Americans in Iraq Attacked W Bomb Containing Nerve Gas (WMD)

Never studied semantics, McG?

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Political semantics is the art of arranging words which look like they mean something but actually mean nothing.

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A lot of that around these parts.

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McGentrix wrote:

semantic alternatives?

(weasel words)

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Isn't the spider calling the weasel hairy?

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I started out my post with:

There is a lot of semantic dispute over what WMD means.

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Sarin-Filled Munitions in Iraq Worry U.S.
By John J Lumpkin

WASHINGTON (AP) - The discovery of an artillery shell apparently filled with a deadly nerve agent has raised fears among U.S. officials that insurgents may have more - and will learn how to use them to greater effect. But officials stopped short of claiming the munition was definite evidence of a large weapons stockpile in prewar Iraq or evidence of recent production by Saddam's regime - the Bush administration's chief stated reason for invasion.
Some U.S. officials and weapons experts suggested the artillery shell may be an experimental design that predates the 1991 Gulf War. A defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the origin and age of the artillery shell are under investigation, but said shells of this type have a long shelf life, so it could have been constructed some time ago.
David Kay, the former top U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq, said it's possible the sarin shell was an old one, overlooked when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein said he had destroyed such weapons in the mid-1990s. Kay, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said he doubted the shell or the nerve agent came from a surviving hidden stockpile, but didn't rule out that possibility. " It is hard to know if this is one that just was overlooked - and there were always some that were overlooked, we knew that - or if this was one that came from a hidden stockpile,'' Kay said. "I rather doubt that because it appears the insurgents didn't even know they had a chemical round".

Link

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Weapons of Mass Destruction 101
The Cliff Notes version.
A basic course in WMDs
Professor: Fedral
Prerequisites: A brain and one functioning eye.

Definition of WMD:

1) Nuclear Weapons

2) Chemical Weapons

3) Biological Weapons

Definition of a WMD attack:

Using one of the above three weapon types in an attack against an enemy

Examples of WMD attacks:

1) Nuclear:
Hiroshima 1945
Nagasaki 1945

2) Chemical:
1000 BC. Arsenic smoke used by the Chinese.
October 1914: German artillery fire 3,000 shells filled with dianisidine chlorosulfate, a lung irritant, at British troops.
1915, Allied troops made chorine gas attacks.
Germany next came up with diphosgene gas; the French tried cyanide gas.
In July 1917, Germany introduces mustard gas.
March 20, 1995 AUM Shinrikyo doomsday cult releases Sarin gas in the Kasumigaseki subway station in Tokyo

3) Biological
Middle Ages, Black Death infected corpses catapulted into besieged cities
1495: The Spanish offered wine spiked with the blood of leprosy patients to the French near Naples.
During the American Civil War, future Kentucky governor Luke Blackburn, MD, sold Union troops clothing contaminated with smallpox and yellow fever.
1916 Germans attempt to infect the French cavalry horses with the disease of glanders.
WWII In attacking the Chinese, Japan's Unit 731, spread cholera, dysentery, typhoid, plague, and anthrax.

Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

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No, it doesn't.

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:::

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Lightwizard wrote:

No, it doesn't.

Hmmm... perhaps you do not have either of the prerequisites LW.

You might need to take my WMD 100 course which is a NON credit course.

In this course, you get first hand knowledge of WMDs by actually having one USED on you.
Most who take this course are satisfied when the Sarin gas destroy their nervous system that they have indeed been the victim of a WMD.

Hope to see you next semester! Laughing

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Tarantulas wrote:

Who else in the Middle East was using Sarin gas in artillery shells? No one I know of outside Iraq. So yes, I'm assuming it used to belong to Saddam.

Aum Shinrikyo produced their own sarin in their Satian 7 building. It's not hard to make Tarantulas and does not have to come from the only source you'd knew of. It could have been produced by a couple guys in a building somewhre.

Sarin is easy to produce and using an IED to attempt delivery is hardly notable.

In other words, you are using the most circumstantial of evidence for your assumption.

But I think it's a pretty safe assumption.

I'd bet it was a shell from the late 80's and was not part of Saddam's arsenal since before the gulf war.

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I didn't know the administration had "dismissed" any chemical weapons.

Ya live, ya lern. But as an aside, does it surprise you that Kay said this particular shell was no big deal?

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I'm not sure what a "low level munition" full of nerve gas might be.

Allow me to explain then. This IED had a snowball's chance in hell of killing more than 10 people. It takes a lot of the "mass" out of "Weapons of mass destruction" even though it is a WMD according to the trinity definition.

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And I'm not sure if you're using the word "caliber" to mean the diameter of the shell or the quality of its contents.

Quality of contents plus ineffective delivery system. The plastic bags and umbrellas that Aum Shinrikyo used are a more effective system than that.

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But I think the discovery of several liters of nerve gas in an exploded IED should matter very much.

How much? I can buy several liters of a blister agent in a few minutes from a legal establishment here. "Nerve gas" is worse but the question (rhetorical since you said you are waiting to see) is whether or not this constitutes a casus beli. IMO, this would be a laughable casus beli.

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My question to the "other side" was, how many of these shells would it take to call the total "WMD"?

And I answered. One. Totas do not influence the question of whether or not it was a WMD, it reflects on whether or not it was a significant threat to America (which it wasn't, it'd be easier to produce the sarin locally for a stateside attack).

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I'm tempted to say that since there shouldn't have been any WMD in the whole country, finding even one is justification enough.

Tarantulas, WMD is a broad enough term that it is impossible to declare that a whole nation should be without any traces of it. I myself have possessed things that were classified as WMDs.

In fact, so do you, right now I bet. The "only nuke" definition aside, all the blistering agents are being called WMD these days.

I have WMDs under my bathroom sink (chlorine). Sarin is a horse of a far different color, but it is again a chemical agent so easy to produce that there's no need for governmental support to do so.

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I doubt a Sarin-filled artillery shell would be owned by a private citizen.

Why do you doubt it? I am a private citizen who owns a tactical battlefield agent (just as do most households) and if I lived in the mid-east I wouldn't have a hard time finding artillery shells.

There have been other stories of private citizens sitting on WMD related products and plans in Iraq, so why would this surprise you?

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Do note that sarin is not too difficult to get, remember the 1995 subway attacks. The IED in Iraq is fuleling several leaps of faith here.

Sarin may be easy to get, but the artillery shell designed to disperse it definitely isn't.

Incorrect, these type of artillery shells are very easy to procure and/or create.

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I don't consider it a leap of faith to say the shell belonged to Saddam.

You do so in effor, it is a leap of faith (though one I happen to share with you because I think it reasonably likely).

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WMD was not the only reason to go to war with Iraq, but it was a reason.

It was the only legal ground we had hopes to walk on. There can be many other reasons, but they are irrelevant to international law.

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Apparently we're looking for lots and lots of WMD, too. I don't know how much biological agent would be needed to count as WMD. How many atomic bombs would satisfy the lefties? Hard to tell.

There's two main definitions for WMD. One is "only nukes" the other is "nukes, biological and chemical".

The inclusion of chemical is such that every household has dilluted WMDs.

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I think it was the British who thought Saddam could deploy his WMD against the Coalition within 45 minutes in a war.

Actually, I think they were saying that it was 45 minutes to deploy them in an attack on Britain and such but don't remember this particular detail clearly.

In any case, while you are posing questions to the "other side" I've another for you.

Do you think this kind of chemical weapon posed a significant and "dire" threat to the USA? And if so, does the fact that it's easier to produce Sarin in the US than to bring it in weigh into your accessment?

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I guess I'm not surprised at what David Kay says. I don't attach a lot of importance to it either.

I would still dispute your claim that a 155mm artillery shell specifically designed to disperse chemical gas is easy to create. If it had been a homemade artillery shell I'll bet the troops would have been able to pick up on that right away. And why would someone build an artillery shell if they didn't have the gun to fire it with? Occam's Razor was mentioned in another topic here, and I think it's good enough for this thread too. It pretty much had to be Saddam's weapon.

Craven de Kere wrote:

Quote:
WMD was not the only reason to go to war with Iraq, but it was a reason.

It was the only legal ground we had hopes to walk on. There can be many other reasons, but they are irrelevant to international law.

Let me once again refer you to Public Law 107-243, which contains all the reasons we went to war, as approved by Congress. Brutal repression of civilian population, refusing to release non-Iraqi citizens detained during the first gulf war, failing to return property seized from Kuwait, attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush, firing on Coalition forces enforcing the no-fly zones, giving aid and shelter to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, and disregarding UN resolutions. And probably a whole lot more but my fingers are tired of typing. WMD was only one of several reasons for going in there, and even if we never find any WMD other than the two artillery shells, we were still justified.

As for making your own WMD, I doubt they're worried about someone mixing bleach and ammonia, or whatever other household chemicals might be under your kitchen sink. The WMD we're going to see is stuff that was already built and ready to go, like what they found in the artillery shell. If most of Saddam's WMD is stored in the Bakaa Valley in Syria as the rumors have said, then maybe we're seeing some of that being brought back in, both to Amman and to Iraq. It makes me a little suspicious that we've had two chemical shells detonated within a couple of weeks of each other when there haven't been any before this. It also makes me wonder what lies ahead for the Coalition soldiers.

Craven de Kere wrote:

Do you think this kind of chemical weapon posed a significant and "dire" threat to the USA? And if so, does the fact that it's easier to produce Sarin in the US than to bring it in weigh into your accessment?

Yes I do, because Saddam aided terrorists by giving them money, so he might as easily have given them chemical and biological weapons if they had said they wanted to travel to the US and attack us. He might as easily have given Sarin production plans to any potential US-attacking terrorists too. But he had things like mustard gas and VX and whatever else. He could have loaded up a couple of suitcases for them and booked them a flight to Washington or Chicago or New York City. And that is both a significant and a dire threat.

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Tarantulas wrote:

Craven de Kere wrote:
Quote:
WMD was not the only reason to go to war with Iraq, but it was a reason.

It was the only legal ground we had hopes to walk on. There can be many other reasons, but they are irrelevant to international law.

Let me once again refer you to Public Law 107-243, which contains all the reasons we went to war, as approved by Congress.

Note the part of my statement that I made bold. Public Law 107-243 had no bearing on international law and absolutely no jurisdiction in Iraq.

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WMD was only one of several reasons for going in there, and even if we never find any WMD other than the two artillery shells, we were still justified.

That is, of course, your opinion.

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Craven de Kere wrote:
Do you think this kind of chemical weapon posed a significant and "dire" threat to the USA? And if so, does the fact that it's easier to produce Sarin in the US than to bring it in weigh into your accessment?

Yes I do, because Saddam aided terrorists by giving them money, so he might as easily have given them chemical and biological weapons if they had said they wanted to travel to the US and attack us. He might as easily have given Sarin production plans to any potential US-attacking terrorists too.

Huh? I think you still think Sarin is hard to produce. Again, it is not at all difficult. Nobody needs Saddam to do it. :-)

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But he had things like mustard gas and VX and whatever else. He could have loaded up a couple of suitcases for them and booked them a flight to Washington or Chicago or New York City. And that is both a significant and a dire threat.

Yeah, but this is where you depart from reality into fantasy and conjecture. This is where you start talking about nightmarish possibility and disregard probability.

Anyone can invoke a boogeyman Tarantulas.

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I think the bogeyman is here -- suggesting that in order to know what a WMD is would be to have one used on them. I suggest they more likely know because they have one in their garage.

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Tarantulas wrote:

So an Iranian website is accusing the US of doing something bad? What a shock. And yes, that's definitely an ad hominem attack, or in other words, "consider the source."

I meant that as a joke,thus the 'wink'. Regarding the source,given all the lies that have been told by this administration one could say the same about them,everything said by them can be described as an ad hominem attack.One persons source is anothers propoganda.

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Fedral wrote:

The problem with this story is that we don't HAVE any more chemical weapons of this type. They were all destroyed or rendered inert many years ago. The United States decided a long time back that the only WMD that we choose to have are nuclear ones and that all supplies of the other two sides of the WMD Triad (Chemical and biological) were to be eliminated from our arsenal.

For a country that doesn't have any more chemical/biological weapons they do quite a lot of research into these types of weapons.Why is it that no one is allowed to inspect the USA's weapons plants?If there's nothing to hide then open the doors.Do you classify Depleted Uranium as nuclear?

Chemical and Biological Weapons: Possession and Programs Past and Present
http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/possess.htm

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It seems like they are flailing at anything and everything to try to prove their point, but failing miserably. Any country with high school chemistry will probably be able to produce sarin, so to make the case that one missile with "a probability" with sarin just leaks piss.

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C.I:

Of course.

As more and more people wake up to see what we've gotten ourselves into:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0511-05.htm

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_Marina_ wrote:

Fedral wrote:
The problem with this story is that we don't HAVE any more chemical weapons of this type. They were all destroyed or rendered inert many years ago. The United States decided a long time back that the only WMD that we choose to have are nuclear ones and that all supplies of the other two sides of the WMD Triad (Chemical and biological) were to be eliminated from our arsenal.

For a country that doesn't have any more chemical/biological weapons they do quite a lot of research into these types of weapons.Why is it that no one is allowed to inspect the USA's weapons plants?If there's nothing to hide then open the doors.Do you classify Depleted Uranium as nuclear?

Chemical and Biological Weapons: Possession and Programs Past and Present
http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/possess.htm

Lets see... perhaps we do not wish our enemies to see how the weapons we developed many years ago were MADE ?

There is this little thing called National Security...

We dont show the enemies or even neutrals how we make our weapons systems so they don't end up using them against us in the future.

Or perhaps you think we should invite China, Syria, North Korea, Iran and every other nation on earth into our classified facilities to 'look around'... maybe take some samples to bring home for the kiddies ... bring the camera ... don't forget your laptop so you can download our mainframe.... yes... lets do that. Rolling Eyes

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Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

Yes, war accomplishes a lot...we learn many lessons.......that's why there's always one going on....and for the same reasons.....and each side has a mandate from a deity.....man if we keep accomplishing and learning at this rate.... :wink:

The question was not whether war brings utopia, you said that war never accomplishes anything. This is the statement being discussed, and it is just on the face of it wrong. By raising an army and fighting the British, the American colonies won their freedom. By entering WW2, the US helped stop Hitler.

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Americans in Iraq Attacked W Bomb Containing Nerve Gas (WMD)

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