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.