On Fri, 21 May 2004, Damon Agretto [EMAIL PROTECTED] mentioned
http://www.stripesonline.com/article.asp?section=104article=22295
The leakage may be from smoke rounds ...
From what I have heard, chemical warheads leak. The Germans, US, and
Soviets all found this out. Presumably, the rounds do not leak
immediately or hugely, so the problem did not halt initial production.
But leakage was, I am told, one of the reasons that the US and USSR
developed binary munitions.
Another solution was to load the warheads shortly before use rather
than load them at the factory. When you do this, the poison spends
most of its time in larger tanks that are less likely to leak. It is
handled by people with more expertise.
If I remember rightly, United Nations inspectors said that the Iraqi
military first made old fashioned munitions. As expected they leaked.
Then it created systems to load warheads shortly before use. In the
fall of 2002, United Nations inspectors in Iraq found some empty
missile warheads that appeared to be designed for such loading.
Also, I am told that in the mid 1990s, after first saying it did not
do any such work, the Iraqi government said that it had developed some
binary shells. The UN inspectors said that the number of shells
manufactures was more than `some'; that the numbers were in production
run quantities.
I can well believe that some liquid filled warheads leak and that
those filled with nerve gas are especially dangerous since so little
poison injures or kills someone.
I can also believe that the Iraqi military worked to protect its own
people by developing late loading systems and by developing binary
weapons.
The United Nations inspectors have also said that sometimes the Iraqi
military buried banned weapons in sand. This destroyed fighter jets
but did not necessarily damage artillery rounds. (As far as I know,
all this has been common knowledge for six or eight years; I cannot
remember where I learned it. Doubtless, if you have a faster and more
reliable Internet connection that I, you will want to check.)
I do not know what the Iraqi military or other portion of the Iraqi
government did with its chemical weapons.
All we know is that the United States, under the Bush Administration,
did NOT, as I wrote to the Brin List on 30 May 2003, send
... 2 or more troops to look at the various sites and to
search for more sites. The troops would not have been able to do
much except clear harmless sites and guard suspect sites -- but
that would have been enough. And that could have been done over a
few days in the middle of April [2003]. Remember, the goal would
not have been to find a `smoking gun' but to have cleared some
sites and to have provided guards for those sites that appeared
dangerous to ordinary soldiers.
On 31 May 2003, the BBC said
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/americas/2951440.stm
The Pentagon has a list of around 900 sites which may provide
clues to Saddam Hussein's alleged chemical and biological
arsenal. So far, around 200 locations have been searched, said
Pentagon officials on Friday.
which means the US military said that 700 sites were unvisited.
As I wrote on Saturday, 31 May 2003
... some 466000 coalition troops were involved [in that part of
the war]. I am talking about shifting the task of fewer than 5%
of the total troop number for a short time. Moreover, if the army
had needed another 2 troops, Bush could have delayed the start
a little longer to wait for them and their equipment to arrive.
Most likely most of those 700 locations will be empty or
clueless. ...
But suppose one of those sites contained enough weaponized anthrax
to fill a Johnson Baby powder container like those that that many
grown up travelers carry? What if someone who is unfriendly to
the US and has the right contacts gets hold of it before a US Army
team comes by?
For all we know, some of those unvisited, but suspected sites
contained chemical weapons. Since they were not visited by the US,
someone could have taken them without the US learning.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
As I slowly update it, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I rewrite a What's New segment for http://www.rattlesnake.com
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