WMD's found

[DiseasedPunk]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html

Are they legit or not? I'm not taking either side, just sending out an interesting news report :P. Just don't start "needlessly bashing" the US, i do live here and its my only home so have some sympathy : (

[Marxist ßastard]

If you don't want this to be a thread of nothing but US-bashing, you should probably put up a source more reputable than FOX News...

[cactoblasta]

A American news report is always suspect, but when they can't even speaka da Ingleesh it's even worse - read it and see.

 

In any case they reckon that shell dates back to before the Iran War, so that probably explains why it had next to no effect when it detonated - someone hit with a full dose of sarin gas should be dead, not easily treated.

 

If that's the best evidence of WMDs in Iraq then I think we should all be glad that Saddam was removed. (insert sarcasm here) I mean the threat that such weapons pose - it's a good thing we've all got the noble coalition to protect us from such a dastardly threat.

[Zmid]

If you distill it down to verifiable facts, there's not much to it - an artillery shell was rigged as a roadside explosive and tests which are not reliable showed that it contained a small amount of Sarin nerve agent, which may be traces left over from Sarin that Saddam had in the 80s and early 90s, which is when it was OK for him to have it.

 

Previous to this, another shell, also rigged as a bomb, was discovered which contained a small amount of mustard gas, which also could have been from the 80s and early 90s, and had been rendered harmless by 'improper storage' in any case.

 

And that is assuming Fox got the actual facts right, and it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't.

[UberBender]

just because it is "ok" to have the WMDs doesnt mean that it is good

[Zmid]

just because it is "ok" to have the WMDs doesnt mean that it is good

:lol:

 

Actually, that's exactly my point. 20 years ago or so, it was perfectly OK for Saddam Hussein to have WMD according to the US and UK governments because back then he was our 'friend' in the Middle East. It then became a despicable, heinous thing. What changed? I can tell you in five words - WE NO LONGER NEEDED HIM.

[Breton Thief Oriana]

Funny thing is, those were the weapons that we supplied him with, huh?

[tyjet3]

Actually no, most weapons supplied to him were ammo and stuff from US. WMD actually came from Russia, Syria, and Korea.

 

-The whole "ok to have weapons thing" is not important. Saddam flat out lied when he told the US he had no WMD.

 

News now is never trustworthy. Reporters are craving any juicy story. Sometimes the media just takes things too far. Like when they showed that man being executed by iraqi soldiers. Totally uncalled for media report. They didn't even get the concent of the family of the man on the video!!! His family first learned of his death by watching it on the news and they actually saw his murder... The media is sick and I personally will never trust their stories...

[Mojlnir]

Additionally, this news report is over a month old and has fallen by the wayside like every other report of WMD that has come out of Iraq. As mentioned above, these weapons date to the Iran-Iraq war and at the very latest pre-Gulf War 1, chemical weapons lose potency and become inert over long periods of time, especially if not stored correctly.

 

My guess is that one of two things happened to bring this shell to its final end:

1. Militants managed to secure this device prior to US invasion from caches of weapons stolen from Saddam while he was in power

2. Saddam, at some point though probably not immediately prior to US invasion, created stockpiles of weapons around Iraq for self defense, and because these shells were not marked as C/B, they were overlooked UN inspection teams and not tagged for destruction...but because they were not marked they had to sit with other normal HE shells and thus negating the claim that they were intentionally stockpiled because doing so would have required special storage unique to C/B weaponry thereby making them recognizable

 

A militant finding a rusty shell buried in the desert is not a reason to invade. What happened to the claim that within 45 minutes Saddam could respond to invasion with C/B weapons? And the curtain of fire that was supposed to rain down as the US advanced on Baghdad? And those C/B trucks that turned out to be weather balloon stations (god forbid the Iraqi's would want to check the weather)?

 

Seems pretty sketchy to me.

 

-M

[Zmid]

Actually no, most weapons supplied to him were ammo and stuff from US. WMD actually came from Russia, Syria, and Korea.

.....and 'dual-use' items from the US and the UK (though I could be wrong about the UK part).

 

-The whole "ok to have weapons thing" is not important. Saddam flat out lied when he told the US he had no WMD.

 

Firstly, obviously my point went completely over your head. 20 years or so ago, it was widely known Iraq had WMD. The complaints from the US and UK over this back then were extremely conspicuous by their absence. It was absolutely OK and acceptable for Iraq to have WMD according to the US and UK.

 

Secondly, when exactly did Saddam lie? There is certainly no evidence to prove he lied when we used WMD as an excuse to invade. In fact, there is very little evidence, if any at all, that says he had WMD past the mid 90s. He may have lied about having no WMD previous to then, but obviously it didn't matter very much to the US and UK, or else the Iraq War would have happened around 10 years ago instead of last year.

 

Thirdly, one small correction - if you're talking about immediately previous to the Iraq War he told the UN he had no WMD, not just the US. The evidence coming from the UN Weapons Inspectors at the time seem to back up this claim. Even the evidence coming from the Iraq Survey Group sent in after the end of open warfare seem to further back up this claim.