I suppose that the troops can use standard demolition methods with the small and medium regular munitions, but what do they do with the large conventional warheads and the chemical/biological weapons? I don’t think that they’d be inclined to fly or ship them back to the U.States.A., so they must have to deal with them somehow on continent.
Assuming that they just take all of the missile warheads out into the desert and let the demolitions team do their stuff, have they constructed facilities to “decommission” all of the chemical and biological weapons? And what about the uranium, will it just be absorbed by U.S.American and U.Kingdom nuclear programmes?
Just wondering, because the transport of these exotics to centralized disposal/decommissioning sites must prove an extra danger for the Coalition of the Willing troops involved. One might guess that a truck so laden would prove an excellent target for Axis of Evil insurgents. I certainly hope that the drivers get whatever amounts to danger pay in the military.
Also, are the facilities where they deal with the nuclear/biological/chemical weapons all grouped together in one area for easy defense, or spread out over random locations for better security?
I believe the Army used to use incineration for some of its old chemical warheads. I seem to remember quite the controversy about it in Mississippi circa the late 80s, when I was a kid. No cites or anything, just my hazy memory.
Another History Channel cite, but I believe that in 1991 they just burnt whatever they found (only chemicals were mentioned). Indeed there was some speculation on the History Channel programme that I was watching that this had caused some of the chemical alerts that the troops kept getting.
Just checking, but a lot of the OP was tongue in cheek, right?
Currently Anniston Army Depot, Anniston, Alabama is destroying many old chemical munitions. Incineration is the current method, though no doubt that is subject change with the composition of said material!
Select locals made a big bruhaha but so far it’s gone well.
Or, are you assuming that Iraq had chemical weapons in the first place?
Even the President seems to have retracted his claims that the weapons existed and now says that our boys were killed to stop a program which might have developed chemical weapons…
I saw Colin Powel when he spoke the U.N… He showed the weapons facilities. He showed that they were actively manufacturing both chemical and biological weapons. I saw with my own eyes the slides, photo’s and cell intercepts that provided the incontrovertible proof. He didn’t use words like might, or maybe. Mr. Powel is a formal U.S.American General – he does not lie. The President of the U.S.America spoke before congress (was it congress? I only saw a recording) about the uranium that Iraq had imported. This is the President of the U.S.America, he does not lie. Not only is he the president, but a Republican. We already know that Democrats lie, just look at fellatiogate and office furnituregate. If a president faced impeachment over something as trivial as fellatio, he/she’d be in jail by now if he/she lied about something as serious as nuclear weapons (not to mention the chemical/biological stockpiles).
To entertain the notion that the Coalition of the Willing are not presently dealing with the fruits of the Axis of Evil’s labours isn’t only unthinkable, it verges on sedition.
If weapons of mass destruction were burried in the sand in Iraq, it would have taken us a maximum of six hours before we found them. I have no idea what remote sensing capabilities the US military has, but I do know what NASA has, and between ground-penetrating radar, various forms of sonar, differential gravetometry, etc., a metal object burried in a sand dune would be detectable from orbit.
… and of course, it would be easily distinguished from the scant handful of non-chemical-weapon metal objects that have been buried in the Iraqi desert since mankind first settled into that part of the world a few thousand years ago.
I imagine a few hundred shells buried in a slit trench wouldn’t look anything like a stranded fuel tanker that got lost and covered up in a sandstorm, or a derelict Iraqi tank from the Iran-Iraq war or Gulf War I. No, not at all, and especially not once you’re real close up to it like those polar-orbiting satellites get.
Sorry, Chronos, but finding a specific type of small metal object buried under sand of uncertain composition and at unknown depth is not the kind of problem remote sensing was ever designed to solve.
Your argument is logically equivalent to saying that space is a very big place, therefore it implies that there are UFOs, unless I can prove there aren’t.
This is a logical fallacy. It’s impossible to prove a negative. The size of Iraq or the amount of sand it has proves nothing except that it’s big and sandy.
Anyways, back to the question at hand, UNSCOM operated a chemical weapons destruction site at Muthanna, Iraq, for a number of years. Weapons from around the country were moved to this site for destruction, unless the weapons were leaking or too dangerous to be moved, at which point mobile labs were called in.
At Muthanna, destruction proceeded in the following manner:
Bulk nerve agents: chemical neutralization.
Mustard: incineration.
122m rockets with nerve agent: vaporized with explosives (yee-ha)
Precursor chemicals: Either incinerated or neutralized in a limestone-filled pool (no swimming)
My interpretation of your comments is that you seem to think that Iraqi chemical weapons have been discovered in the aftermath of the war.
Dealing strictly with facts (given the forum), the evidence provided by Colin Powell built a strong case that Iraqis still had something to do with WMD, but there have been no stockpiles of chemcial or biological weapons found in Iraq after the war that began on March 20, 2003. This is a plain fact.
It does not mean that there are no weapons still hidden in Iraq. It does not mean that Iraq did not possess the means to build new weapons, if it decided to do so. It simply means that the United States has no idea what happened to any chemical or biological weapons that might have been in the country between 1998 (when UN weapons inspectors were kicked out) and 2003 (when the war began).
Nor does it mean that the President and Secretary Powell lied to the people. Lying generally means intentionally making something up in order to deceive. It could well be that our intelligence was simply not right about Saddam having stockpiles of WMD.
In case you don’t believe my claim that no WMD has been found, I kindly refer you to this, the interim report of the American lead weapons inspector, Dr. David Kay. He works for the CIA. At the beginning of the fourth paragaph, his report reads:
"We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. "
The U.S. has plenty of experience with large chemical weapons demolitions, because we destroyed most of our own chemical arsenal during the 1990s in response to the end of the Cold War. I believe incineration is the preferred method. Ravenman may also be correct about the Multhanna site, but even if Multhanna isn’t available any more, we have plenty of our own facilities to handle the job, if we ever find any Iraqi chemical weapons.
No president has faced impeachment over fellatio. There was a president impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted on both counts.
A president cannot be impeached for fellatio, because fellatio is not a high crime, while perjury is. Lying to the public about nuclear weapons, however reprehensible, is not a crime that I am aware of, so even should it be proven that President Bush lied about Iraqi weapons, he could not be impeached simply for that. Unless he’s been testifying about the weapons in some court of law that I’m not aware of…