Oh give me a break! It's 40 Fricken vials, not 4000. You think 40 amounts to a 'stockpile'? Geeze, my grandmother had 40 vials of sarin around the house at any given time. Hell, for Christmas each year the grandkids would get a vial or two in their stocking.

/sarcasm

Hell, for Christmas each year the grandkids would get a vial or two in their stocking.

That explains a lot.

Please note that these "vials of Sarin" have since been authenticated as Sarin Test Kits, used in the field to detect the presence of Sarin, VX, etc. in the air.

Don't people....like....research anymore? Iraq had tons of sarin during the gulf war and even if they DIDN'T destroy all of it, the stuff has a shelf life of usually about a couple of weeks.

rabit -

Yes, proper research is important ...

According to the CIA, nations such as Iraq have tried to overcome the problem of sarin's short self life in two ways:

The shelf life of unitary (i.e., pure) sarin may be lengthened by increasing the purity of the precursor and intermediate chemicals and refining the production process.

Developing binary chemical weapons, where the two precursor chemicals are stored seperately in the same round, and mixed to form the agent immediate before or when the round is in flight. This approach has the dual benefit of making the issue of shelf life irrelevant and greatly increasing the safety of sarin munitions.

While I can't speak for the specific vials in question, Iraq had the capability to possess quite long-lasting stocks of Sarin.

Just to reemphasize and clarify what Bill was saying: Yes these are tests kits, but the chemical agent was also real Sarin. That is, the Soviets shipped real Sarin to show what a 'positive' result would look like in the test.

Further, from this Christian Science Monitor article:

While further analysis determined that the find was probably part of a Soviet test kit with samples, its discovery in a room with mortar shells appeared to indicate an intent to weaponize the material.

Yes, I read the wikipedia article too;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

But tried doesn't automatically mean succeeded.

"Iraq had the capability to possess quite long-lasting stocks of Sarin"

Capability to what? Manufacturer all on their own? Exactly how long-lasting? It's been 15 years since Iraqi claimed to have destroyed their sarin stockpiles and means to manufacture? Everything I've heard about the Iraqi chemical weapons programs sounds like they were pretty primitive.

making the issue of shelf life irrelevant

Implies that shelf life is ... irrelevant.

Everything I've heard about the Iraqi chemical weapons programs sounds like they were pretty primitive.

Read the Duelfer report for all the detail in the world. Your point seemed to be that sarin necessarily has a prohibitive shelf-life - it does not.

The stuff gramma made lasted a lot longer than 5 years. Had to be careful with the stuff though. If you inhaled any of it, it could cause brain damage and make you repeat stuff over and over. If you inhaled any of it, it could cause brain damage and make you repeat stuff over and over.

Good idea (150mb PDF, downloadable from from CIA website) and it clarified a few things for me about Saddam's intent to eventually restart his programs, but doesn't take away from my skepticism of the administrations goals in Iraq.

But one also needs to take into account this;

Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."[Washington Post, also another article from the Christian Science Monitor]

And also from another source, the state of Saddam's CW program in 1991:

This was one of the factors that lead the Iraqis to investigate binary weapons, for which sarin is particularly well suited. A project (described in the revised "Full, Final, and Complete" disclosures issued by Iraq after the defection of Hussein al Kamal) was established which achieved some success in the design and construction of binary munitions using 122 mm rockets and 155 mm artillery shells, although the project does not seem to have progressed to full scale manufacture (there is no evidence that more than a few hundred binary shells were produced - more than would be needed as prototypes, perhaps, but nowhere near what would have been needed for use against the Iranians had the war continued).

But, while they still had not mastered the art of manufacturing binary munitions in which the mixing of the precursors occured on firing at the time of the invasion of Kuwait, they had developed a simple process for generating the agent immediately before use...an Iraqi soldier would be provided with a gas mask and would pour an appropriate amount of the DF into the munition.

Seems kind of primitive to me.

rabit -

You just invalidated your original argument by proving that the Iraqis had working sarin kits that could last indefinitely, though they hadn't figured out how to create an automated sarin artillery shell.

Sarin as a terror tool doesn't give a damn about employing it in an automated artillery shell, a technology that no other nationality had bothered to develop. That would be advanced. Iraq had the capability to stockpile Sarin idefinitely, they maintained dual use industrial capability to produce it even through sanctions, and while no stockpiles were found by Deulfer, Iraq failed to account for large stockpiles as of their declarations to the UN.

Thanks for doing the digging.

I'm glad I could be helpful in clarifying some facts about Iraq's 'advanced' state of binary chemical weapons of mass destruction technology. I guess I sort of see the danger now, that Iraq posed to the United States. CWs probably delivered inside Iraqi-made long range missiles, an Iraqi soldier strapped on each one who has to hand-mix the ingredients at the right moment before impact, sort of like a certain Kubrick picture that more people should watch right now (along with Fog of War, maybe).

All joking aside, it pisses me off that seemingly intelligent people desperately cling to every faint new shred of WMD-evidence, and have totally lost grasp of the bigger reality...

Iraqi WMD or not, Osama bin Laden is still alive, the murderer of thousands of Americans with families (Remember? The one who got this whole mess going? Oh, he recently said he'll do it again too); and yet some of us are still more concerned with defending/rationalizing along partisan lines. Have people lost their damn minds?

Did it possibly even occur to anyone that Osama pulled a Manson, wanting to inflame a "culture" war with the intent that there'd be a domino effect of escalating violence between the two sides. Think that anger over a reported 100,000 loss of Iraqi lives will just fade away as they bite into their taste of McFreedom? I wonder if Osama is safe in a cave somewhere with his Sony 60-inch plasma screen 5.1 home theatre satellite TV setup watching everything going on in the news (presumably between Ally McBeal reruns).

The world is a strange place. That's all I will say here. ;)

Cheers!

rabit -

Considering you can't even grasp the very, very rudimentary fact that the "advancement" of ARTILLERY shells have NOTHING to do with the stability of the raw WMD that could be put in an aerosol can and disbursed into a ventilation sytem or leaked as a liquid in a subway (as what happened in Japan), how can we trust ANY of your analysis?

The rest of your schtick is barely amusing. You have NO grasp of why intelligent people could advocate war, or the deteriorating strategic situation with Iraq that essentially called for eventual conflict by the estimation of many smart people on both sides of the aisle. Also, Ally McBeal? The pop culture reference needs an update. "McFreedom?" How clever!

Seriously, in all respects, humor, ironical commentary, raw data, logic, you are trying to punch way above your weight and failing miserably. All while calling people that disagree with you dumb or insane.

The irony.

The Democratic Underground beckons you.

Thank you for your understanding! :)

Ah, okay. Calls for one more reply.

So sorry to bring up Osama. I know it must hurt your feelings and all, but you know that every day he is alive, he still represents more of a danger to all Americans than any of Iraq's WMD ever did. A president who said he's "not that concerned about him" gives many Americans the impression that Bush wont' do anything about Osama for another four years.

No, the Ally McBeal reference is quite deliberate.

oh, one more.

You have NO grasp of why intelligent people could advocate war

Not with the justifications that the administration presented to the public, over 200 times, detailed in Waxman's report. And a president who seems to get core facts wrong:

Q But, still, those countries who didn't support the Iraqi Freedom operation use the same argument, weapons of mass destruction haven't been found. So what argument will you use now to justify this war?

THE PRESIDENT: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them. [TV Poland interview from May 29, 2003, transcript on the official White House website]

There's nothing more that can be said about that.

Fundamentally, there is a difference between whether the WAR is wrong and how the Administration COMMUNICATED it's rationale. Read this.

Once again, you don't grasp this. There are plenty of people that thing war with Iraq was necessary, but the admin did a very bad job expressing the variety of rationale for the war.

You, on the other hand, are shifting between these arguments with abandon ("the war is bad" to "Bush gave shifty rationale").

Hell, you started this thread scornfully mocking people that could believe Sarin had a shelf-life of over a few weeks, then were challenged and proven 100% wrong - so you just picked up and shifted to another line of attack.

This pretty much points to your true motivation.

And I have it on good authority that 74% of people that watch Alley McBeal re-runs are anti-war.

Ally McBeal snorts Sarin and repeats herself. Ally McBeal snorts Sarin and repeats herself.

MEME PILEON!