Cyanide Salt Block Found in Iraq

Fox News ^ | Tuesday, February 03, 2004 | Fox News

[grimalkin]

WASHINGTON

[GeronL]

David Kay also mentioned (I forgot where, but someone on FNC mentioned it) that Iraq was cooking up RICIN till the day the US troops rolled in.

[DallasMike]

This amount of NaCN is NOTHING!!

Agreed. My first job out of college was as a chemist/chemical engineer in a plating facility. I did all the chemical ordering and we easily went through 2000 pounds of cyanide every month. Foundries that do heat treating have vats with literally tons of cyanide in each one.

That's not to say that 7 pounds wouldn't be a danger in a local water supply though -- but Iraq is a LONG way from here.

[Quix]

So it would qualify as a WMD.

hmmm.

[GeronL]

what happened to those mustard gas shells??

[EricT.]

Cyanide salts are used in hundreds of manufacturing processes.

True, but the fact that they found it in one of Abu Musab Zarqawi's safehouses makes this a significant story. This guy is Al Qaeda's poison expert. I don't think he's just setting up a silver reclaimation business.

[Thumper1960]

There are no weapons in Iraq....Islam is a peaceful religion....nothing to fear from the docile Iraqis....move along....

[TaMoDee]

Thanks for the backup, ChemEngr. I'am a PetEngr of some vintage!

[Consort]

[Sacajaweau]

btt

[commish]

did all the chemical ordering and we easily went through 2000 pounds of cyanide every month.

And how much of this did you keep stored in YOUR HOUSE?

[Jorge]

I'm thinkin' there will be lots of WMD's found, oh, about late October, 2004.....LOL.

And Osama will be captured.
It will be like an early Christmas!

[PISANO]

So finding this cyanide, and the ricin program, don't count for exactly what reason??

Long ago on this board I stated that NO MATTER WHAT WE FIND in IRAQ it would fall short of the HYPED WMD'S that the entire news media cackled about before the start of the war. What we have already found lies bare the claim they had NO WMD.

Active programs are NOT enough. Empty shells and missle payloads designed for Bio/Chem agents are not enough, defectors who worked on the programs are NOT enough. Nothing less then a fully loaded missle with an active Nuclear warhead pointed at Isreal would shut down the news media about our failure to find MASSIVE amounts of WMD.

It has to be massive amounts ALSO, even though a very small amount of certain agents can kill hundreds of thousands that FACT is lost on the public due to our several UN presentations designed to cover Tony Blair's hind quarter.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Maybe, maybe not. It is indeed a common industrial chemical and it is widely used in labs and in commerce for many innocent purposes. OTOH, ingest 1/10000th of that 7 lb block and you would almost surely fall over dead in about a minute. See: Hermann Goering.

[Quix]

IC

THANKS.

[tcuoohjohn]

takes about 7 grams of cyanide in its solid form to kill you ( nickle is about 5 grams). In solution it takes about 600 parts per million to have any effect and about 1200 parts per million to insure lethality. If you dumped 7 pounds of cyanide in a water resevoir it better be a very damn small one. As the water treament guys say...dilution is the solution.

[graycamel]

Don't tell Newt Gingrich... I remember he "wanted" to poison the water supply with arsenic. (sarcasm)

[lafroste]

Nothing less then a fully loaded missle with an active Nuclear warhead pointed at Isreal would shut down the news media

Nope, sorry that would not do it. See, it was pointed at Israel, not the US. Ergo, it really is none of our business. We had no right to get involved in this minor regional squabble, don't you know.

Now, if it had been aimed at San Fran, THAT would shut them up (assuming it was actually fired, then malfunctioned and missed, so they could claim diversion thanks to their astral powers and moonbeam crystals)

[Only1choice____Freedom]

And Osama will be captured. It will be like an early Christmas!

No, we already have him. Rice is sandbagging him until the most politically benificial moment. Haven't you heard the media? They are spinning it already!!

[Prodigal Son]

what happened to those mustard gas shells??

I thought it turned out that those tested negative for mustard gas?

[Dog]

Sac this would kill more than 100....this stuff is used in our death chambers here in the US today. Iraq used this as a weapon during the Iraq-Iran war.

It is a chemical weapon....the Soviets had stockpiles of the stuff and so did we during the Cold War.