They store this shit South of me in Maryland and build overpressure schools in case it leaks from old munitions.
I’m not trying to hide getting a cite, but I’ve read about it in the papers and in books. The stuff stores practically forever, which is why the old WWI shells are still deadly when a farmer runs one over in Europe as happens from time to time.
On what do you base this liklihood? All available information (which is admittedly scant, but it’s what we’ve got) appears to indicate these are expired weapons. I don’t think anyone is saying the contents of those weapons, even in a degraded state, couldn’t be dangerous, but it’s one thing to have some dangerous chemicals, and quite another to have them properly packaged in a functional munition. If we’re talking “weapons” I don’t think it’s fair to say that because something has dangerous chemicals in it, it’s automatically a WMD. Those chemicals have to be in the right state for dispersal. The shell must properly deliver and disperse the agent over a wide area so as to affect a large number of people. And so on.
I can’t find anything that says any of these things were binary shells. The official reports all just say they’re too degraded to be used. I suppose that means they all must have been pre-mixed. That would make their explosive charges irrelevant vis-a-vis any attempt to define them as WMD.
I think you’re mistaken in your assertions about mustard gas. The reports say these mustard shells are too degraded for use. How about a cite they can last for “several decades?” I quoted a weapons expert above who said that these things can’t do much more than burn skin.
I think this whole arguement is silly (as I said way back on page one) but…I thought these shells were supposed to BE from the Iran/Iraq war.
I’d say that whether or not the shells are binary is moot wrt the larger arguement (i.e. if they justify the war or not)…but it would be nice to know one way or the other I suppose.
-XT
Explain “expired” in terms of a mustard gas shell.
The mustard gas is still mustard gas. The shell is still a shell. the explosive is still an explosive.
What exactly has “expired?”
You can’t just call it “expired” and handwave at it and say it’s no big deal.
What “expired” probably means in that context is that the explosive part of it is old, and apt to go off if messed with.
Old explosives are more dangerous as nitroglycerin can “sweat” out of its stabilizing agents.
Cite?
Because that’s not what the official reports are saying.
“Expired” means the mustard gas has degraded. The reports say the mustard gas has degraded. What is the basis for your assertions that it is NOT degraded?
I’m not sure what expired means, but if the weapon is characterized as “degraded”, it’s fair to use the terms synonymously. It’s no less hand-waving to wonder if the shells have corroded, and perhaps the compartment holding the agent has been breached. Exposure to air or water might change the chemical composition of the agent. We can see that wet sulfur mustard can polymerise. If it’s viscous, it can’t be dispersed like the volatile liquid, as I said. I can’t assume this is what happened, because I don’t know. All I know is the weapons are “degraded”. If it’s “degraded” it can’t be used for some reason, otherwise it’s not degraded. It’s an ex-weapon, pining for the fjords and so-forth. Maybe it’s the explosive, maybe it’s the agent inside that’s gone bad. Maybe it’s both.
I take it back. DtC reminds us it’s the mustard agent that’s gone bad.
Again, it might be dangerous, but if the wiki article is any guide, it may very well be a caustic jelly now.
You are actually confirming what I suspected, it is not idiotic to say these are not WMD, (they are not useful for that now) what they remain, in their likely degraded capacity, is to be deadly to the foolish ones willing to handle them, hence my early comment that Iraqis knew what they were all right: useless for the most recent war since they were dangerous for them to handle.
Okeydoke.
We still have it in storage at Aberdeen (or did, it was supposed to have been gotten rid of in '04.) We last made it in 1968:
It’s stored both in munitions and as the raw agent. That gives it an almost 40 year storage rate as a viable agent.
From Everything I’ve read you have to neutralize it to make it go away.
The shit is stable.
Ha, well. I’ve actually enjoyed doing the research.
It would be nice to know since, as Scylla rightfully points out, members of the general populace seem to be edging ever closer to diametrically opposite and ridiculous claims (i.e. IRAQ HAS NO WMDS EVAR or OMG THAT IS A WMD QED) over these kinds of stories, so it’s good to know what it is.
At any rate, I’m sending the CDC the following email, so hopefully I’ll know something more concrete soon–
Well, if I didn’t already have an FBI file, I have one now. 
Mustard gas doesn’t degrade unless you neutralize it.
Yeah, but that assumes that the mustard gas was of excellent purity and was stored properly, both of which may not be true. The impression I get of the Iraqi chemical weapons program was that it was in its infancy and was essentially carrying out sloppy syntheses in order to maximize short-term production during the Iran conflict.
Every single thing I can find, even on conservative blogs, says that both the sarin and the mustard gas are degraded. I quoted David Kay as saying the mustard agent would burn you if you got it on you but that’s about it.
I think that Scylla might be reading too much into the caution people take with old shells. In a degraded state (as you said) it appears to be nasty stuff that you don’t want on your skin but I can find nothing (and I tried) that says it can still be dispersed as a weaponized gas.
Under proper storage conditions, if what I have read so far is correct, most if not all of the “recent” discoveries are munitions barely buried in the sand, and reportedly degrading. And once again, it is joke to call those unsafe to handle items WMD when the enemy is smart enough not to bother pulling them out of their “storage”
So you say. nevertheless, the official reports all say this stuff is degraded. Are they lying?
I’ll bet they don’t leave it out in the sun at 118°F for 20 years. The Iraqi shells I’ve seen* all looked rusted pitted and dirty, not as if they’d been stored under any sort of controlled conditions. That makes a difference even with ‘stable’ compounds.
*papers and TV carried pix the first dozen or two times these things were dug up.
Ya damned right. Using the USA Patriot Act powers, men in black will hunt you down and drag you to a castle in Transylvania for proper reorientation.
Amidst all this fascinating nitpickery about a term of art none of us are qualified to use, I’ve somehow missed a critical translation. The OP’s title begins with a pronoun, used in place of a group of items we are supposed to know are being referenced. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out what the “those” in the title actually refers to
Now, someone tell me how the above can be logically equated to the below.
I contest the OP on different grounds. I assert the usage of the pronoun “Those” in the title is wholly improper. “Those” WMD, i.e. the ones we went to war over, were not scattered, degraded, ancient shells. These, the ones referred to in the OP, are. The two are NOT close enough for the rules of grammar to allow the use of a pronoun substitution.
Enjoy,
Steven