Thus dies the Old Media FRAUDcaster's story line that these "old WMD" shells should be considered harmless.
Bin Laden's an "old" man. He's depleted and harmless.
Let's try that excuse the next time the left says "why haven't we found Bin Laden yet?"
this doesn't apply to Saddam's mustard gas. What we found is not old or young enough to be lethal. It's potent enough to be nothing at all.
somebody notify MSM!
So you're saying that non-functioning shells left over from previous wars constitute an ongoing WMD program?
The MSM and Dems of today would have been against WWI and WWII..."unwinnable", "Germany didn't attack us..."
Bump for WMD debate.
What is getting lost in the translation is the difference between a weapon being in a degraded condidtion, and the lethality of the contents.
The shells and rockets that have been found, are in fact degraded in that you could not successfully fire one of those shells in an artillery piece, nor could the rocket be fired, etc. The contents, wheter it be sarin or mustard gas are still extremely dangerous and could be adapted into a chemical IED.
Think about that for a moment.
The US Army is in the process of destroying it's stockpile of chemical weapons out here at the Umatilla Depot in Oregon. It took years to build the special incinerator needed to destroy the still-active and highly dangerous agents.
And most of those arms date from Post WW-II, and the early Cold War years.
All of the "yeah, buts" that we are hearing is mainly from those who simply cannot bring themselves to admit that the Bush Administration really didn't lie about WMDs; namely the Media, DemocRats, entrenched libs at State, CIA, and the Pentagon.
Every couple of years, some French or Belgian farmer plowing his fields gets an ugly surprise when his plow trips some unexploded ordinance from WW1. This is a known fact that was promoted for years by the leftist MSM as an example of why minefields and former warzones were dangerous and we should spend billions to clean them up.
Hadn't heard that much lately, have you?
Does temperature make a difference? If these UXO (unexploded ordnance) have been buried in western European soils, they've probably been at a constant temperature of perhaps 60 degrees F. Chem warfare materiel stored in Iraq, even in an underground bunker, is undoubtedly at a higher temperature.
A FReeper on another thread said that German farmers yrly die after hitting mustard gas that's been around for yrs.
Wonderful work musicman!
More.
They're from before 1918, the Kaiser has already accounted for them, the League of Nations inspectors didn't find anything, Valerie Plame's grandmother was a covert operative outed by Vice President Marshall's chief of staff, this is obviously part of a neo-conservative plot to control possible oil reserves under the floor of the North Sea, Wilson lied, soldiers died, Winston Churchill MIHOP'd the Lusitania, France and Belgium are a quagmire, no blood for North Sea oil . . .
"* It's estimated that three Titanics worth of unexploded bombs still litter the fields of France and Belgium, left over from World War 1."
135,000 TONS!!?? Wow. That's a lot!
This was also a problem in San Diego, esp. in Tierrasanta, where I used to live, we were always told to be careful when walking in the canyons because of unexploded shells left over from the days when Tierrasanta was part of Camp Elliot during WW 2. I remember somebody got killed because of one in '83 or thereabouts.
SHUDDER