Posted on 09/19/2007 12:06:09 PM PDT by mojito
An explosion at a Syrian military complex in July which killed 15 soldiers was a bid to arm a chemical warhead and was not caused by a heatwave as Damascus said, according to Jane's Defence Weekly.
Syria had said temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing the soldiers and wounding another 50.
But Jane's Defence, quoting Syrian defence sources, said the blast occurred as Syrian weapons experts, with Iranian backing, were attempting to activate a 500-km-range (300-mile-range) "Scud C" missile with a mustard gas warhead.
"The explosion occurred when fuel caught alight in the missile production laboratory," the magazine said, quoting the sources.
"The blast dispersed chemical agents (including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent) across the storage facility and outside. Other Iranian engineers were seriously injured with chemical burns to exposed body parts."
The sources said dozens of Iranian missile engineers were killed along with the 15 Syrians.
The magazine also pointed out that the explosion occurred at about 4:30 a.m., two hours before sunrise, when temperatures have barely begun to rise, let alone reach 50 C.
Syrian officials were not immediately available to comment on the Jane's story.
The article, to be published in the Sept. 29 edition, said the Syrian-Iranian cooperation at the classified military production facility in Aleppo, northern Syria, was the result of a two-year-old weapons agreement between the two nations.
Under the deal, the magazine said, Iran agreed to supply Syria with weapons and ammunition, train Syrian personnel, and help transfer technology for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical-warfare systems.
It said the agreement, signed in November 2005, had led to the establishment of five pilot facilities in Syria aimed at producing chemical weapon precursors.
As a result of the explosion on July 26, Jane's said an Iranian-Syrian programme to arm short-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads had been aborted.
MOSSAD............
“As a result of the explosion on July 26, Jane’s said an Iranian-Syrian programme to arm short-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads had been aborted.”
Yeah, Right. Perhaps only at that one site...
I am inclined to believe it was less Darwin at work but rather something else. Unless of course an alternate spelling for Darwin is M-O-S-S-A-D.
A single secret facility, possibly/probably stocked with what weapons were shipped from Iraq while the liberals and the UN fought Bush for a year before he invaded.
At the time they arrived, everything was secret, nothing was planned for loading or re-work or research or launching missiles from the storage site. You’d WANT everything in one place.
Move missile warheads in later. Or get them later, and move them to the nerve gas and mustard gas storage area. Again, logical place to store them. (Maybe not a good place to LOAD the warheads (in the same building or even the same room!) but a good place to keep secrets together.
Find out Saddamn is dead, US is winning, Areal is getting uppity - so you try to load weapons PRIOR to 9/11 anniversary! - and do so with the “small” explosives in a mustard gas warhead that disperse the agent into small droplets. (This size explosive would be much less than 15-20 lbs - like a small device inside the mustard gas tank. After all, you want to blow up the tank, disperse the mustard gas liquid into a cloud of particles, not destroy the mustard gas in a large explosion.
Everybody in the room is killed when the warhead or fuze to the dispersal warhead goes off.
I’m thinking they never stopped working on arming the chemical warheads. If it was an accident, they’d blame it on Israel. Thinking it was a cover to make Israel think Syria doesn’t have these mounted on missles, so that Israel won’t bomb them like they bombed the nuclear facility.
I’ll give you a hint...
WMDs
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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Kozak,
I was going to write a beautiful piece on how our enemies get trapped in their own schemes and blah blah blah.... but I think you made the point much more elegantly. Bravo!
There are these things called test ranges that are normally used that sort of thing.
Cant have the sky looking at you.
One seems to be taken out now. Wonder if Israel is working on the others? They were arming it, but where was it pointed? Israel, Lebanon or Iraq?
I thought of that, but you mean they’re too cheap to build “facilities” at the range?
Maybe the CIA put a Owners Manual for the Chemical Scud on the Internet, instructing the Weapons Techs to fit the fuse to the missile using a 5 pound sledge...
Maybe they had the missile pointed down? ;)
This remarkable piece of information, courtesy of YNET News:
“The scientific arm responsible for Syria’s knowledge and missile production is the Scientific Study Research Center (SSRC). They can be contacted at POB 4470, Damascus. They can also be reached by phone at: 963-11-772-603, or faxed at 963-11-2223771. Yet behind this seemingly innocent name hides the agency in charge of the manufacture of ballistic missiles. The center also handles a great part of the knowledge and acquisition of equipment worldwide.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3451415,00.html
Yes, tell Chloe to send it to my screen.
That's a pretty good start.
L
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