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ISIS in Iraq seizes control of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons facility

re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

A laundry list of breaches of the 1991 cease fire agreement were the justifications for a continuation of war started in 1990.

You are misrepresenting the case that was made.

That's really not true. The war was sold to the American public based on WMD, the fear of another 9/11, only this time with chemical/biological/nuclear weapons. I remember the Powell presentation....

Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulism toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people. And dry agent of this type is the most lethal form for human beings.

By 1998, U.N. experts agreed that the Iraqis had perfected drying techniques for their biological weapons programs. Now, Iraq has incorporated this drying expertise into these mobile production facilities.

Etc. Pages of that.

Yeah, sure, the formal declaration of war contained all the breaches, etc. but really no one outside the State Dept or UN cared or cares about violations of UN agreements or terms of a ceasefire.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

You could do no such thing.

You clearly show with your posts a distinct lack of skills needed to disseminate information effectively in any way, shape or form on even the most basic of subjects and concepts that the idea of you being able to reassemble complicated chemical weapons systems is not even off the deep end, it's off the deep end, the wharf and even completely losing sight of the shoreline.

When you've demostrated the ability to use basic comprehension, we'll discuss your chemical weapons prowess.

Well that is your opinion, however I was not talking about chemical weapons which can be made with basic chemicals.... I was talking about uranium, and how to reassemble a weapon that was disassembled.

My basic point was that the problem of building a weapon is the cost - but if you already have the parts then you can reassemble the weapon...

If you disagree with that than you may as well disagree with basic logic...

Now if you want to talk about chemical "weapons" I would love to have that debate but I'm not going to give away too much knowledge for simple reasons.

Hell, I'm really not even comfortable talking about the subject unless it's political.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

So instead of backing up anything you are just going to compare it to IKEA! :lamo
now i have seen it all. WMDs=IKEA furniture! :lamo

If you have the parts - yes it's like building IKEA furniture if you're an engineer or have some background in engineering.

You do realize a 15-year-old build a nuclear reactor in his shed right? (which was stupid btw because he almost died).

If you have the right parts for a weapon - there will always be someone around to put it back together...... Someone built it didn't they? so what makes you think for a second someone couldn't rebuild it?

Don't confuse engineer or design with build either...
 
There are rumors that elements of the rebels used CW against citizens in Syria and tried to blame Assad. [to encourage strikes from the West] If true, they know how to use them.

Although Syria seem to fess up by agreeing to destroy their stockpiles.

Tell me who to believe?

You mean the alqueada people posted VIDEO OF THEMSELVES LOADING AND LAUNCHING THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS so they could blame Assad.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Hell yeah they found yellow cake and progressives say "well it wasn't enriched" really? then what the hell do you need yellow cake for? *crickets* on their part.

No, the yellowcake was part of their nuclear energy program which had ended a over a decade before the war. The Israelis and the U.S. bombed those programs out of existence by 1991.

Saddam was planning to make nuclear weapons or dirty bombs and probably give them to terrorists to use against the US, use them himself or use them as a bargaining chip to get something....

Yellow cake doesn't make a very good 'dirty' bomb, and there is no evidence for the rest.

Not only that but I will bet anything in 20 years some dude on a camel will just be hopping along and fall into a military stockpile of WMD's and be like "WTF."

Hell, they're still finding crazy weapons and artifacts from Nazi Germany all these years later - bunkers, weapons, art, experimental technology etc.

But the claim was the programs were ongoing, military grade weapons existed, were being sent to the field, moved about, etc. Reread the Powell presentation.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

This is called moving the goal post.

A weapons PLANT is not the same as actual weapons. We occupied the country for 9 years do you think we left actual WMD's sitting there all that time?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

No, the yellowcake was part of their nuclear energy program which had ended a over a decade before the war. The Israelis and the U.S. bombed those programs out of existence by 1991.



Yellow cake doesn't make a very good 'dirty' bomb, and there is no evidence for the rest.



But the claim was the programs were ongoing, military grade weapons existed, were being sent to the field, moved about, etc. Reread the Powell presentation.


You actually believe that?

Just like the North Koreans want nuclear power right and Peanut Boy and Rodman are just trying to help them when they store books (if they're lucky to have some propaganda) in their ****ing fridges?

Believe what you want tho..

Evolution is true but reverse engineering is not, and building **** doesn't happen unless you designed the product.

Let me guess building a Tesla Coil or Faraday Cage is too difficult too?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

You actually believe that?

Just like the North Koreans want nuclear power right and Peanut Boy and Rodman are just trying to help them when they store books (if they're lucky to have some propaganda) in their ****ing fridges?

Believe what you want tho..

Evolution is true but reverse engineering is not, and building **** doesn't happen unless you designed the product.

Let me guess building a Tesla Coil or Faraday Cage is too difficult too?

I honestly have no idea what your point is.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

I honestly have no idea what your point is.

Of course you don't.

What you want to hear is that Saddam was awesome and that Iraq having WMD's was a lie.

I'm not a Bush fan but I know that is epic bull****..... How can someone gas the Kurds on live TV then turn around and tell the world he has no WMD's then they're found, no one cares because they want to believe in their political fantasies, then turn around and make excuses when rebels start using them?

Yeah that is pretty ****ed up, yet some call me delusional and stupid?

And how does my post relate - pretty simple - you claim one cannot rebuild a weapon or create one - yet I call bull**** and say it's happened numerous times and that I can throw lighting bolts at people if I wanted to just to prove that fact.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

So Bush Inc tried to eliminate the threat of WMDs and failed miserably. Doesn't surprise me at all.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Once again, they were supposed to have NONE. As in ZERO. And ZERO capacity to build them.

If they are "old" that most likely means dating back from before the first Gulf War.
That's pretty damn old.
If they are so contaminated and so unstable that there is very good likelihood that the only people to be harmed are the ones futzing around with them,
then they are ineffective and might have been ineffective for quite some time.
So that would mean that there are, in effect, ZERO, which also rules out the possibility of any capacity to build them too.

The general consensus was that the THREAT was over-sold, over-estimated and overplayed by the Bush administration, but even barring that, we still go
right back to the discovery of evidence that points to the fact that Bush had been planning the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11/2001, which renders the
entire WMD/Mushroom Cloud/Curveball hypothesis moot anyway.

The prezzy-dint had a hard-on for Saddam Hussein no matter what...WMD's or no WMD's, 9/11 or no 9/11, gassed his own people or handed out smores.
Everyone in that administration knew that they would never ever be able to sell an Iraq invasion on the pretext of "getting revenge for Dad" so they had to have something, anything, anything at all, or several somethings, or a whole lotta somethings made outta nothing, as long as it could be pimped out and presented as looking like something.

So no matter how this is sliced and diced, in the end this "Aaaaa-HAAAA!" moment doesn't really matter.
Well, ACTUALLY that's not exactly true come to think of it because in the end it DOES matter because it's an "Aaaaa-HAAAA!!" moment which will sell very well on
Fox News, where actual facts and details don't matter.

Just scream "Aaaaaa-HAAAAAA!!!" and you got em right where you want em, the Two-Minutes Hate in full throated crescendo, swell and sforzando.

rumsfeld saddam.jpg
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

So Bush Inc tried to eliminate the threat of WMDs and failed miserably. Doesn't surprise me at all.


Bush hasn't been president since 2008.... Do you understand that? Now Obama like the ****ing retard he is pulls out of Iraq and now it has gone to ****.

This is what you get when you have democrats running the show - ****.... lousy economy and world anarchy....

But of course my "liberal" generation just had to show the world they weren't racists... Whats next Billary???

Funny part is those who elected this ****ing peon are the least informed people in the United States...

Life under Obama and many others has been MISERABLE.....If this ****ing government was regulated to the same rules as Wall Street EVERY POLITICIAN would be going to prison - yet the federal government does whatever the **** they want...

Wait until libertarians/Tea Party take control because people WILL be held accountable - not censures but PRISON....
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Yes, weapons grade CBR Munitions have to be properly maintained, stored and the like. Yes, they lose "Viability" as military weapons.

Now, get a crate of old Chemical Weapons, put in on a ship... say one bound for NY Harbor, then detonate it. Sure, it wouldn't have the same effect as if it were lobbed from Artillery fire or launched from the crude scud's Saddam had.

I'm sure that'd be a small consolation to the people of NY that the terrorist used old, less effective chemicals.

(P.S. You are free to insert any target civilian city... Paris, London, Tel Aviv...)

How many rogue states are there right now, post Saddam?
How many are there with the funding needed for such an operation?
Who normally monitors ocean going vessels and does risk assessment like this on a regular basis?

See, the point I am attempting to make is, if you or anyone thinks that a multi-trillion dollar invasion, war and occupation
has removed that threat, or removed it at ANY TIME in the last fifteen, twenty or even thirty years, they're dreaming.

They also have little or no knowledge of how we secure our ports and harbors.
Not saying that we do a sterling job of that either, I am saying that the author of such a statment knows absolutely nothing about how it is done.

In fact, it almost sounds word for word like it was lifted directly from a Charles Krauthammer diatribe.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

None - I'm sorry if I spoke awkwardly there - they had the materials necessary. They had not constructed any.

We thought Iraq had an ongoing production program - they didn't. They probably would have stood one back up if we'd decided well what the hell and dropped pressure, but as it was, Iraq was generally in "freeze" mode on it's WMD's. The extent to which Saddam was fully aware of that is debatable, but it seems he did think he had a greater capability than he did.

Some have even gone so far as to state that he wanted everyone ELSE to also think he had a greater capability than he did, and that in the end it turned out that he apparently did too good of a job convincing some in the Bush administration who had been looking for a justification.
Like two lonely hearts, they found each other and that was the blind date from Hell.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

If they are "old" that most likely means dating back from before the first Gulf War.
That's pretty damn old.
If they are so contaminated and so unstable that there is very good likelihood that the only people to be harmed are the ones futzing around with them,
then they are ineffective and might have been ineffective for quite some time.
So that would mean that there are, in effect, ZERO, which also rules out the possibility of any capacity to build them too.

The general consensus was that the THREAT was over-sold, over-estimated and overplayed by the Bush administration, but even barring that, we still go
right back to the discovery of evidence that points to the fact that Bush had been planning the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11/2001, which renders the
entire WMD/Mushroom Cloud/Curveball hypothesis moot anyway.

The prezzy-dint had a hard-on for Saddam Hussein no matter what...WMD's or no WMD's, 9/11 or no 9/11, gassed his own people or handed out smores.
Everyone in that administration knew that they would never ever be able to sell an Iraq invasion on the pretext of "getting revenge for Dad" so they had to have something, anything, anything at all, or several somethings, or a whole lotta somethings made outta nothing, as long as it could be pimped out and presented as looking like something.

So no matter how this is sliced and diced, in the end this "Aaaaa-HAAAA!" moment doesn't really matter.
Well, ACTUALLY that's not exactly true come to think of it because in the end it DOES matter because it's an "Aaaaa-HAAAA!!" moment which will sell very well on
Fox News, where actual facts and details don't matter.

Just scream "Aaaaaa-HAAAAAA!!!" and you got em right where you want em, the Two-Minutes Hate in full throated crescendo, swell and sforzando.

View attachment 67168482

I agree with you but that still doesn't change the fact Saddam was a ****ing ruthless nut that abused his people.... Weather or not it was vendetta or not is absolutely irrelevant to me - it was nice to see evil wiped off this earth and now this **** breaks out and we all know Obama will do absolutely nothing about it.

I don't know who is worse Obama, our Congress or Saddam??

I don't know why those in the ME and Africa just cant ****ing behave????? that's the best question - of course racist to progressives.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Apparently you dont understand that these weapons are DISMANTLED and UNUSABLE.

In 2014? Hopefully yes. 10 years ago - much less so. Which we know now because one of them was used against us as an improvised explosive device with a gas element.

Now, could they be fired through artillery tubes? Probably not. That doesn't stop them from being usable, however, as we found out. Allow the National Ground Intelligence Center Commander to elucidate:

he 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center's commander said here today.

"These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes ... they do constitute weapons of mass destruction," Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee....

The munitions found contain sarin and mustard gases, Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said. Sarin attacks the neurological system and is potentially lethal.

"Mustard is a blister agent (that) actually produces burning of any area (where) an individual may come in contact with the agent," he said. It also is potentially fatal if it gets into a person's lungs.
The munitions addressed in the report were produced in the 1980s, Maples said. Badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended, Chu added.

While that's reassuring, the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents, Maples said. "We're talking chemical agents here that could be packaged in a different format and have a great effect," he said, referencing the sarin-gas attack on a Japanese subway in the mid-1990s.

This is true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred, Chu said. It's not known exactly how sarin breaks down, but no matter how degraded the agent is, it's still toxic.

"Regardless of (how much material in the weapon is actually chemical agent), any remaining agent is toxic," he said. "Anything above zero (percent agent) would prove to be toxic...

Though about 500 chemical weapons - the exact number has not been released publicly - have been found, Maples said he doesn't believe Iraq is a "WMD-free zone."

"I do believe the former regime did a very poor job of accountability of munitions, and certainly did not document the destruction of munitions," he said. "The recovery program goes on, and I do not believe we have found all the weapons."

The Defense Intelligence Agency director said locating and disposing of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most important tasks servicemembers in the country perform....


The argument that no WMD were found except for the ones that we found, but that they don't count, is a very poor argument.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

90% were usable - the yellow cake needed to be enriched but other than that the guy had the capabilities to make nuclear weapons.. Oh not to mention they found the technology to enrich yellow cake so.....

I'm not the biggest Bush fan but the guy stopped something really bad from happening here.

So far, out of all the reading I've done here, it looks like few if any have the slightest knowledge of what yellowcake really is,
what it's risk factor is or what its potential dangers are.
Did I hallucinate or did someone mention pulling into a harbor with a dirty bomb made of yellowcake?
So far back I wonder if I could find it now.

Did someone actually utter that? Please tell me that they didn't.
If I WASN'T hallucinating, then I would like a rough description of how such a yellowcake dirty bomb would be constructed, or how it would be deployed, or
how it would be expected to work. Any one or all three, and I am not interested in accurate engineering descriptions, just a general theory will do fine.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

If I had executive power and was in charge of the Military I would tell these little ****s to get their act together or they will be severely bombed - and I mean severe.

Basically "behave or you're all Martyrs."

What else can you do?

Who will defend them? who will throw bombs back? no one.... Iran? they would probably want to say out of this.

After I got done wiping **** off the earth "Palestine" would be too afraid to attack Israel.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

90% were usable - the yellow cake needed to be enriched but other than that the guy had the capabilities to make nuclear weapons.. Oh not to mention they found the technology to enrich yellow cake so.....

I'm not the biggest Bush fan but the guy stopped something really bad from happening here.

They found the technology? What did they find? Please clarify.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Some have even gone so far as to state that he wanted everyone ELSE to also think he had a greater capability than he did, and that in the end it turned out that he apparently did too good of a job convincing some in the Bush administration who had been looking for a justification.

Well, that's one of the analytical gaps we discovered later - it never occurred to anyone to consider what his motivations for running a deception campaign designed to threaten his neighbors might be.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

So far, out of all the reading I've done here, it looks like few if any have the slightest knowledge of what yellowcake really is,
what it's risk factor is or what its potential dangers are.
Did I hallucinate or did someone mention pulling into a harbor with a dirty bomb made of yellowcake?
So far back I wonder if I could find it now.

Did someone actually utter that? Please tell me that they didn't.
If I WASN'T hallucinating, then I would like a rough description of how such a yellowcake dirty bomb would be constructed, or how it would be deployed, or
how it would be expected to work. Any one or all three, and I am not interested in accurate engineering descriptions, just a general theory will do fine.

Enriched?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

They found the technology? What did they find? Please clarify.

It's there, it just needs to be built...

You claiming Iraq or any nation in the Mid East lacks the hardware to make a bomb?

Probably not against the US but that doesn't mean they cant use it against others in the region or use it as a bargaining chip while Michelle eats her ****ing hamburgers.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Good point - the hermit kingdom is also nuts, though in a more traditional, terrifying, autocratic god-king dictatorship sort of way. I honestly have no idea how we are going to deal with those people when and if that government ever collapses.

Absolutely NO argument there whatsoever.
I didn't lose a wink of sleep worrying about the dangers of a Saddam presence but I've lost tons of sleep wondering about
a nation of 23 million mentally ill fundamentalists (ahhh but I repeat myself!) living in a true cult of personality, worshipping a LIVING GOD who does indeed possess functional nuclear weapons with the very real and functional range needed to strike the US or US interests and allies.

I suspect we have a good many scenarios and plans for dealing with them. I shudder to imagine what most of them are and I suspect most of them involve
complete and utter destruction, the likes of which would surely mean extended collateral damage to surrounding areas and the loss of tens of millions of innocents in neighboring countries.

And of course the default plan, which is to just hope China keeps them in check.
Which is purely a matter of convenience to China and China only, and the moment it becomes less convenient for China, China will do an about face.
Will we be standing there with our thumbs up our keisters or will we have the stomach to do what is thought to be unthinkable?
 
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