careful," he told an audience in Washington Monday afternoon. Rumsfeld said it may take some time to determine precisely what the chemical was, what its presence means in terms of risks to U.S. forces and other implications. U.S. troops have announced the discovery of other chemical weapons before, only to see them disproved by later tests. Deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said "the jury is still out" on whether chemical or other weapons of mass destruction remained in Iraq. The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, said it was possible the shell was an old relic overlooked when Saddam said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s. Kay, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a hidden stockpile, although he didn't rule out that possibility. Former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, speaking to the AP in Sweden, agreed the shell was likely a stray weapon scavenged from a dump and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles.?
No doubt because Rumsfeld is currently under-the-gun as never before, he has hastened to make his comments about the uncertain results of preliminary field tests -- something he has never, to my recollection, done before in relation to Iraq Survery Group findings, preliminary or otherwise.
allow him to stick his nose in it
Red
"Your story has grown tiresome. Auf Wiedersehen, Hans. Now's the time on Sprockets when we dance."
It looks like Blix is trying to look important but no one cares one zippety doo dah about what he thinks. He's dead meat. No resurrection for him.
Of course not. In case someone hasn't figured it out already, Blix is on the take, or was.
The issue I addressed in this thread was not a political one about whether or not Saddam had destroyed all of the hazardous materials that were once extant in Iraq. Rather, it was the military one about whether or not U.S. troops are now exposed to a serious threat from sarin. Even after the Secretary of Defense declined, yesterday, to accept the field report about sarin, Fox News reported to-day that a "Defense Department official" had told Fox News that the shell in question contained 3 litres of sarin. This is patently absurd. It would be absolutely impossible to "estimate" the amount of sarin that an already-exploded shell had contained. On the other hand, if the IGS ever recovers an unexploded shell that contains 3 litres of sarin, they will have no problem convincing everyone, even Blix, about the claim. Instead, their conclusion in this instance is largely based on symptoms of nausea and pupil dilation in the soldiers who recovered and exploded the shell. Such symptoms are a commonplace among troops in the field and they could have been owing to any number of other causes. The "DD official who spoke ONLY to FOX", if he/she had had an unexploded shell that contained 3 litres of sarin, would have shown the evidence to an international inspection team immediately. In the meantime, in order to pursue purely political objectives, FOX is scaring the crap out of the relatives of U.S. troops in Iraq, and possibly the troops themselves, depending on how gullible they are, even though the military threat is, hopefully, negligible to non-existent. A very highly respected U.S. scientist who had top security clearance for handling the most potent pathogens is currently being prosecuted to the limit of U.S. law for having forthrightly AND VOLUNTARILY reported that he could not account for all of the toxic materials he once had in his inventory. This is a commonplace in every 'first world' nation on earth, most of which currently have vastly greater quantities of chemical and biological hazards in their inventories than Saddam had at the outbreak of the 2nd Gulf War. In all of these countries, the inventories are unreliable because disposal is a process that is seldom monitored with the care that is warranted. Lamentably, every day of the week, unrecorded amounts of pathogenic cultures and highly toxic chemicals, after use in experiments, are washed down the drains in scientific labs throughout the world. At last report, the immense quantities of chemicals and biologicals that President Nixon, to great public fanfare, had ordered destroyed in the early 1970s, are still with us.
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