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

re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Do you honestly think that one warehouse containing weapons -- most likely donated to Iraq by the US to fight Iran -- was good enough reason to:

1) Invade a country
2) Spend 7+ Billion dollars
3) Loss of 100,000+ lives
4) Cause a country to be on the brink of civil war
5) Create tons more animosity towards the West

Seriously, do you think it was worth it? :doh :screwy

Cheney et al. are lucky they are not rotting in prison, and you want an apology? How ****ed up is that!
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

cpwill said:
GE (General Explosive) bombs have a longer shelf life than some chemical compounds, and I'll admit to not knowing the shelf life of Iraqi Mustard - from what I understand it was pretty stable, but yeah, as you point out, it's been decades.


What I don't understand is why folks are surprised. We knew that Saddam still had Sarin back in 2004, which was also the year that it leaked that we had secretly found and removed 2 tons of enriched uranium and roughly 1,000 highly radioactive sources" that "could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device," or dirty bomb. That's part of what made the simplistic "bush lied people died" chants so annoyingly vapid.
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Apparently....:

Subject: STABILITY OF IRAQ'S CW STOCKPILE

DESPITE THE GENERAL SOPHISTICATION OF

IRAQ'S CW PRODUCTION INFRASTRUCTURE,

SOME OF IRAQ'S CHEMICAL AGENTS HAD A

SHORT SHELF LIFE, MOSTLY OWING TO IMPURITIES

IN THE PRECURSOR CHEMICALS. CIA BELIEVES

THAT SOME SARIN HAD A SHELF LIFE OF ONLY A

FEW WEEKS.
Click to expand...

CIA HOLDS THAT THE STOCKS OF SARIN MAY

REMAIN VIABLE WELL BEYOND MARCH. CIA

ANALYSTS BELIEVE THAT THE SHELF LIFE PROBLEM

WAS ONLY TEMPORARY AND THAT THE IRAQIS

CAN NOW PRODUCE UNITARY AGENTS OF

SUFFICIENT QUALITY BY ADDING A STABILIZER OR

IMPROVING THE PRODUCTION PROCESS.
Click to expand...

Apparently Iraq's capabilities for sarin gas storage were only a few weeks at best. All I could find.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Dayton3 said:
Exactly how many chemical weapons was Saddam Hussein supposed to be allowed to keep and in what condition?

Even degraded chemical weapons can be very dangerous.
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I have stuff in my fridge that's 'very dangerous'. Is that how low the bar is set to justify an invasion?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Unitedwestand13 said:
even though chemical weapons are WMDS by definition, the medias framing of the argument was that the administration was talking about iraq possessing a specific kind of Weapon of mass destruction. the kind of weapon of mass destruction whose defining characteristic is that upon detonation it creates a giant mushroom cloud.
Click to expand...

The actual quote: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

The Democrats attacked the president as if that was a definitive statement and poor them, they had been fooled. Especially that fat SOB Ted Kennedy. He did more damage than anyone. There was no definitive accusation in that statement and the Democrats have lied their asses off about it for over a decade.

there was also a lot of talk about Iraq possessing yellow cake uranium.
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For a decade Saddam played Clinton like a flute denying access to UN weapons inspectors.

All of these weapons were in material breach of the cease fire Saddam signed in order to save his ass in 1991.
 
Napoleon said:
Apparently you never read the ISG reports and certainly weren't paying attention when Bush himself publicly admitted that there were no WMD.
Click to expand...

I read them and Bush said no such thing. What he did say in his book was that none were found. Perhaps what ISIS actually just captured was a very large shipment of Pringles potato chips?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

MaggieD said:
It wasn't just talk:



U.S. removes 'yellowcake' from Iraq - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - Conflict in Iraq | NBC News
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and what about the aluminum tubes?

Former secretary of state colin Powell specifically mentioned in a 2002 interveiw that iraq was in the process of acquiring aluminum tubes as a component to be used in a nuclear weapons program.

here is the transcript


https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/fox.htm
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

This thread confuses me. Are people here actually trying to justify the invasion now, or is this about trying to say it was justified in 2003?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Unitedwestand13 said:
and what about the aluminum tubes?

Former secretary of state colin Powell specifically mentioned in a 2002 interveiw that iraq was in the process of acquiring aluminum tubes as a component to be used in a nuclear weapons program.

here is the transcript


https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/fox.htm
Click to expand...

Bottom line, they were many many years away from constructing any weapons with the yellowcake... if that was their intention.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

MaggieD said:
I don't know who Mail Online is, but I'm not buying it.
Click to expand...

It's bull****. In the 1980s the Anthrax vaccine still had minute amounts of active anthrax. Not enough to be deadly, but it could be used to grow anthrax in a lab.

This fact lead criminally dishonest journalists to claim that selling anthrax vaccine to Iraq was equivalent to selling militarized anthrax.

It doesn't help that the idiotic author of that Mail Online article seems to think Pharmaceutical companies sell chemical weapons. :roll:
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Amadeus said:
I have stuff in my fridge that's 'very dangerous'. Is that how low the bar is set to justify an invasion?
Click to expand...

I'll play devil's advocate here... but what exactly do you have in your fridge that is... comparable to sarin gas.... and why?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Hatuey said:
Apparently....:

Subject: STABILITY OF IRAQ'S CW STOCKPILE
Apparently Iraq's capabilities for sarin gas storage were only a few weeks at best. All I could find.
Click to expand...

Ah, no. You will note the critical word there, "some". When they detonated in 2004, for example, having been on the shelf for probably about two decades, they still hit our guys, whom we had to treat.

As your second source says

CIA HOLDS THAT THE STOCKS OF SARIN MAY

REMAIN VIABLE WELL BEYOND MARCH. CIA

ANALYSTS BELIEVE THAT THE SHELF LIFE PROBLEM

WAS ONLY TEMPORARY AND THAT THE IRAQIS

CAN NOW PRODUCE UNITARY AGENTS OF

SUFFICIENT QUALITY BY ADDING A STABILIZER OR

IMPROVING THE PRODUCTION PROCESS.
Click to expand...

Iraqi's weren't stupid, and they had the ability to adjust their programs.

DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
WASHINGTON, DC 20511
The Honorable Peter Hoekstra Chairman Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence House of Representatives Washington, DC. 20515

Dear Chairman Hoekstra: Thank you for your letter of June 19, 2006, requesting that we declassify “key points”from a National Ground Intelligence Center report on the recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq.Attached please find the requested paper.

Sincerely,
44
John D. Negroponte

UNCLASSIFIED Subject: lraqi Chemical Munitions 21June 2006 Purpose: This summary provides an unclassified overview of chemical munitions recovered in lraq since May 2004.

Key Points:
-- Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
-- Despite many efforts to locate and destroy lraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
-- Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside lraq cannot be ruled out.
-- The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
-- The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors,including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
-~ It has been reported in open press that insurgents and lraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons
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re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Middleground said:
Bottom line, they were many many years away from constructing any weapons with the yellowcake... if that was their intention.
Click to expand...

A nuclear weapon, yes. A dirty bomb they already had all the materials necessary for.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Hatuey said:
Apparently....:

Subject: STABILITY OF IRAQ'S CW STOCKPILE

Apparently Iraq's capabilities for sarin gas storage were only a few weeks at best. All I could find.
Click to expand...


You took the statement "SOME SARIN HAD A SHELF LIFE OF ONLY A FEW WEEKS"

And changed it to "Apparently Iraq's capabilities for sarin gas storage were only a few weeks at best."

Essentially the opposite meaning of the actual quote. That is dishonest.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

These weapons were found shortly after the US invasion of Iraq by US troops.

They were old soviet 1970s rubbish that wasnt capable of being used as the Bush administration had announced.

I recall from the 2006 report by the Bush administration which I read that

"Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent."
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Which were all built pre first gulf war and were therefor not the threat that Bush and Blair had warned everyone about.

Some of them were actualy so unstable that the Saddam regime had them stored in Bunkers for safety of the Iraqi army.

The facilities which were used in Iraq were also all destroyed in the 1990 gulf war.

So this story can only mean 5 things:

It`s an overhyped piece of media garbage.

ISIS has seized a useless facility

ISIS has seized weapons that are potentialy more harmfull to them than to any enemy of theirs

The post 2003 Iraq government had built it`s own chemical weapons program.

The Bush administration were dumb enought to leave those chemical agents that they found behind.


Pick yourself.
 
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re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Unitedwestand13 said:
even though chemical weapons are WMDS by definition, the medias framing of the argument was that the administration was talking about iraq possessing a specific kind of Weapon of mass destruction. the kind of weapon of mass destruction whose defining characteristic is that upon detonation it creates a giant mushroom cloud.
Click to expand...

The administration claimed that Iraq had an ongoing Biological production program, an ongoing Chemical production program, and was seeking to establish a nuclear production program. What we found was no biological program at all, legacy chemical weapons, and enriched uranium and radioactive materials that could be used in dirty bombs. The big mushroom cloud may have been the item that captured everyone's attention (or yours, for me it was the bio stuff), but it was hardly the extent of the Administrations' WMD argument.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

cpwill said:
A nuclear weapon, yes. A dirty bomb they already had all the materials necessary for.
Click to expand...

again the administrations was claiming that iraq's possession of aluminum tubes and amounts of yellow cake uranium was sufficent evidence for the united states to mount preemptive invasion of the country.
 
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...)
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

cpwill said:
A nuclear weapon, yes. A dirty bomb they already had all the materials necessary for.
Click to expand...

So what dirty bombs were found made from that particular stockpile of yellowcake?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

cpwill said:
The administration claimed that Iraq had an ongoing Biological production program, an ongoing Chemical production program, and was seeking to establish a nuclear production program. What we found was no biological program at all, legacy chemical weapons, and enriched uranium and radioactive materials that could be used in dirty bombs. The big mushroom cloud may have been the item that captured everyone's attention (or yours, for me it was the bio stuff), but it was hardly the extent of the Administrations' WMD argument.
Click to expand...

the nuclear weapons claim was what that the "Main stream media" focused on.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Unitedwestand13 said:
again the administrations was claiming that iraq's possession of aluminum tubes and amounts of yellow cake uranium was sufficent evidence for the united states to mount preemptive invasion of the country.
Click to expand...

That is incorrect - the administration constructed a three - tiered argument for invading Iraq; only one of which was his possession and seeking after WMD's, a case which in and of itself extended well beyond aluminum tubes and Nigerien yellow cake.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Hatuey said:
I'll play devil's advocate here... but what exactly do you have in your fridge that is... comparable to sarin gas.... and why?
Click to expand...

I was being facetious. The notion that 'very dangerous' is the new low standard for an invasion just strikes me as foolish. We're not even talking military grade stuff.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Unitedwestand13 said:
the nuclear weapons claim was what that the "Main stream media" focused on.
Click to expand...

:shrug: I don't remember that obsession to the extent that the other material was drowned out (I remember, in fact, quite a lot of argument about what was better for the Iraqis), but if they did so in your area, well then that is their fault.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

Middleground said:
So what dirty bombs were found made from that particular stockpile of yellowcake?
Click to expand...

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.
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

cpwill said:
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.
Click to expand...

and does this somehow justify the invasion of the country?
 
re: ISIL seizes Saddam's chemical weapons plant

You might want to check that 9 billion number--more like two trillion and counting.
As for down here, the over 30,000 wounded have been a huge extra burden to the already burdened VA, certainly no fault of theirs.
Yet we still have trouble getting a VA bill without filibuster.

With the next generation of Veterans ready to be added to Defense Dept. pensions,
more unintended consequences from the Bush/Cheney war of choice .
Middleground said:
Do you honestly think that one warehouse containing weapons -- most likely donated to Iraq by the US to fight Iran -- was good enough reason to:

1) Invade a country
2) Spend 7+ Billion dollars
3) Loss of 100,000+ lives
4) Cause a country to be on the brink of civil war
5) Create tons more animosity towards the West

Seriously, do you think it was worth it? :doh :screwy

Cheney et al. are lucky they are not rotting in prison, and you want an apology? How ****ed up is that!
Click to expand...
 
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