Or you could just buy a lot of liquid fertilizer and a truck.
DTC:
Santorum isn’t a chemical weapons expert. I doubt he inspected the shells, and he’s clearly just quoting the report summary.
Your report link is a generalized link to a series of PDFs. You’ll need to tell me which PDF you’re quoting and then quote it.
Finally, these are just appeals to authority. We know historically that mustard gas is stable and retains its potency across decades and centuries in lost shells. You would have me beleive that these are magic shells which magically degrade unlike any others due to wishful interpretations of generalized statements.
It doesn’t work that way.
We know that this mustard gas was of high quality and still viable according to UNMOVIC in 2003
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/UK/PMO/uk-pmo-iraqwmd-030303.htm
This is also pertinent:
http://www.cpeo.org/lists/military/2004/msg00661.html
I never heard of these guys, but they seem to dispute your “undisputed” evidence and claim some of the munitions are in “pristine” condition.
They quote:
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/site/modules/news/article.php?storyid=377
(these guys seem a little nutty but they have links to less nutty people and it appears they are the guys that got the report declassified, so a link to them is probably pertinent here)
And apparently Rumsfeld disputes what you say is “undisputed”
Calutrons are a way of separating nuclear material using powerful magnets. The process was used early in the Manhattan project but later abandoned for more efficient methods. Saddam had both stationary and mobile units. A picture of a calutron that was destroyed in the early 90’s can be found at this Frontline site by scrolling down to June 1991. If you remember seeing the UNSCOM team on the news chasing after a truck that snuck out the back gate of a facility they were inspecting then you were looking at a mobile calutron. General info on Calutrons.
The obvious problem with a mobile lab is the mobile part. It would be nothing to drive them onto a ship and sail to parts unknown given a little warning.
And Rumsfeld doesn’t have a vested personal interest in what these weapons contain, nosir…
Oh come on.This is just laughable–
The Rumsfield quote is just vacuous blather and doesn’t really contradict anything I’ve said, nor does it amount to a declaration that any of those shells still have WMD capability. He doesn’t even mention the mustard shells. Why not? If any of those shells still have WMD capability why isn’t anyone from the administration trumpeting it from the rooftops?
I guess then we should have stayed out since even he mentions that the threat applies to the troops in Iraq, I still see this as his weasel way of admitting those were not the weapons we went to war for.
As I see in the “update” even this blog had to cover their ass by mentioning the unfortunate detail of the weapons being old, the assertion that some were recent weapons remains wishful thinking, and I do suspect the main reason why most information remains classified is that many more Al-Qaqaa’s would be revealed for the administration to then take more heat.
Which evidently says that the mustard gas munitions are degraded. He has at least not been contradicted on this point by anyone in the White House.
It’s on the page about chemical weapons. What is your response to David Kay’s assessment that the material in the mustard shells is “probably not lethal?”
I have yet to see a cite that they retain potency under the kinds of conditions that these shells were in. They were not stored, they were rotting in the desert.
It seems to me that you are the one who would have us believe that these shells have a magical ability to resist rust and deterioration for 20 years in sand and heat (and possibly the sand-blasting effects of desert wind).
This refers to shells that had been stored in active stockpiles (and subsequently been destroyed), not these shells, not shells which had been left exposed in the desert for two decades.
[quoteThis is also pertinent:
http://www.cpeo.org/lists/military/2004/msg00661.html[/quote]
This link goes to a story about some members of an Air Force bomb disposal crew who suffered some unspecified injuries after trying to crack open a corroded WWI era munition found in Delaware. The article describes a “tar-like” substance and claims that it is suspected to have been a blistering agent. I can’t figure out why this is pertinent to any any alleged WMD capabilities of the shells found in Iraq. No one has disputed that the stuff inside these things can still be nasty and dangerous. It just can’t be weaponized as a WMD anymore.
The claim that any of these munitions are “in pristine condition” come from a single anonymous assertion on a right wing blog. I think the claim deserves to be quoed in its entirety so as to give the full effect:
[quote]
An extremely plugged-in reader with sources on the Hill writes:
It is only partially true to say that the wmd counted in the report are old--There are NEW "things" which have NOT been uncovered before, and which MAY all be from that period, but some of it is in pristine condition.
The same reader adds, concerning the legacy media stories on the WMD report:
Someone ought to be asking about the Department of Defense official who has been downplaying this, trying to bury the story. Rumsfeld came out with a big statement about this this afternoon and still the DoD "official" keeps namelessly trying to be named president of the Bush Lied League. If you check you will see that in all the articles where they go to someone to downplay it, it is always a DoD intelligence official.
Whoever this person is should be fired not only for deliberately trying to mislead the American people but also endangering our security.
Come on. I see quotes from allegedly “well connected” sources on left-wing blogs all the time making all kinds of nutty claims about Bush. He’s drinking again. He’s having an affair with Condi Rice. I hope that stuff is true for my own amusement but I would never be crazy enough to try to cite any of it here.
IIRC, Saddam reported in his 13,000 page accounting of Iraq’s weapons, that many chemical weapons caches had been bombed by coalition forces during desert storm, and the precise status us some of those weapons was undeterminable:
Rumsfeld should know that, which makes his claim that Saddam ‘inaccurately alleged’ a bit of a lie. At this late date, that should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Rummy’s career.
Thanks for having the integrity to say so. Now, if only it were contagious. Wait, on the off chance that it is, could you, like make out John Hindraker and others pushing the idea that these are THE wmd?
Hang on - are you referring to the June 1991 incident ? Surely you’re not unaware that these specific calutrons were destroyed later… Scroll to the bottom
As it happens, your own bloody link shows a picture of destroyed calutrons. And those were not “mobile calutrons” - those were disassembled calutrons, loaded on trucks for transport. I hope the difference is obvious, but seeing as this thread has shown the need to reclarify terms like “expired” or “weapon”, I am probably unduly optimistic. (There’s a teeny problem in making a mobile calutorn facility. They need to be cascaded in the hundreds to work. And they need an ungodly amount of power. Unless Iraq developed a mobile powerplant in the double-digits MW class.)
I really hope that I am misunderstanding you, but it sounds as if you’re arguing that the absence of evidence of calutrons is really evidence that they were there, but mobile.
How about if I belittle it as a “weapon of mass destruction” even if it’s not degraded?
I should say up front, Scylla, that my argument here isn’t with you, since you agree that these aren’t the WMDs we would have gone to war over. I’m just using your post as a jumping-off place in case Shodan returns to the debate.
Also:
No question that it’s nasty stuff, and as long as I have a choice in the matter, I’d stay the hell away from it. It causes nasty burns, and if it gets into your eyes or lungs in serious concentration, it can leave you crippled. But it’s not often lethal, its effects are largely treatable, and dispersal works against its effectiveness. If we were to go to war in order to prevent an off-chance that this stuff might be used in an attack against us, we would have totally lost it.
Bugs are flying creatures that are known to bite, and can frequently be seen around fruit. Bats obviously have wings and teeth, and we’ve all heard of the “fruit bat.”
I say bats are bugs.
You’re up.
Thank you.
It appears that even though the calutrons had been loaded on to trucks, it’s not clear they were “a mobile uranium enrichment setup.” It doesn’t seem that they could be run while on the trucks.
The obvious problem with a mobile lab is the mobile part. It would be quite a task to supply them with enough power to operate.
“… to produce one gram of uranium enriched at 3.5 percent (which is the type of uranium needed by a nuclear power plant [weapon grade is an even higher percentage]) through the electromagnetic approach would involve spending five times more energy than the energy produced by the reactor.”
Electro-Magnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) “Calutron”
Iraq’s facilities were comparable in size to the electromagnetic isotope separation of the Manhattan Project, which developed the US atomic weapons in the 1940s, representing a four-to eight-billion-dollar investment on the Iraqis’ part. The calutron technology is not obsolete, though it is expensive – this technique has not been used for 45 years because it is not economic. Once the plants at Al Sharqat and Tarmiyah went into operation [with hundreds of calutrons each], Iraq would have been able to produce enough enriched uranium for one bomb a year from each plant.
The leader of the Iraqi enrichment program, Dr. Jaffar, initially claimed that the primary aim of the programme was to develop a technological and industrial infrastructure, and that enriched uranium was needed for the research reactors and for a future nuclear power program. But to produce one gram of uranium enriched at 3.5 percent (which is the type of uranium needed by a nuclear power plant) through the electromagnetic approach would involve spending five times more energy than the energy produced by the reactor. The combination in the Iraqi EMIS programme of high capacity/modest separation and low capacity/high separation would be particularly useful if the goal was to produce highly enriched uranium. [DGSP 1991-3] Although Iraq was at, or close to, the threshold of success in its endeavour to produce highly enriched uranium through the electro-magnetic isotope separation (EMIS) process, there is no indication that Iraq has produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material nor any indication that Iraq has otherwise acquired such material. [S/1998/694] Iraq claimed that only about half a kilogram of uranium at an average enrichment level of 4% had been produced.
This story is hard to cite because it died on the net. Reason ,it was thoroughly discredited. The weapons are degraded and in degraded strructures. Maybe you could get them Fedexed bit they wont be picked up and loaded to go anywhere. Its a waste to try to convince those who desperately want to believe the war had a proper basis. Sorry it didn’t.
mobile means they’re mobile.
Not sure where you’re going with this. Mobile does not mean it’s a self contained uranium plant. It just means it’s mobile. It can be moved around the city of Bagdad, the country of Iraq or the continents of Europe or Asia.
The internet is made up of lots of little computers hooked together. Your brain is made of lots neurons hooked together. Despite this similarity, your brain is not the internet.
Many things share similarities. This does not make them the same. We’re working with my two year old on this concept. Would you like us to copy you one? Could you benefit from a refresher?
Despite that some bats and some bugs share some similarities, they are not the same. Bugs are by definition insects. Bats are by definition mammals. It is impossible that they be the same.
This does not preclude them from sharing common traits.
[/QUOTE]
Rumsfeld is in the White House and he contradicted it. This is good we started off with “undisputed,” now we’re with “not contradicted at this point by anyone in the White House.” Neither is true.
You seem very intent on making an argument from athority here. Personally, I don’t care who says what. I prefer to think for myself. In this case, the historical and scientific evidence says Mustard gas lasts. This doesn’t change no matter how many politicians assert otherwise.
My response is the same as it has been before. I need an actual cite. That isn’t one. You need to do better than “it’s in there somewhere.” If you expect me to respond to it, I actually expect you to present it. Document/page number/quote. If you can’t do that, don’t waste my time.
The ones they dig up in France aren’t stored either and they’re going on a century.
I’m sure they can rust and deteriorate and degrade. However, as long as they are not actually breached the mustard gas inside them should be viable.
You need to understand that the mustard gas inside the shells is not exposed to the elements until such time as the shell deteriorates to the point that it loses it’s integrity. Also, burying something in the sand isn’t such a terrible thing. We store aircraft in the desert so they don’t deteriorate. No humidity, you know. Buried in the sand it’s cooler. Mummies last a long time. Buried in the sand is not a particularly hostile environment for an artifact. Certainly it’s not as hostile as a muddy field in France, or the bottom of a salt water sea, both of which are environments where mustard gas munitions have survived for far longer periods.
If you think it’s “nasty and dangerous” than why can’t it be weaponized?
Anonymous is bad? What’s the name of the source for “degraded?”
That’s fine. I’ve said before that I think WMD is a “Red Herring,” and I’ve said these shells do not justify the invasion. BUT they are WMDs. Mustard gas was cited by such by Bush and others as a WMD that Saddam used against his own people, and Bush did mention unnacounted for missing shells filled with chemical weapons and called them WMDs, and I don’t think anybody really argued.
I think if there is a binary shell of Sarin that could be mixed to make Sarin gas and I think it there is shell of viable mustard gas than both those shells qualify as WMDs by previously generally accepted standards.
I think they are shitty WMDs. They are not the WMDs used to justify the war. I despise the revision that suddenly comes up and claims Sarin and mustard gas aren’t WMDs. Both were mentioned as such in various UN reports leading up to the war and in the aftermath. Why are they suddenly not WMDs right now?
Again, I don’t have an agenda with this. I’m just trying to call a spade a spade. The WMD case made for the war was about mobile biological labs, nuclear programs, biological weapons and vast storehouses of chemical weapons, as well as ongoing programs to create tons of newer nastier shit and the means to disperse it. That was the argument.
A few paltry shells of old chemical agents do not support that argument. If somebody wants to make the argument that they do, let them try.
But I do think we should be in service to the truth, and the truth is that shells of mustard gas and sarin lying around in the desert in the middle of a violent insurgency are to be taken seriously. The truth is that they are WMDs, according to the definitions that have generally been accepted since 2002-3 or so.
I really don’t see what the disagreement or issue is against these. I don’t see why people insist on belittling them or blindly asserting that they are somehow not dangerous or can’t be weaponized.
We all knew they were there. I don’t recall anybody saying that Saddam didn’t have them in the 90s and that he didn’t use them. They weren’t why we went in there.
So it’s not like anybody has anything to lose here by the fact that these shells exist, and it’s not like it strenghtens anybody else’s argument that they do.
It’s really scary because it doesn’t kill. It cripples and blinds and gives you cancer and leaves you scarred and fucked up for life. To me, that’s worse than a quick clean death. But I agree that going to war for 500 old shells would have been stupid, particularly when the chemistry to make this stuff is within the reach of just about anybody willing to put in the effort.
The Representative from Pennsylvania Disagrees:
Apparently we went to war so that we could recover the chemical shells we blew into the weeds during Desert Storm. That really does sound stupid, but at least Weldon’s being open about it, and not trying to cover with some other lame rationale.