Posted on 06/19/2014 6:02:11 PM PDT by Nachum
With all eyes firmly focused on what really matters (the oil refineries), The Telegraph reports that ISIS has over-run a Saddam Hussein-era chemical weapons (CW) complex. The al-Muhanna 'mega-facility', about 60 miles south of Baghdad, gives the jihadists access to disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin. The US state department is 'concerned' but "do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value." However, as a former commander of Britain's chemical weapons regiment warned, "we have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before and has carried out experiments in Syria." This is likely great for ISIS 2014 Annual Report; but, of course, the other awkward question is: does this mean Saddam did have WMDs (and ISIS found them) after all?
As The Telegraph reports, the jihadist group bringing terror to Iraq overran a Saddam Hussein chemical weapons complex on Thursday...
Isis invaded the al-Muthanna mega-facility 60 miles north of Baghdad in a rapid takeover that the US government said was a matter of concern.
The facility was notorious in the 1980s and 1990s as the locus of Saddams industrial scale efforts to develop a chemical weapons development programme.
During its peak in the late 1980s to early 1990s, Iraq produced bunkers full of chemical munitions.
A CIA report on the facility said that 150 tons of mustard were produced each year at the peak from 1983 and pilot-scale production of Sarin began in 1984.
Its most recent description of al-Muthanna in 2007 paints a disturbing picture of chemicals strewn throughout the area.
Two wars, sanctions and UN oversight reduced Iraqis premier production facility to a stockpile of old damaged and contaminated chemical munitions (sealed in bunkers), a wasteland full
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
I thought Dick did well enough in the interview. He would have been a great president. Pity he wasn’t up to the task physically. Regardless I would vote for him in a microsecond today.
That is also how the UN allows other tyrants to have everything and not hold them accountable for their weapons.
True story folks. I remember rolling my eyes reading this about 5-6 or six years into the war.
Even so, we also had access to countless individuals, many of whom would have worked at or near one of the WMD facilities.
Enhanced interrogation techniques were no doubt used on many of these folks so that the military wouldn't have to scour every inch of the desert in order to find what was there.
saddam used pretty much all of his chemical weapons on the kurds and if he had any left he would have used them in the Iraq war on american troops, hell had he saved some of that vx instead of using it on the kurds he could have inflected serious casualties on usa army
One of my favorite responses to the leftist creepozoids is to show the pictures of the buried-in-the-sand jets under the Iraqi desert. If they could hide the jets, they could hide anything.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/sandplanes.asp
Until now. Because there will be somebody stupid enough to suit up and go in there for Allah and see if there's something he can drag out. For rational people it would be easier to manufacture Sarin for themselves. These guys aren't rational people.
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the al-Muthanna mega-facility 60 miles north of Baghdad....
Huh?
saddam used pretty much all of the vx gas he had in the Halabja chemical attack
Im also not saying that terrorist groups cant acquire wmds, hell Aum Shinrikyo in Japan managed to make there own sarin which they used on tokyo subway trains
First, they couldn’t find all the WMDs hidden if they tried. That is my point.
Second, that place was known and we were lied to. By everyone. It was there in a time that Bush said it was to begin with in his run up, then refused to admit it was there once the Dems pressured him via the MSM to be a fall guy.
Chemical weapons are what they are. There is so many different types. They are very elusive, workied around them in the early 80’s. doesn’t take much to do alot of damage.
From NBC Defense School almost 40 years ago, I learned that VX (nerve agent) is some BAD, BAD stuff. And just a small amount in liquid form when dispersed as a gas goes a long, long way. Somehow I doubt that its lethality has lessened with age.
I doubt it, the American military was trained for and prepared to fight an NBC war against the Soviets, Saddam wouldn't have done much damage to us.
As it was, we expected it and were ready for it.
For terrorists, dirty bombs and military level chemicals don’t have to be very effective, just using them would set the modern media into a panic frenzy, if they use them here.
Yep. Now, that's not to say that wearing those suits in Iraq in late spring wasn't a miserable experience...
So, during the years that we “were in control of” Iraq, why were these depots full of nerve gas and toxins not disposed of?
Why, when we had boots on the ground, didn't we secure this facility?
And lets bear in mind, for all FOX’s covering fire of “well these people are not smart enough to be able to move it safely”. Baghdadi has full cooperation with the Baathists in exile, many of them high rankers from Saddam’s military including Izzat al-Douri, the ‘king of clubs’. If anyone can get that stuff moved, its the guys who once created it and used it.
Well, duuuuuuuuh! Ya think?
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