where are the chemical weapons?

[TheSovereign]

http://washingtontimes.com/national/200 ... -3312r.htm
found about 500 of them

but guys....they dont exist SHHHHHHH

[FlyingPenguin]

A bit more rational perspective from - of all places - the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. You need to read the full editorial - it's not long - but here's the pertinent excerpts:

http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles. ... 9,650,3441

QUOTE:

The discovery of 500 pre-1991 Sarin/mustard gas-filled shells in Iraq and the belief of the U.S. government that more remain, has prompted two opposing and equally incorrect claims: one is that it vindicates the WMD rationale for deposing Saddam; the other is that it is “no big deal.”

For the first - We didn’t go to war over 500 decaying shells....

{my edit}

....The coalition discovery of 500 Sarin/mustard gas-filled shells means 500 fewer shells on the market and renewed coalition interest in finding what our government believes remains.

That makes yesterday a very big deal and a very good day for our troops.

[TheSovereign]

see i like your thinking pengy
they found 500 so that must mean that, that's all there was
couldnt possibly mean their could be a sea of them somewhere

they had months to move stuff out, we found smoke my dear pengy
smoke may not mean fire but it definatly means something is burning

[FlyingPenguin]

You read the editorial Sov? Not my opinion but I agree. This is the is the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs which is pretty much pro-administration.

If you remember I also was of the opinion from before the war that there WERE WMDs (although I did not believe it was a serious enough issue to go to war over and make things worse) but of course they moved them all to Syria when we gave them ample warning.

The point I think the editorial makes (which is both postive and negative) is that it's very good we found these, but this is no vindication for entering the war. It's also very convenient that the Republicans are pulling this out of their hats now just before mid-terms.

I downloaded the report. It's one page. There's zero details. Just a statement that we recovered those 500 shells.

You'd think if this was a REALLY big deal this would have been released a long time ago to major fanfare. Funny how they've sat on it until now while the administration takes a beating for no WMDs.

Business as usual...

[renovation]

its election time ! sure some WMD were found and the reports has been released now !

[MRCOMPUTER]

Sarin and Mustard Agent were never placed in the same munition. It is interesting to discover this particular find of these 2 shell types. At the end of WWll, the US and Russia removed stockpiles of these from Nazi germany. We have stored these munitions until now, when good sense has finally prevailed and disposal techniques were developed and such munitions are being destroyed.

Sarin and Mustard are difficult to deploy and must be detonated over a target, (airburst), in order to be effective as a weapon of mass destruction. Ground impacting shells have limited effect, unless you have a decent amount of wind blowing over the target area.

During the years of storage, the chemical agents actually eat their way thru the shell casing. To prevent contamination, we have placed each leaking round in a larger casing. Some rounds have been reincased several times. It would be interesting to find out how they are dealing with this "find", and when these rounds were actually manufactured and by who...