NationStates Jolt Archive


Iraqi forces find chemical materials in Fallujah lab

Superpower07
26-11-2004, 03:25
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/25/iraq.main/index.html

I wonder how Bush will play upon this in relation to the WMD hunt?
Myrth
26-11-2004, 03:49
For some reason this was merged into a totally unrelated thread...
I've split it out again.
Bozzy
26-11-2004, 04:23
what is unmentioned is that the chemical lab was in a MOSQUE - the same type of building where weapon have been found stored and where insurgents - mostly foreign - have been shooting from.

Oddly, Al Jazeera is more worried about an Arab militant (possibly boobie-trapped) being shot in one (from which he was shooting only hours before) than they are about their 'holy' places being defiled by fellow Arabs to exploit.
Custodes Rana
26-11-2004, 04:54
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/25/iraq.main/index.html

I wonder how Bush will play upon this in relation to the WMD hunt?


CNN reported this? I've yet to find anything about this on any other news media websites.......
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 11:54
CNN reported this? I've yet to find anything about this on any other news media websites.......Because you haven't looked? Here's 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4041235.stm) at BBC News for starters, last modified 19 hours ago. This articles does state that "The biggest haul was made at a mosque complex in the east of the city."
what is unmentioned is that the chemical lab was in a MOSQUESource? The BBC article implies that the chemical lab was, in fact, not in the mosque but in another building: "Soldiers also found a house which contained a laboratory and instructions on how to make anthrax and blood agents, an Iraqi official said."

I also find it funny that the presence of anthrax-making instructions seems to be a main point for the articles. As we learned from the anthrax attacks in the US post-9/11, even big labs with the proper gear have serious problems weaponizing it.
Quagmir
26-11-2004, 12:11
Why should anyone (not) believe this? Planting evidence is easy. Also very convenient. Justification is desperately needed.
Lutton
26-11-2004, 12:14
Unfortunately, all the stuff they found was marked "US DoD, with love from Donald Rumsfeld to his good friend Saddam Hussein."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/images/1219-04.jpg


(And, no, tragically, the above pic was not photoshopped ...)
Tactical Grace
26-11-2004, 12:15
So let me get this straight, some building in Iraq, the nature of which is disputed, has allegedly been found to contain some pamphlets on Anthrax by the occupying forces. Uh-huh. This find totally changes everything. :rolleyes:
Lutton
26-11-2004, 12:20
So let me get this straight, some building in Iraq, the nature of which is disputed, has allegedly been found to contain some pamphlets on Anthrax by the occupying forces. Uh-huh. This find totally changes everything. :rolleyes:


Oh yes. It wholly justifies the billions of dollars spent on Iraq (which, sources have revealed, Bush thought was Iran anyway ...) and all the dead. :rolleyes:
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 12:22
I don't think any member of the media has yet claimed this changes anything, nor has any member of the US government or the US armed forces been reported as saying so in any capacity (certainly not in an official one). To think so would be extremely foolish, since it's at least as likely that the stuff's been collected by the insurgents post-invasion.
Portu Cale
26-11-2004, 12:32
ROFL!

They found chemicals. Hell, you want to find chemicals? Go buy them. Amonia is a chemical, nice to asphixiate people! Your local hardware store must sell this. And other chemicals. I've read around how to build weapons from common house ingredients i.e. common chemicals. :p Duhhh!

By the way. If anyone of you has bottles, liquor, acess to sulphuric acid (or any other type of acid, many are sold), and detergent, tell me. Ill denounce you as a possible RIOTER!

(Coktail molotov, anyone? :D )


AND OH GOD!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10733882&dopt=Abstract

I am a one-man WMD manufacturing program. NOT.
Lutton
26-11-2004, 12:54
W00t! Lookie here! TG, a mod, has deleted a message - his own! W00T!
Tactical Grace
26-11-2004, 12:56
Yeah, I posted in the wrong thread.
Volvo Villa Vovve
26-11-2004, 13:44
Another intersting thing that is rarely mention is if Saddam had weapon of massdestruction the Iraq war have been like destroying a can of tomatoes with a sledge hammer. The can destroyed by the content spread all over the place. Because either Saddam as most people believe didn't have weapon of massdestruction. Or he had them but the US military couldn't stop them spreading to other countries or even find them. If scenario two is correct I think it would be safer that a brutale dictature that have a fixed adress (Iraq) and who he scared of his own skin have them (and don't want a abraham tank or a nuke commin nocking). Then now then if the weapon exist have been spread to more crazy and suciadal people who is unknown and is on a unknown destination.
Tactical Grace
26-11-2004, 13:50
Yeah, you know that fairground game where little heads pop out of holes at random and you have to hit them with a mallet as quickly as possible before they pop down again?

That's the emerging pattern of the US War on Terror.

"They're over there! No! Over there! Damn too late, LOOK! THERE!"
Islamaisbad
26-11-2004, 13:54
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/11/25/iraq.main/index.html
Oh they found WMD in Iraq, what will they find next, pizza in Italy?
The Arch Wobbly
26-11-2004, 13:57
Whack-A-Mole?
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 14:19
Oh they found WMD in Iraq [...]
Except they didn't. According to US military officials, they found a laboratory which had been used to manufacture improved explosives. This laboratory also included several different chemicals which could have been used to manufacture certain chemical agents (toxins), as well as instructions as to how to manufacture the explosives, toxins and, incidentally, anthrax. There is no mention of there even being any ingredients which would allow the production of anthrax.
Islamaisbad
26-11-2004, 14:45
Except they didn't. According to US military officials, they found a laboratory which had been used to manufacture improved explosives. This laboratory also included several different chemicals which could have been used to manufacture certain chemical agents (toxins), as well as instructions as to how to manufacture the explosives, toxins and, incidentally, anthrax. There is no mention of there even being any ingredients which would allow the production of anthrax.
What do you think they were going to use the cyanide for? Minestrones soup?

Yeah... what about the 122mm sarin rockets the polacks found last summer?
The God King Eru-sama
26-11-2004, 14:54
Ooo ... hydrogen cyanide. Hardly WMD (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Chemical/1091.html) material.
Mekonia
26-11-2004, 15:02
The lab looked to me like our science lab in secondary school! Equally I'd bet ya'd find similar labs (maybe not in a mosque) in the UK or the US. I sure Bush and Condi will do a little dance for joy. :fluffle:
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 15:14
What do you think they were going to use the cyanide for?
If the insurgents whose laboratory it was could make the call, the sodium and potassium cyanides would no doubt have been used to create hydrogen cyanide and cyanogen chloride.
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/readyguide/cyanide.htmCyanide salts [such as sodium cyanide] are used in metallurgy for electroplating, metal cleaning, and removing gold from its ore.Cyanide salts are not WMDs and can rather easily be acquired anywhere in the civilized world, not to mention the industrialized-but-not-quite-civilized world. They can be used to manufacture WMDs, but that can also be said about most of the stuff you'll find in an average college chemistry lab.

The two, then 15-23-year-old 122mm rockets with sarin warheads had deteriorated to almost total uselessness. Said Reuters: ""Due to the deteriorated state of the rounds and small quantity of remaining agent, these rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against Coalition Forces," the [US military] statement said." A small amount of weakened cyclosarin gas in non-functional rockets, and the warheads themselves had little to no value as weapons.

What it really comes down to, then, is whether you actually require a weapon to be capable of causing destruction, or even mass destruction, for it to count as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. If you do, then the rockets are not WMDs nor are they proof that there were WMDs in Iraq at the time of the invasion -- they might hint at the possibility of there maybe being some hidden in the country somewhere.

If you determine WMDs as any NBC-agent which could, in some way in sufficient amounts, be used to create weapons capable of mass destruction, then yeah, the 2 deteriorated cyclosarin warheads were WMDs. And, incidentally, you should probably invade most large pest extermination companies.
Sgt Peppers LHCB
26-11-2004, 16:09
Yeah, you know that fairground game where little heads pop out of holes at random and you have to hit them with a mallet as quickly as possible before they pop down again?

That's the emerging pattern of the US War on Terror.

"They're over there! No! Over there! Damn too late, LOOK! THERE!"

Yet when I say that word you delete me...
Terra - Domina
26-11-2004, 16:27
If you determine WMDs as any NBC-agent which could, in some way in sufficient amounts, be used to create weapons capable of mass destruction, then yeah, the 2 deteriorated cyclosarin warheads were WMDs. And, incidentally, you should probably invade most large pest extermination companies.

that last line is the best :)
Custodes Rana
26-11-2004, 17:29
If you determine WMDs as any NBC-agent which could, in some way in sufficient amounts, be used to create weapons capable of mass destruction, then yeah, the 2 deteriorated cyclosarin warheads were WMDs. And, incidentally, you should probably invade most large pest extermination companies.

Except for the minor fact that MOST large pest extermination companies haven't gassed thousands of Kurds & Iranians, invaded neighboring countries, or had attempted to create nuclear weapons.

But yeah, you're right.
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 17:36
Except for the minor fact that MOST large pest extermination companies haven't gassed thousands of Kurds & Iranians, invaded neighboring countries, or had attempted to create nuclear weapons.
I was not commenting nor will I comment on the whole reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq or my views on it. What I was saying is that if you define WMDs by my latter example ("any NBC-agent which could, in some way in sufficient amounts, be used to create weapons capable of mass destruction") then the mere existence of such materials, nor most uses of such materials or trading in them, is a particularly good reason to go to war. In fact, such a definition is downright silly, because then every country in the world has shitloads WMDs and is freely trading them to all kinds of end users.
Custodes Rana
26-11-2004, 19:41
I was not commenting nor will I comment on the whole reasoning behind the invasion of Iraq or my views on it. What I was saying is that if you define WMDs by my latter example ("any NBC-agent which could, in some way in sufficient amounts, be used to create weapons capable of mass destruction") then the mere existence of such materials, nor most uses of such materials or trading in them, is a particularly good reason to go to war. In fact, such a definition is downright silly, because then every country in the world has shitloads WMDs and is freely trading them to all kinds of end users.


I thought "we" were talking about large pest extermination companies??????
Tahar Joblis
26-11-2004, 19:56
I'd like to interject that, far from the press having claimed a "made by Reagan Admin" stamp on it, the rather common chemicals used in manufacture of explosives could well have been imported very recently indeed.
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 20:03
I'd like to interject that, far from the press having claimed a "made by Reagan Admin" stamp on it, the rather common chemicals used in manufacture of explosives could well have been imported very recently indeed.Cannot be stated often enough, so that maybe people will remember this if someone goes out and claims this is proof of WMDs having been in Iraq at the time of the invasion.

I thought "we" were talking about large pest extermination companies? [...]Yes, I mentioned large pest extermination companies -- because they deal in large amounts of, for example, cyanide salts and hydrogen cyanide. Then, continuing on the point, I mentioned that by the same definitions every country in the world has shitloads of WMDs and trades in them extensively. Which bit confused/confuses you?
Slaytanicca
26-11-2004, 20:16
what is unmentioned is that the chemical lab was in a MOSQUE - the same type of building where weapon have been found stored and where insurgents - mostly foreign - have been shooting from.

Oddly, Al Jazeera is more worried about an Arab militant (possibly boobie-trapped) being shot in one (from which he was shooting only hours before) than they are about their 'holy' places being defiled by fellow Arabs to exploit.
Western churches were traditionally used as a last bastion. Why do you think they all have towers with arrow slits and yew trees?
Custodes Rana
26-11-2004, 21:20
Yes, I mentioned large pest extermination companies -- because they deal in large amounts of, for example, cyanide salts and hydrogen cyanide. Then, continuing on the point, I mentioned that by the same definitions every country in the world has shitloads of WMDs and trades in them extensively. Which bit confused/confuses you?


I was being sarcastic...........


Have a nice day.
Erehwon Forest
26-11-2004, 21:28
I was being sarcastic. [...]At yourself?
Friedmanville
26-11-2004, 21:33
Why should anyone (not) believe this? Planting evidence is easy. Also very convenient. Justification is desperately needed.

Planting evidence? C'mon....there isn't any reason to suspect the planting of evidence, particularly now. Wouldn't a better time have been a week before the reelection of Dubya? Logic argues against it.
Smeagol-Gollum
26-11-2004, 22:06
I seem to recall that the last time that anthrax was in fact used as a weapon was in the USA.

I cannot help but wonder who we should get to invade them, destroy their stockpiles of WMDs (yeah, real ones this time) and impose regime change.

The UN perhaps?
Graecio-romano Ruslan
27-11-2004, 18:38
I also find it funny that the presence of anthrax-making instructions
huh? I thought it was impossible to make anthrax, what with it being a bacterial agent?
Erehwon Forest
28-11-2004, 02:01
huh? I thought it was impossible to make anthrax, what with it being a bacterial agent?From the CNN article: ""We have also discovered in this laboratory a pamphlet and instructions showing how to manufacture explosives and toxins," Dawood said. "And they also talk about the production of anthrax.""
I believe it refers to maintaining, growing and weaponizing the Bacillus anthracis. My choice of word, "make", was a poor one -- "produce" is clearer.

The point being, there was no anthrax bacteria there.