This is a shell from the Iran-Iraq war that got lost. Governments do this stupid crap all the time. That's no one's taking it any more seriously than most people do William Safire's rambling polemics.

One irony though: I'm sure the Al Qaeda people there are scrounging all the more harder for some more of these shells in the abandoned stockpiles the Iraqi Army left behind when it was dissolved by us. But before we invaded they didn't have that opportunity because Hussein loathed them more than he did us. So now, thanks solely to our brilliant invasion, the terrorists now have potential access to WMD's--which is the very thing this conquest was intended to prevent!

Derek:

You are wrong. Sadam declared he had **never** produced 155mm chemical shells. There is no evidence he ever used this type of weapon in the Iraq-Iran war. As to your assertion that our invasion means terrorists now have access to WMD, given Sadam's contacts with them before the war, the fact that he had WMDs, and the fact that he wanted to harm the U.S., the terrorists either had or would have had access to them anyway. At least now we have a chance to stop their transfer.

BTW, no one I have read has mentioned that the lethal dose of sarin is 100 milligrams, so the 3-4 liters in the shell was enough to potentially kill 30,000-40,000 people. This must surely qualify it as a WMD.

JD,

The Pentagon itself says the stuff came from the 80s. Take it up with them. They seem to know about the 155's, too:
"Iraq first field-tested such a shell containing sarin in 1988, the defense official said."(http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/special_packages/iraq/8702174.htm?1c)

As to the lethality of the shell, it depends on a lot of perfect conditions. You're panic numbers are on the very, very, very high end. In operation, they haven't been very successful. It takes a few tons to kill an infantryman in combat and one time terrorists used it, in the Tokyo subway, 12 were killed. The Washington Snipers (two idiots, a hunting rifle and Caprice Classic) did more damage.

But, as I indicated before, and you have ignored, it's only because of our invasion that terrorists have access to this stuff. So, congratulations, hot shot, your little war armed the terrorists with WMD's.

Good work

Huge irony - weapons like the sarin shell do the most harm when deployed in densely populated areas like, well, any urban area, an area that election maps have shown us is preponderantly liberal.

A WMD attack on a major American city would have a profound effect on the next national election, but not the sort of effect the terrorists might imagine in the aftermath of Madrid.

Actually, they do awful in urban areas. They need to be deployed in a flat open plain where they can get maximum dispersal. They also require extermely conducive weather conditions. Rain and wind deteriorate their effectiveness.

Yeah, you can kill lots of people out on the prairie - maybe if you find a picnic or softball game to aim your attack at. Oh well...

Derek: If the weapons aren't really that harmful, why should we care whether the terrorists have them?

Derek
What about crop dusters to distribute this gas?
Since thats what crop dusters do.

OJ
As far as your 4th NO, The big if is changing their culture. Yes if they become like us, and I guess plan A is to shoot them until they become like us. (that probably will work) but what is plan B.

Or are you saying they are culturally inclined towards democracy now?

Derek --

Has the Pentagon made any conclusions concerning specifically the shells recently discovered? Anything released since the recent discovery.

As to jd watson's point, it appears the UN report on Saddam's WMD validates his claim that
Iraq never declared any binary 155mm artillery shells. In fact, they never claimed any filled with sarin at all in the UNSCOM Final report (Find on "Munitions declared by Iraq as remaining"). Ths report appears to deny their existing at the end of the Gulf War, makes no mention of their having been destroyed in the Gulf War, nor of having been destroyed unilaterally. The only binary munitions claimed by the Iraqis were aerial bombs and missile warheads. Not in an artillery shell. Link http://www.overpressure.com/archives/week_2004_05_16.html#000819

We know there are terrorists in Iraq today, and there were there during Hussein's dictatorship. We know Hussein had chemical weapons. We know terrorists were actively seeking to get them. We know he associated with terrorists and supported them in various ways. Why is it conclusive evidence that access to these weapons could have ONLY come from having invaded Iraq. You may feel comfortable making rhetorical bets like that to outtalk bloggers. Real leaders with real responsibilities do not.

Matt,

I'm not the one who insisted on an invasion based on chem. weapons hysteria.

Murcek,

They're not very effective in urban settings. We have more to worry about from conventional bombs. Most terrorists groups realize that costwise, conventional explosives are the way to go, which is why most of them gave up these exotic weapons after a few intial tests.

MG,

The Iraqis probably believed the shell was destroyed or used up, which is why they didn't declare it. If they were hiding something, it wouldn't be a short-range artillery shell. As my link indicated it was a 1988 test model. Most likely, it just got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. You should see the stuff the U.S. military loses.

The rest of your post relies on chain of "what-ifs" to justify an invasion. However, my point does not. We opened the candy store to terrorists and if there are any more of these things floating around and terrorists get a hold of it, it will be a most ironic unintended consequence.

h-man,

No matter what dispersal system you use, you still face weather and obstacles problems. Also, it's more likely, from what I've heard, that filling the crop duster would probably kill the pilot off before he got off the ground--and that's assuming the chemicals could even be preserved in the plane.

h-man,

The problem with culture is there, but first we have to overcome a bigger obstacle: getting the losers to peacefully surrender power to the winners in an election. Even among the Shi'ites there's no evidence this would happen. The best we can hope for now is basically what Saddam had in the end, a strongman overseeing a tribally run nation. The alternative is turning to the only people with national pull, and they're all religious figures with little to no love for democracy.

>why it was that all the things the Left believed
>twenty years ago proved false but they never
>acknowledge it

Because they are True Believers who have Accepted The Cause (whatever it is this week) as their Personal LORD and Savior, that's why. They're their god's Chosen, and Can Never Be Wrong, because they Have The Absolute Truth About Life, the Universe, and Everything.

You find this attitude whenever anyone Has the Absolute Cosmic Truth -- anything else is DIE, HERETIC!

Whether that "truth" really is truth or not, it provokes much the same reaction. Think of a Jack Chick tract and you've got the attitude -- the Proof Texts (quote! quote! quote! quote! quote!), the Burn In Hell as We Anointed Gloat from On High, the lip-smacking thirst for Payback, to be proven Right over the bodies and blood of all others.

Whether it's "ALLAH-U AKBAR!", "PRAISE THE LOOOORD!", "MAC IS THE SUPERIOR SYSTEM!", Marxspeak or Greenspeak, it's the appeal to Cosmic Authority (who always Agrees With ME!) and the crushing of The Great Satan.

Derek: Maybe not, but you seem sure that weapons getting into the hands of terrorists is an awful development while being equally sure that the weapons are hardly harmful. This is reminiscent of how lefties always "rebutted" claims about going into Iraq by pointing out that we supposedly armed Saddam -- as if that gave us an excuse not to go get him now. When it is useful to your conservative-bashing to claim that the weapons are harmful, you say one thing. When it is useful to claim that Saddam didn't pose a threat to us, you say another.

The one constant in the arguments of liberals like yourself (unless you're a paleocon; I don't know) seems to be a hostility towards American military ventures; nothing else.

Derek,

1. The quote you cite from the Pentagon abut the weapon "coming from the 1980s" has already been disproven. They never said that. Rather, it came from the "ex-regime." http://haloscan.com/tb/dsensing/108493249978147120The difference is obvious.

2. And I'm sure the mustard gas shell they found last week was from the 1980s too, right? No matter what we find, I'm sure it all came from the 1980s. And, as the Kurds know, those weapons don't count, right?

3. Using your logic, no one would ever produce chemical weapons, because they are too dangerous and ineffective. Yet Saddam admitted to producing them and using them. So do many other countries. Proof is in the pudding. In this case the shell did not go off because it was not used as it was intended. The spinning of the shell in flight was to have mixed the chemicals to form sarin.

4. Let me see if I understand you correctly: Saddam had WMDs (as the sarin incident shows), admits his support for terrorists and openly declares he wants to destroy the US. So, we can be sure that terrorists won't get his WMDs, right? But we invade, remove him from power and have access to the entire country, including his hiding places for WMDs, so now terrorists will have access to his WMDs like never before. Do I have this right?

I'd ask you to do the math, but you appear to have taken your cue from the Ministry of Truth and already determined that 2 + 2 = 5.

Derek:

If the US Army or the CIA decided to set off a chemical weapon in an Arab capital, do you think it would be as ineffective as your description above?

Actually, they do awful in urban areas. They need to be deployed in a flat open plain where they can get maximum dispersal.

Yeah, kinda like hijacking an airplane and crashing it onto the prairie would do more harm than crashing it into a couple of building in an urban area like New York City.

Derek:

The war had nothing to do with WMD. But they're there.

If a chemical weapon leaks into the pressroom at the NYT, is it really there?

Those dead people on the wide-open prairies of the Tokyo subway eight years ago would probably dispute the effectiveness of sarin gas in a closed-in area. I'd suspect survivors riding the IRT or the BMT in New York would feel the same way if a gallon of the stuff was released there sometime in the near future.

Derek-
Just one example of why what you say is incomplete and misleading (which is what happens when you get your info form lefty sources). I was on the Marunouchi line subway just 10 minutes behind the Tokyo sarin attack. 12 people were killed, but you didn't mention that about ***6,000*** were injured; hundreds are still suffering. The cult members had small plastic bags of Sarin on the trains (unitary, not binary, unfortunately), which they pierced with sharpened umbrella tips. That's all it took to do some serious damage with this stuff. You can spin all you like to minimize the danger people like this pose to the world, but the rest of us are more concerned with reality.

Minimal self-protection gear would protect a crop duster pilot easily long enough to deliver the payload.

As if dying as a result would deter the already proven suicidally inclined.

What kind of effect do you think there would be from one pass down the grandstands during the Indy 500?

Derek:

Given the status quo ante, what would you have done about Saddam?

Hints: 1. the status quo had long reached its sell-by date. 2. There is no such thing as a null decision.

"We flagellate ourselves for mistreatment by a few of our guards, who will be punished; he delightedly oversaw the shoveling of 300,000 innocent Iraqis into unmarked graves."

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Reality is no longer the issue. Hasn't been for a long, long while.

It's all perceptions now. Accompanied by axes to grind.

(Problem is, reality eventually catches up.)

Sarin::

As a former Army Veteran, and my having been through the Army’s, Nuclear, Biological, Chemical weapons school, let me tell you, Sarin is serious, and very dangerous. Although it is not a persistent agent, I can guarantee you that if deployed in a crop duster, wasn’t Moussaoaui linked to wanting to take crop dusting lessons?, it would be most lethal. The 3 highly effective ways of dispersing any chemical, bio agent, is through, artillery, missile, or that’s right, planes that have the capability of spreading the agent, such as crop dusters. In fact, Army protocol states that when filling out an NBC report, the dispersion method be listed as well, What are the options for dispersion? Those mentioned above.

The only real question is weather and wind direction. Both of these factors will significantly affect the agent being dispersed.

Saddam was a methodological liar, and whether or not he fessed to everything he has, well, I think we have clearly seen that. I look at it like this, the fall of Saddams regime, just meant that there is one less safe, and secure staging area in the world for terrorists to gather strength, materials, and time in order to inflict harm upon us or our interests.

The notion that sarin does not qualify as a WMD because of it's battlefield limitations is ignorant, stupid and vicious. Am I being to harsh to Derek the know-nothing [*****]? Well, go check the charter on the page he lists. He and his fellows have consciously abandoned commity. Good for them, the pig[stickers].

Derek, oh Derek? Hello, Derek? Hmmmm. Where could Derek be?

The best time to deploy chem/bio weapons in a tactal enviroment is in the early morning/late evening when the wind is the most calm. This is when the targeting weapon is to be a non-persistent weapon. when the weapon is persistent, it does not matter when the weapon is delivered. there will be a vapor hazard for many days depending on what agent is used. that is why persistent chemical weapons are the choice for area denial. also you presupose that the personal in the target area (and downwind) are in MOPP4

I always preferred the MOPP70 plan...
Driving at 70MPH away from the target area.