'nerve Gas Bomb' Explodes In Iraq

[BigBank_Hank]

Originally posted by Busyman@17 May 2004 - 12:48
I think that there is much more of this to come the closer we get to the election.

I'm sure you also think that the military has also captured Bin Laden and that Bush is waiting to use that until its almost election time

[BigBank_Hank]

News Update:

It also seems that Mustard Gas was also found at a different location.

[vidcc]

hank

However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the escalation of insurgent activity.

He said the round dated back to the Iran-Iraq war and coalition officials were not sure whether the fighters even knew what it contained.

we are still finding unexploded munitions from WW11, including land and sea mines, grenades and bombs that failed to detonate on impact. It would be almost impossible to account for every single round of ammunition that iraq ever had, it's not as if these things are the size of a cruise missile.
Nobody here has denied that saddam has had weapons...we sold most of them to him in the first place... but to find the odd remnant of such weapons and use that as proof of his danger at the time we invaded would be scraping the barrel. It's hardly the threat to world peace we have been told it might be.

personally i think the world is more dangerous now than it was before we invaded. This opinion has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the decision to invade and everything to do with the side effects that have resulted. Iraq is now and even after the handover will be more unstable than it has been for a long long time and even if you agree with the reasons for invading it cannot be denied that the instability is a direct result.

[Biggles]

Mustard Gas and Sarin are both technologies that are over 70 years old. The number of rounds used in the 80s Iran/Iraq war was huge - as was the number that failed to detonate etc.,. There will still be caches of these weapons probably unmarked and definitely deteriorating on the original battlefields. They will be a hazard in the future for whoever runs the country.

Their existence is irrelevant to the arguments put forward that Saddam was developing a modern long range capability that threatened the West. The supposed reason for the war.

The shell used formed part of an improvised bomb and was not delivered as originally intended, via artillery. It looks more like insurgents simply cobbling together bombs out of whatever they find. This is only worrying if they suddenly realise what they have done and have found a stock pile of these shells somewhere. If they let a lot off together in a crowded place they might do damage - although it is difficult to control artillery shells in that sort of way.

What is remarkable is not that this has happened, but that after a year of intensive searching this is the first Iran/Iraq chemical shell to re-appear. What is certain is that if the insurgents are playing around with badly maintained 30 year old shells they are as liable to kill themselves as anyone else.

[hobbes]

After the Gulf War, United Nations inspectors found large quantities of sarin in production at an Iraqi chemical weapons plant.

A senior coalition source said the round dated back to the Iran-Iraq war and coalition officials were not sure whether the fighters even knew what it contained.

As we found upon entering Iraq, there are old ammunition stashes all over the country. To me the quote above pretty much sums it up, this is not a significant finding.

edit: Biggles posted while I was typing and so I add.... "what he said".

[clunk1234567]

I think it was a marine after a curry dinner myself

[BigBank_Hank]

@vidcc: I'm not making this out to be the I told you so about the WMD's. I said it earlier that this is one shell that has been found and its not a widespread finding.

I'm just thankful that whoever was set this explosive up didn't use it properly because the result would have been much worse. It was a 155 mm artillery shell that needed to fired for the chemicals to mix properly. This could have turned out much worse.

[Busyman]

Originally posted by BigBank_Hank@17 May 2004 - 13:06
This is timely but it has nothing to do with the prison scandal and has everything to do with June 30 drawing nearer. The terrorist and insurgents are getting desperate now because we are winning the war and the handover of power back to the Iraqi people is a month away. They've tried everything else to beat us but they haven't succeeded so now they are going to resort to this. This is the first case and I fully expect to see a lot more of this as we get closer to June 30.

Why would they be desperate anyway?

It would seem they just want to be disruptive.

I would think it easier to kick ass once American soldiers leave.

[BigBank_Hank]

Desperate to make us leave before we hand over things to the Iraqi's. They'll try anything to get us to just up and leave and it aint happening.

And if you think that after we hand over control we'll be pulling out your mistaken. They is still a lot of work to be done there and we have to provide security to make sure things go smoothly. We can't just leave them with no means of protecting themselves from attacks.

[lynx]

The substance was found in a shell inside a bag discovered by a US convoy a few days ago

If it was found by a US convoy, how did it then fall into the hands of insurgents who managed to detonate it?