(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
This has been reported over and over and nobody cares. To the world there never will be WMDs. There was an Iraqi general who wrote a book about how stuff was taken to Syria. There is a whole slew of information about that and where it was taken. It doesn't matter. Nobody is listening. And Bush won't detail what they found.
Liberals don't care. The Big Lie was shouted often and loud enough so that it's a given, along with 'Bush avoided duty in Vietnam, Bush is stupid,' etc.. The MSM will attempt to avoid discussion of WMD's except on Fox where Moira Laisson dismissed them as 'degraded, unusable, so what'.
A bigger nightmare for the MSM is the horrific torture/murder of those two US servicemen. They're terrified it will enrage Americans to the point where dem's 'get out of Iraq now' won't work with voters. If the admin. takes the gloves off and fights the Iraq war the way it should be fought, if they release more information, more sites of WMD's, sets up photo ops of what they've found, the press won't be able to ignore it although they'll say it doesn't matter...the amounts were too small, weren't used, blah, blah, blah.
Dems think the only thing republicans have as a winning issue is national security/military might. If they can turn this into Vietnam redux, they think they'll retake congress and the WH with the connivance of the MSM. They're traitors and they don't care.
This isn't even on the radar at DU, as far as I can tell. They're still hung up on threads about why Bush is evil, why he hates the American people so much, which syndrome of alcohol abuse he is exhibiting, etc. That place truly is a mad house.
The Left are testing the resolve of the Right.
You will never 'convince' the Left of anything, since reason is not part of the Liberal mindset.
You will only RIDICULE the Left incessantly until they drop the subject.
Get busy!
Ridicule the sheep Left about WMD, and they will bleet something else.
The Dems have been having a very hard time lately. The bad news just keeps on coming.
Interesting wording. I believe only mustard nerve agent degrades, while sarin is still as potent as it was when made.
Can we come up with a stupid slogan like their's?
Dems lied, now they're fried?
I'm sure there's a better one out there but just can't use my brain that well before coffee. :)
A good start. Certainly more of these found than has been reported, and it shows Saddam didn't destroy his old stockpiles.
Still, we need to find what was moved to Syria and the Bekka Valley. Those will be the nails in the coffin of the 'Bush Lied' crowd.
From two years ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1522544/posts
According to UNMOVIC's Working Document of March 6, 2003:
Iraq primarily filled 155-mm projectiles [the same caliber as the IED in question] with high purity Mustard that remained stable during long-term storage. However, Iraq also provided some information and documents on the development and tests of 155-mm binary nerve agent (Sarin and Cycolosarin) projectiles. UNSCOM found several examples of these munitions at the Muthanna State Establishment. Iraq stated that, despite positive test results, no industrial-scale production of binary 155-mm projectiles occurred. . . . Iraq has provided a number of explanations regarding the disposition of approximately 550 unaccounted for Mustard filled 155-mm projectiles. UNSCOM, having determined that the Mustard . . . was likely to remain stable for a long period treated this issue as a serious matter.
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The UNMOVIC document makes clear that Iraq had provided no evidence to support its claim that its binary nerve agent projectile--the exact type detonated in Baghdad--had not been moved to large-scale production. If UNMOVIC suspected the Iraqis of lying about moving their binary projectiles into large-scale production, should we simply assume these shells, and at least 550 high purity Mustard shells, were merely lost in the process of a preemptive large-scale destruction? Furthermore, besides UNMOVIC's clear concern for the potency and long shelf-life of Iraq's Mustard gas, the only purpose of designing a binary projectile is to improve shelf-life by separating the nerve agent into two stable precursors. After consulting with U.N. experts, Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UNMOVIC, was not comfortable speculating on the shelf-life of such shells--shouldn't the Times be uncomfortable as well?
STILL, the foolishness at the Times pales in comparison to that displayed by everyone's favorite arms inspector, Scott Ritter (for background on "Saddam Hussein's American Apologist," see Stephen F. Hayes's cover story in the November 19, 2001 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD). Ritter has his own theory on the source of the sarin shell, which he outlined in the Christian Science Monitor on May 21, 2004:
Iraq declared that it had produced 170 of these base-bleed [binary] sarin artillery shells as part of a research and development program that never led to production. Ten of these shells were tested using inert fill--oil and colored water. Ten others were tested in simulated firing using the sarin precursors.
And 150 of these shells, filled with Sarin precursors, were live-fired at an artillery range south of Baghdad. A 10 percent dud rate among artillery shells isn't unheard of--and even greater percentages can occur. So there is a good possibility that at least 15 of these sarin artillery shells failed and lie forgotten in the Iraq desert, waiting to be picked up by any unsuspecting insurgent looking for raw material from which to construct an IED [improvised explosive device].
Ritter's theory is as bizarre as it is illogical. For one thing, it is contingent upon absolute faith in the word of the Iraqis. In other words, if they said they only produced 170 shells, then they only produced 170. On matters of national security, as President Reagan famously said, trust, but verify. UNMOVIC and UNSCOM were never able to verify these numbers. Ritter treats them as if they had the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
Ritter then claims that a likely 10 percent dud rate would leave approximately 15 unexploded shells in the desert. This scenario seems implausible for two reasons. Out of 15 duds, most would surely penetrate the soft sand and dirt of the desert, the impact craters covered over by the winds of time so that they would not be "waiting to be picked up." But say a few were not immediately swallowed by the desert. If the assumption is that these 150 shells were being tested, surely the scientists and technicians would be curious as to why the duds had malfunctioned. Would they have not ventured out to discover the outcome of their tests? A well-placed source with the U.S. military in Iraq confirmed that the shell had, in fact, not been fired, but was almost certainly removed from one of the dozens of unsecured arms caches that dot the country. If the shell wasn't fired, then it wasn't a dud. Ritter's theory, based in his unwavering faith in the Iraqi military and the off-chance that insurgents, combing the desert for duds rather than harvesting the country's overflowing arms caches, stumbled upon this magic shell, is suspect.
The detonation of the sarin shell should not be dismissed. It may yet be proved that Saddam's biological and chemical weapons programs were, in 2003, too diminished to be considered a major threat to national security. But, at present, such conclusions are based on nothing more than wishful thinking. If this shell really was the only WMD in Iraq, it will be a welcome blessing.
Michael Goldfarb is a staff assistant at The Weekly Standard.
Binary VX program
During Powell's U.N. presentation, he stated that the Iraqi regime had lied repeatedly regarding its weapons programs, saying that it took Iraq years to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent VX.
Powell said, "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamal, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law."
Regarding Iraq's VX program, the documents indicate that the Iraqis "finished work on binary that had a long shelf life."
Kamal states they were able to stabilize VX: "They were able to do it by splitting VX into binary. Bombs consisted of two parts, and they made it during the last days of the Iran-Iraq war. So the components were only mixed when fired."
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:_5cSYmBmXXQJ:www.wnd.com/news/article.asp%3FARTICLE_ID%3D31228+%2B%22mustard+gas%22+%2B%22shelf+life%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=8
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In addition, the 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq could have been given to terrorists. However, we are not saying the 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq mean the CIA estimated were correct. We're just saying the 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq prove Saddam was lying all along. In fact, the 500 chemical weapons found in Iraq were never found during 12 years of inspections. UN inspectors are capable of verfying destruction of weapons, not for finding hiddne ones.
A lot of independent-minded Americans will say: "500? Close enough. Dems lied, not Bush"