OT-Sarin arty round explodes in Iraq

DOESN'T COUNT AS WMD. It's only one shell! ...and I only got your daughter "a little bit pregnant"

Oh but don't you know? Halliburton put it there, it wasn't a "stockpile", they didn't realize it was sarin, never would have happened if we hadn't invaded, just an old relic, didn't kill anyone so hardly a WMD.......

/sarcasm off

The goalposts change daily don't you know.

The funny thing is, I think we may get a relatively happy ending in all this. I hope to God we do because the price of failure is unthinkable. Except for the likes of Teddy Kennedy, he'd prefer failure to a Bush re-election.

On Tue, 18 May 2004 19:34:17 GMT, "Tom Gardner" wrote: The shell existing was a technical violation. It should have been reported to the UN and destroyed years ago. It appears that the shell was thought by the Iraqis to have been high explosive considering the way it was set off. The fact that the soldiers exposed suffered so little probably means the chemicals were either diluted or had degraded over trime. The thinking now is that the shell is at least 14 years old and maybe older. Further testing may turn up a more accurate age. All that being said it is in no way evidence of a program or of significant stockpiles of WMD. ERS

The design requires firing from an artillery piece to properly mix.

AND...the white house apparently said that this is NOT the smoking gun of WMD (at least as reported on local news). The report shocked the hell out of me.....Here they had an opportunity to Milk one old pre gulf war 1 round with an "I told you so" and they had the sense to take it for what it was. I guess more sense than some in the group who want so much to be right that they have already jumped on the bandwagon :)

IIRC, hundreds of pounds of nerve agent are unaccounted for at just the Umatilla, OR weapons depot....Don't be the pot calling the kettle black here.

Koz

Eric R Snow wrote:

So, Ted Kennedy's car has officially killed more people than Iraq's latest "WMD"

It was a binary arty round. It requires being fired from a cannon before the binary agents could mix properly for full dispersal.

Now..a Binary Sarin Round. Is it a WMD or not? The US found one. Where there is one, there is likely to be more, particularly in a country that has a history of large stockpiles of them. Id hardly think this was used as a door stop at the nearest Republican Guard COs office.

Iraq used lot numbers to indicate the contents, unlike the major players who used color coding for the type of round. It will be interesting to see if it can be determined where this one was snagged from..and how many brothers it has in the same dump.

Gunner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell

Its to the Whitehouses advantage to simply sit this one out, politically. It already raises the question in everyones mind..so they are getting brownie points by simply saying nothing.

And how many Kurds did we kill in the last 20 yrs with that stuff?

Gunner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell

In the early days - e.g. day 2 or 3 - when we saw some first bunkers that were being investigated - I saw hollow shells in a large stack that was being burned and blown up with other 'stuff'.

These, I believe, are container type war heads. Fill it with a bottle of xxxxyyy and when it rockets out - it is held in a firm bed - but the G force of impact slams it home and the whole is out gassing whatever.

Nothing has been said about that also.

Martin

Didn't kill any Kurds that I know of but killed one hell of a lot of critters where it is leaking from the bunkers. Story is that dead critters are used as the "early warning" system of a leak at Umatilla. I assume that's false but it makes a good story :)

I do know they've had lots of problems with leaks and improper procedures in burning the old stuff. I guess bad burning is better than no burning though. At least it will eventually be gone.

Scares the crap out of you when the toxic leak alarms go off in town though :)

Koz

Gunner wrote:

It being a dull day, I decide to respond to what Koz fosted Wed, 19 May 2004 15:07:36 -0700 on rec.crafts.metalworking , viz:

Part of the problem as I understand it, was that the original shells weren't really meant to last this long. So they are corroding, leaking and all that ikky metal ruining stuff we all know and hate. Plus the some of the compounds used in either the rocket propellent or the chemical weapons themselves are corrosive. To complicate things further, again , as I understand it, there seems to be a concerted effort by the 1000 Friends of Oregon et alia, (living mostly in Urban Portland) to prevent anything from actually being done to remove the weapons and dispose of them. the above mentioned incineration. Apparently, the 1000 "Friends" of oregon would rather risk the uncontrolled release of war gases upwind of the Interstate (and Pendleton), than possible dioxin contamination of a weapons storage facility.

Yea, I agree with your implied conclusions. The stuff needs to be dealt with even if there is some risk...the risk of making it actually go away is less than the long term risks of storing it or moving it (which was an apparent fiasco when done in the past at some other sites).

Anyway, my point was to those who would use a single shell found in Iraq as "proof" of WMD. Yes, it is a nasty and shouldn't be there. However, we can't even keep track of what we have so to hold someone else to a standard higher than we are able to sustain is hypocrisy.

Koz

pyotr filipivich wrote: