This is why the so vague as to be Schrödinger term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was coined instead of the already sufficient and common terms of art "nuclear" "biological" and "chemical" used to describe weapons with special international restrictions. So that you could justify failed foriegn adventures by saying "hey! they had a warehouse with some worn-out cold-war artillery shells with Sarin gas in it! That is exactly the same thing as having nuclear bombs 45 minutes from leveling London with mushroom clouds! And having a "suspended program" is exactly the same thing as having secret labs building atomic bomb components and enriching uranium preparing for a huge terrorist after-market for atomic bombs.
Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify. 1. They are primitive. 2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.
This is absolute ignorant, disingenuous and utterly wrong.
Mustard gas, a Blister Agent, is a NBC weapon. Specifically a Chemical weapon. Your adherence to WMD as the requirement is in fact you sticking to the poorly articulated requirements that you ascribe to me. (Cognitive dissonance at it's best I suppose.) It is a 1st World war technology. That is still a proscribed weapon according to the terms of the treaty, regardless of purity or age.
Sarin is a Nerve Agent. Specifically in the G-agent class, similar to Cyclosarin, Soman and Tabun. Your equivocation to make it seem less harmful is disingenuous. The delivery system which the Aum Shinrikyo cult used was primitive and poor. I guarantee you that with the same purity of agent, an explosive Chemical Shell, whether binary or unitary would be FAR more deadly over a much larger area. G and V agents are Cold War weapons and are QUITE deadly despite your characterizations to the contrary.
A functional chemical industry able to make pesticides and a foundry/machining complex to make shells is all that is required to manufacture G type chemical agents. Stocks of ANY of those components is a violation of the treaty that iraq was signatory to.
Filled and degraded or unfilled shells themselves, whether unitary (one chamber for a final product) or a binary (two chambers with a function on firing to mix the two components for a final chemical product) are a violation of the treaty.
The NBC weapons presence issue is a Binary function. There ARE or ARE NOT weapons there. The Fact is that weapons WERE found during ODS and the following years. That's a Positive, not a negative. You cannot hand wave that away by saying they were old or poorly kept or a bad design. They were in fact, extant NBC weapons in violation of the treaty. Inspection efforts showed a very clear and consistent to conceal extant programs over the 12 years following the 1st Gulf war war.
It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.
Running away won't help us or any of the allies. We cannot loose, to do so is only going to be because we decided to fail. The most critical strategic goal is destroying Al Quaida's forces in Iraq and showing the Arab World that Iraq saw them up close and turned their backs on them. Witness how the Democrats have in fact stopped talking about iraq because the Success in areas like Al Anbar. Specifically due to the surge which you say is not or will not work. The Surge is in fact working.
Of course if you listen to Obama, the success is because Democrats were elected and that scared the terrorists off.
no subject
Sarin and Mustard gas hardly qualify.
1. They are primitive.
2. It took 5 men and one liter of Sarin (an artillery shell would hold 5 times as much) to kill 12 people packed into a fucking subway in 1995.
This is absolute ignorant, disingenuous and utterly wrong.
Mustard gas, a Blister Agent, is a NBC weapon. Specifically a Chemical weapon. Your adherence to WMD as the requirement is in fact you sticking to the poorly articulated requirements that you ascribe to me. (Cognitive dissonance at it's best I suppose.) It is a 1st World war technology. That is still a proscribed weapon according to the terms of the treaty, regardless of purity or age.
Sarin is a Nerve Agent. Specifically in the G-agent class, similar to Cyclosarin, Soman and Tabun. Your equivocation to make it seem less harmful is disingenuous. The delivery system which the Aum Shinrikyo cult used was primitive and poor. I guarantee you that with the same purity of agent, an explosive Chemical Shell, whether binary or unitary would be FAR more deadly over a much larger area. G and V agents are Cold War weapons and are QUITE deadly despite your characterizations to the contrary.
A functional chemical industry able to make pesticides and a foundry/machining complex to make shells is all that is required to manufacture G type chemical agents. Stocks of ANY of those components is a violation of the treaty that iraq was signatory to.
Filled and degraded or unfilled shells themselves, whether unitary (one chamber for a final product) or a binary (two chambers with a function on firing to mix the two components for a final chemical product) are a violation of the treaty.
The NBC weapons presence issue is a Binary function. There ARE or ARE NOT weapons there. The Fact is that weapons WERE found during ODS and the following years. That's a Positive, not a negative. You cannot hand wave that away by saying they were old or poorly kept or a bad design. They were in fact, extant NBC weapons in violation of the treaty. Inspection efforts showed a very clear and consistent to conceal extant programs over the 12 years following the 1st Gulf war war.
It's not like the region has a history of stubborn violence or anything, so I'm sure we heard the last gasps in 2003, deployed 300,000 Iraqi soldiers 2004 (right after the election it was supposed to be), turned the corner in 2005, stayed the course in 2006, deployed all the reserves in 2007 to victoriously get violence back down to the levels when we were winning back in 2005. Yeah, with failur-er successes like that, we would hate to just hand those shadowy bad-guys their victory.
Running away won't help us or any of the allies. We cannot loose, to do so is only going to be because we decided to fail. The most critical strategic goal is destroying Al Quaida's forces in Iraq and showing the Arab World that Iraq saw them up close and turned their backs on them. Witness how the Democrats have in fact stopped talking about iraq because the Success in areas like Al Anbar. Specifically due to the surge which you say is not or will not work. The Surge is in fact working.
Of course if you listen to Obama, the success is because Democrats were elected and that scared the terrorists off.