Real World Event Discussions

Iraqi WMD's non-existence still confounding some buggers!

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Friday, September 14, 2007 17:16
VIEWED: 19028
PAGE 6 of 27

HERO

Friday, September 7, 2007 8:34 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Tell you what- you "hide" a uranium weapons program in California, or the ability to produce 5 tons of Sarin... or the ability to produce 25,000 liters of liquid anthrax and you win.

I was thinking about this as I wrote it. How many WMDs are too many? How many tons of sarin gas do you need? I think that the ability to produce it is bad and easily found, but a couple tons of it is really bad, yet easily hidden. Especially since I plan to cheat our little game and hide everything in Utah.

Good thing for you Saddam would NEVER cheat...

H

RUE

Friday, September 7, 2007 8:39 PM

Hero

You still think there's WMD in Iraq ?

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

CHRISISALL

Friday, September 7, 2007 8:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Hero

You still think there's WMD in Iraq ?

Of course he does, Rue, it's in the secret base of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who briefly aligned himself with Iraq, and who had planned to steal them from Saddam all along.

He (and they) are now in Iran.

Silly silly British Rue Chrisisall

RUE

Friday, September 7, 2007 8:53 PM

Oh dear, that was a silly question for me to ask, wasn't it ?

And yet, I'm still hoping for a reply.

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

SIGNYM

Friday, September 7, 2007 9:19 PM

Quote:
I was thinking about this as I wrote it. How many WMDs are too many? How many tons of sarin gas do you need?

A lot.

Quote:
I think that the ability to produce it is bad and easily found, but a couple tons of it is really bad, yet easily hidden. Especially since I plan to cheat our little game and hide everything in Utah.

Because too bad for YOU that Sarin and liquid anthrax degrade quickly, especially in hot weather. You can't produce Sarin or liquid anthrax little by little and store it like in a piggy-bank. You see, this is where being a technical newbie puts you at a disadvantage. Your imagination is free to dream up all kinds of scenarios. But once you start grappling with the real details there are suddenly many stumbling blocks. And what about those rockets? What good does it so to have all those weapons if you can't "deliver" them? The facts are as the facts are.

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Always look upstream.

FLETCH2

Friday, September 7, 2007 10:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
I was thinking about this as I wrote it. How many WMDs are too many? How many tons of sarin gas do you need?
A lot.
Quote:

For military use in an open battlefield that's probably true in a confined space like the NY subway.... not so much.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4365417.stm

That's the kicker of this whole thing. A pound of polonium has limited miliary use against forces with good ABC countermeasures. The same amount wrapped around a dirty bomb and exploded in Times Square? Different ball game.

So if the question is "can you hide enough to win a replay of the Iran-Iraq war or topple Saudi Arabia, the answer is probably no, if the question is can you hide enough to give NYC or LA a very bad day, that's very different.

You may not agree that WMD's were the real reason that the administration went to war but they certainly expected to find some when they got there. Declaring war on that basis, going in and finding nothing was the worse possible result for them because it very serverly damaged US creadibilty from that moment. Right now Washington could show a video of Iran's president Ahmadinejad, tapdancing around an A-Bomb, provide a hand writen note by him saying he'll drop it on Tel Aviv and a radar track of the plane in the air and the UN won't believe it. The US could have come up with any number of reasons to topple Sadam, they chose WMD because unlike Rue they were absolutely sure that when they got there they would find some.

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FLETCH2

Friday, September 7, 2007 10:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Because too bad for YOU that Sarin and liquid anthrax degrade quickly, especially in hot weather. You can't produce Sarin or liquid anthrax little by little and store it like in a piggy-bank. You see, this is where being a technical newbie puts you at a disadvantage.

Isn't liquid Anthrax principly in that state to allow it to be weaponised? I believe as dry powdered spores (like the stuff mailed to congress) it would actually last a long time. The UK exploded an Anthrax bomb on a Scotish island during WW2 and it was still considered lethal in the 1980's (I know the weather is a lil different but I'm curious.)

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

Also, isn't Sarin made from binary components? Wiki suggests the shelf life in Binary form could be several years.

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

SIGNYM

Friday, September 7, 2007 10:53 PM

Saddam didn't have the technology to create sporulated anthrax. When Colin Powell showed that little vial of powder to the UN and said that Saddam had so many thousand liters, that was complete BS. Saddam had liquid anthrax in the 80's. What Saddam missed destroying had been "spoiled" for many years by that time.

AFA terrorist use of WMD... Saddam was a secular dictator. He was not confused by visions of matryrdom and paradise. At one time he was our bulwark against Iranian theocracy. His ambitions were purely regional. Bush had to work hard to paint Saddam as a "terrorist" (in the sense of attacking the USA) and a lot of Bush's arguments had a lot of "if" coming offa them. (Saddam MIGHT sell WMD to terrorists. Or they MIGHT steal them from him. Or they MIGHT be deployed and stolen later.) The data just wasn't behind it.
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Always look upstream.

FLETCH2

Friday, September 7, 2007 11:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Saddam didn't have the technology to create sporulated anthrax. When Colin Powell showed that little vial of powder to the UN and said that Saddam had so many thousand liters, that was complete BS. Saddam had liquid anthrax in the 80's. What Saddam missed destroying had been "spoiled" for many years by that time.

AFA terrorist use of WMD... Saddam was a secular dictator. He was not (towards the end to his reign) particularly "connected", but he also wasn't confused by visions of matryrdom and paradise. At one time he was our bulwark against Iranian theocracy. He had no intention of bringing down the USA because his ambitions were purely regional. But that's why Bush had to work so hard to connect Saddam to 9-11: to paint him as a "terrorist".

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

Hummm ok, that's kind of opposite from the way I understood it. Anthrax creates spores naturally and you can dry them and make them into a powder. That was why the 1940's British bomb could be made so easily. However, powdered Anthrax is hard to handle and deploy and is risky to your own troops. Making it as a liquid makes it more potent and means you can use it in the same artillary shells you can use to fire chemical weapons. I thought liquifying it was what made it "weaponised" as opposed to the powdered form which is what is supplied to most labs?

CUNKNOWN

Friday, September 7, 2007 11:23 PM

I can't believe there is still discussion on this.. even Bush and Cheney themselves have admitted there was a severe "intelligence failure." Very curious, especially considering that the CIA was trying constantly to tell Bush even before the war that Saddam had no WMD. Bush just didn't listen. Anyway, any reputable source you can find will say that there were no WMD in Iraq and that there was an "intelligence failure" which made us think there was WMD there before the invasion.

So, I don't get what this thread is about. Is this for real a discussion on whether Saddam had WMD? I don't know whether to laugh or cry guys.