NEWS: Nerve Gas Shell DOES NOT Explode in Iraq

POLITICS: Nerve Gas Shell DOES NOT Explode in Iraq

Two U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal team members were not treated for exposure to sarin gas after an Improvised Explosive Device did not explode in Iraq today.

Of course General Kimmit was lying. Actor Sean Penn told everybody at the Oscars that there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Therefore the shell must not have existed and could not have gone off.

This is not a Hat Tip: Roger L. Simon

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: "Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet...is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction?"

SEC. RUMSFELD: "Not at all. If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat. "

I guess Rumsfled meant to say "We know where IT is but since there's only one, we expect it to be really difficult find. Hope some Iraqi will plant it next to the road somewhere."

In other news, the DoD does not routinely claim to have found chemical weapons only to issue the quietest of corrections days later, and one shell of unknown is a direct and immediate threat to the security and sovereignty of the US, an saying "I think you have a crush on Rummy" is an intolerable slur on your sexuality.

Film at 11.

Even the DoD is playing this down. One US Army source on the BBC even said they didn't even think the people who planted the bomb new what they had.

...and they accuse liberals of turning molehills into mountains.

It was an old shell left over from the 80's. Artillery shells by definition cannot be WMDs otherwise they'd destroy the people who fired them. Duh...

reprobate is just saying that because he has a crush on Sean Penn.

The fun part about an article written as sarcasm is that you don't even have to pretend to take reprobate seriously.

Don't you have to have your sense of humor removed at birth to be a Neocon?

anaphalaxis,

One 155mm sarin round going off in a football stadium would kill 50% of the crowd. For that matter, one 155mm HE round would probably get similar numbers with less persistancy. If the round had been set off properly in Madrid on 3/11, it would have killed a lot more people than the conventional explosives did. Finally, chemical agents hurt emergency services people a lot because the initial responders don't know what's wrong until they're dead.

Stiles,

Neocon implies conversion. Do the math here. I campaigned for George McGovern in 1972, was I a neocon then? Or just somebody with an eight-year old's understanding of politics. Since I was eight at the time, that makes sense.

I have no idea what grown-ups are doing supporting Kucinich, but it's not like there are a lot of them...

Well there you go making the classic unproven link between Iraq and terrorism. You can shout about it as long as you want but it just isn't there. Saddam was a dictator not a terrorist.

Look, it's not surprising there might be some WMD's left in Iraq. After all, we sold Saddam as many as he could pay for when he was our buddy in the '80s.

But in making the case for war, the point was argued that Saddam had a vast quantity of WMD's that posed an immediate threat to us, and was making more. Neither has been proven. Finding one shell that might be more than 20 years old doesn't prove it either.

What the US said about Saddam's WMD's was wrong at best, and a complete lie at worst. This doesn't make it any truer.

hear hear.

this is not me laughing at pat's article.

See? I thought so...

Thats... thats beyond the pale!

What's all the fuss about? Actor Sean Penn says there are no WMD's in Iraq. Case closed. That leaves no room for argument. You all know you're right, and you all know the government is lying. Why is there still room for debate here?

I'm somewhat conservative, and I have somewhat of a personal stake in all this, and even I understand that this one shell doesn't prove anything.

However, anaphalaxis, WMD is usually loosely defined as "a weapon that can kill or injure lots and lots of people at one time". An artillery round properly fitted with a chemical or nerve agent will not destroy the people who fire it, and depending where it landed, could definitely be categoriized as a WMD. If you were only referring to the kind that lay on the side of the road, not fired from a tube, they still can be command detonated from a safe distance, and not destroy the freedom fighters who are employing them.

I think that may be a bit broad, using that definition you could pretty much call most conventional bombs and artillery WMDs, which I don't think are generally accepted as such.

I think you might want to rework it to include something about them being unconventional, ie not a simple explosive device, in nature.

Just a thought.

[Edited on May 17, 2004 by digitalrhino]

Hey, if you say so, whatever ...you're the expert.
I was really just refuting the "by definition, artillery cannot be.." statement, not trying to specifically define WMD. I will leave that for someone with more time on their hands

WMD is a loose definition, but no sane person wants to be in the same city as several dozen pounds of sarin gas. Sarin is not the most frightening of commonly available chemical agents, ricin is. If the 155mm shell discovered in Iraq yesterday had been properly decanted and deployed, 9/11 would have been viewed as a slow day by comparison.

What is really bothersome is that people evil enough to set an IED would cheerfully have given us an NBA finals that lived up to their name if they had been smart and competant enough to realize what they had. It is no longer a matter of speculation of: Will Saddam's WMD reach the hands of terrorists? Yesterday it happened.

That, however, is the trick with chemical weapons. So much depends on the wind, and other uncontrollable factors. A perfect deployment is quite the rarity.

Remember the Aum Cult bombing of the Tokyo subway with Sarin. In many ways, it was an ideal situation: People packed together in an enclosed space, entire bags full of a substance considered lethal at 1/2 mg per person... and yet only a dozen people died. (Hundreds were sickened, likely for life.) What went wrong? The bags didn't pop well. The floor of the trains where the bags were resting were cold that day, slowing the evaporation of the sarin. (Sarin is deadliest in gas form. In one case, railway workers were mopping the stuff up by hand, having no idea what they were dealing with. They ended up covered in liquid sarin. One died. One.)

Point is, with chemical weapons, a perfect deployment is the stuff of nightmares, but it's also far more rare than fearmongers lead us to believe. There's a reason why nukes are still the WMD of choice, ahead of chemical weapons or germs.

i think it's also important to remember here that roadside bombs made from artillery shells are about the most common weapon used in iraq right now.
the fact that the first and only sarin shell found up untill now was used in a roadside bomb where it is hardly effective probably means that whoever planted that thing found one of those shells through sheer luck and didn't even know what it was.

if they actually knew it was a sarin shell they'd probably have saved it untill they found a artillery piece to lob that thing at a camp or stockade.
this isn't proof anyone has weapons of mass destruction it's just proof some random scavenger chanced upon a 20 yr old shell.
the only scary part is that they might have found a whole crate full of them and now they know what they are.

Perhaps foreign combatants brought in foreign WMDs...

There was not sarin gas in that artillery round, the sarin gas was planted by the American mercenaries who wander lost in the desert! God will roast their stomachs in hell.

No it isn't. It is defined as a weapon that causes.... mass destruction...

Have you read this thread Stockula?