n e r b l e

can't believe no one started a thread

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C293...0137%2C00.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent (search) recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.



Bush administration officials told Fox News that mustard gas (search) was also recently discovered.

Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt (search), the chief military spokesman in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy."

The round detonated before it would be rendered inoperable, Kimmitt said, which caused a "very small dispersal of agent."

However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the results were from a field test, which can be imperfect, and said more analysis was needed. If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war.

Click to Read the Weapons of Mass Destruction Handbook

A senior Bush administration official told Fox News that the sarin gas shell is the second chemical weapon discovered recently.

Two weeks ago, U.S. military units discovered mustard gas that was used as part of an IED. Tests conducted by the Iraqi Survey Group (search) — a U.S. organization searching for weapons of mass destruction — and others concluded the mustard gas was "stored improperly," which made the gas "ineffective."

They believe the mustard gas shell may have been one of 550 projectiles for which former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein failed to account when he made his weapons declaration shortly before Operation Iraqi Freedom began last year. Iraq also failed to then account for 450 aerial bombs with mustard gas. That, combined with the shells, totaled about 80 tons of unaccounted for mustard gas.

It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.

An official at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in New York said the commission is surprised to hear news of the mustard gas.

"If that's the case, why didn't they announce it earlier?" the official asked.

The UNMOVIC official said the group needs to know more from the Bush administration before it's possible to determine if this is "old or new stuff. It is known that Iraq used sarin during the Iraq-Iran war, however.

Kimmitt said the shell belonged to a class of ordnance that Saddam's government said was destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war (search). Experts believe both the sarin and mustard gas weapons date back to that time.

"It was a weapon that we believe was stocked from the ex-regime time and it had been thought to be an ordinary artillery shell set up to explode like an ordinary IED and basically from the detection of that and when it exploded, it indicated that it actually had some sarin in it," Kimmitt said.

The incident occurred "a couple of days ago," he added. The discovery reportedly occurred near Baghdad International Airport.

Washington officials say the significance of the find is that some chemical shells do still exist in Iraq, and it's thought that fighters there may be upping their attacks on U.S. forces by using such weapons.

The round was an old "binary-type" shell in which two chemicals held in separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin, Kimmitt said.

He said he believed that insurgents who rigged the artillery shell as a bomb didn't know it contained the nerve agent, and that the dispersal of the nerve agent from such a rigged device was very limited.

The shell had no markings. It appears the binary sarin agents didn't mix, which is why there weren't serious injuries from the initial explosion, a U.S. official told Fox News.

"Everybody knew Saddam had chemical weapons, the question was, where did they go. Unfortunately, everybody jumped on the offramp and said 'well, because we didn't find them, he didn't have them,'" said Fox News military analyst Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney.

"I doubt if it's the tip of the iceberg but it does confirm what we've known ... that he [Saddam] had weapons of mass destruction that he used on his own people," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Fox News. "This does show that the fear we had is very real. Now whether there is much more of this we don't know, Iraq is the size of the state of California."

But there were more reasons than weapons to get rid of Saddam, he added. "We considered Saddam Hussein a threat not just because of weapons of mass destruction," Grassley said.

Iraqi Scientist: You Will Find More

Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime, told Fox News he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.

George said the finding likely will be the first in a series of discoveries of such weapons.

"Saddam is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George told Fox News. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's eyes.

"I'm sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the weapons.

Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.

"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did ... it's not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents with other gases and substances, George said.

Officials: Discovery Is 'Significant'

U.S. officials told Fox News that the shell discovery is a "significant" event.

Artillery shells of the 155-mm size are as big as it gets when it comes to the ordnance lobbed by infantry-based artillery units. The 155 howitzer can launch high capacity shells over several miles; current models used by the United States can fire shells as far as 14 miles. One official told Fox News that a conventional 155-mm shell could hold as much as "two to five" liters of sarin, which is capable of killing thousands of people under the right conditions in highly populated areas.

The Iraqis were very capable of producing such shells in the 1980s but it's not as clear that they continued after the first Gulf War.

In 1995, Japan's Aum Shinrikyo (search) cult unleashed sarin gas in Tokyo's subways, killing 12 people and sickening thousands. In February of this year, Japanese courts convicted the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, and sentence him to be executed.

Developed in the mid-1930s by Nazi scientists, a single drop of sarin can cause quick, agonizing choking death. There are no known instances of the Nazis actually using the gas.

Nerve gases work by inhibiting key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their transmission. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered quickly.

Antidotes to nerve gases similar to sarin are so effective that top poison gas researchers predict they eventually will cease to be a war threat.

Fox News' Wendell Goler, Steve Harrigan, Ian McCaleb, Liza Porteus, James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

*Lauren

They found mustard gas and said nothing? I find that hard to believe.

Its good they've finally found the clear evidence of WMD, after being there for such a short time. A year is nowhere near enough time to find the obvious weapons!

Avatar

I'm not convinced ... if it was used against US troops now, then it could well have been bought by insurgents recently and not be a left-over of any WMD-stockpile of Sadaams.

JohannafromIHJ

I read about this a week ago or something. It's a minor find, and it's interesting that this article describes it as "significant", when everything else I've read about it is pretty much "eh". Had this been a big find, it would have been reported full on when it was found, not like this.

StellaSlight

From all the existing medias, they chose... FOX News. Haha.

last beautiful girl

I'm not shocked that they're all 'whaaaa'? Bush probably didn't tell 'em.

I'm kind of relieved that they've found some, and it's not the 'we know that Iraq has 'em, we just don't care'-ish scenario that it was before.

migamoo

If it was more of a "we found the missing WMDs" and they had solid proof, it would have been on more news networks and everyone would have known about it. Since I've only seen it on one news source, I'm a little skeptical.

Ashley

Sparrowhawk

Actually, the evidence points to this shell coming from a chemical dump that the UN inspectors were storing chemicals confiscated years ago in preparation for sealing them in concrete. The reason it's being kept quiet is that the Bush Administration doesn't want to admit that the War on Terror is the reason the dumps are no longer under guard.

Finding these shells is not justification for invading... the shells were of old design and in the hands of those who had no idea what they contained (as evidenced by how they were detonated).

roswellcharmed_2000

i don't exactly believe this. its kinda sad that the bush administration has made me doubt news reports so much because of all their lies.

Sparrowhawk

Sarin Shells Made Before 1991 War

United Press International

The 155-mm shells containing sarin gas that exploded in Iraq May 17 were manufactured before 1991, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. That was a pre-Gulf War shell, a different category than the weapons being sought by the Iraq Survey Group, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, the joint staff deputy director for operations, told a Pentagon news briefing.

The artillery shells were rigged to explode as a roadside bomb but failed to detonate. Apparently unknown to the bomber, the shells did not contain explosives but two liquid chemicals that were meant to mix and create sarin, a deadly nerve agent.

U.S. Army soldiers found the shells and detonated them in place, releasing a small amount of sarin gas that sickened them.

Rodriguez said the sarin shells were the only ones of their kind found yet.

It's the only two we've seen the entire time, said Rodriguez.

An artillery shell bearing traces of mustard gas was discovered in Baghdad, Knight-Ridder reported May 7.

Neither find is being offered as evidence of Saddam Hussein's alleged illegal weapons programs, one of the prime reasons offered by the Bush administration for the March 2003 invasion and war. *

Saddam's forces used both sarin and mustard gas against Kurds in Halabja in the 1980s.


Photo Copyright Getty Images


© YellowBrix, Inc. Copyright 1997-2003

http://www.wokr13.tv/news/national/...66-4e3a8e847643

*emphasis mine

n e r b l e

one, it's "official." it's definitally mustard and sarin gas. there was a gallon found. a gallon. that's enought to kill about 50000 people. it didn't detonate properly thank God.

why wasn't it in the news? cause it would make bush look better. the media is slanted left for the most part. so they certainly don't want to admit that sadaam and other terrorist organizations had access to this stuff just like we assumed all along. and if it WERE crap why wouldn't the media be screaming about how the bush administration tried to make it look like we had and important find but we didnt'?

ceilirose

From what I've read the origins of the sarin gas are still unknown. The Army doesn't know whether it was from Hussein or some other source. Also one can of sarin gas doesn't prove the massive amount of WMD stockpiles that were an imminent threat to the US and the main reason for the pre-emptive strike.

It has been in the news but Bush has got more problems with Abu Ghraib, the Chalabi situation, who is actually going to lead Iraq on 6/30 and his own re-election campaign.

I laugh when I hear that the media is left centered..it's more centrist. CNN is now a Fox-wannabe. In the lead up to the war no major newspaper or journalist dared to bring up the idea that the US was going to war on false reasoning. They would have been called un-patriotic or French-leaning. It's only now that any of them are questioning the lead up to the war..they were stenographers up till now.

JohannafromIHJ

That's so original. Damn the left-slanted media, working against America! Couldn't be that they listened to what experts, and the militaries, of the world said and decided that focusing on this find would be too premature, since it could be from anywhere.

Woe.

AlexEvans

We found research programs. "Where are the weapons?" We found delivery systems. "Where are the weapons?" We've found weapons. "Where are more weapons?"

This is getting tiresome.

Iraq did not dispose of its WMDs. It continued research and development. It kept and built delivery systems. And it kept weapons.

Iraq had WMDs.

Oh and by the way, Bush said there was not an imminent threat, that it was too dangerous to wait for that. I'm getting really sick of people claiming he said the opposite. It is dishonest and repetitive.

ceilirose

Bush didn't say the threat was imminent. He had his Administration do it for him.

"Absolutely."
• White House spokesman Ari Fleischer answering whether Iraq was an "imminent threat," 5/7/03

"The threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be removed."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 3/25/03

"It is only a matter of time before the Iraqi regime is destroyed and its threat to the region and the world is ended."
• Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, 3/22/03

"This is about imminent threat."
• White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 2/10/03

Iraq is "a serious threat to our country, to our friends and to our allies."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/31/03

Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world."
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/03

Iraq "threatens the United States of America."
• Vice President Cheney, 1/30/03

"Well, of course he is.”
• White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett responding to the question “is Saddam an imminent threat to U.S. interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?”, 1/26/03

"Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons. Iraq poses a threat to the security of our people and to the stability of the world that is distinct from any other. It's a danger to its neighbors, to the United States, to the Middle East and to the international peace and stability. It's a danger we cannot ignore. Iraq and North Korea are both repressive dictatorships to be sure and both pose threats. But Iraq is unique. In both word and deed, Iraq has demonstrated that it is seeking the means to strike the United States and our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction."
• Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 1/20/03

Some from the man himself:

"The Iraqi regime is a threat to any American. ... Iraq is a threat, a real threat."
• President Bush, 1/3/03

"Saddam Hussein is a threat to America."
• President Bush, 11/3/02

"I see a significant threat to the security of the United States in Iraq."
• President Bush, 11/1/02

"There is real threat, in my judgment, a real and dangerous threat to American in Iraq in the form of Saddam Hussein."
• President Bush, 10/28/02

"The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."
• President Bush, 10/2/02

"There are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists."
• President Bush, 10/7/02


All courtesy of http://www.americanprogress.org/site...RJ8OVF&b=24970

There are more direct quotes from any number of Administration officials there as well.