Well, you wouldn't know that from the Bu****es.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Philip Carroll" wrote in message
...
My understanding is that shell had already been tagged by the UN years
earlier, and was to be sent to it's place of manufacturer (somewhere in
Colorado under "W's" Dad) for disposal. I think you guys are grasping at
straws any way, one ancent shell manufactured in the US does not make a
Iraqi weapons program.
"Bob Crantz" wrote in message
hlink.net...
After spending more than a year attacking the Bush administration daily
for
their supposed failure to produce the WMDs that everyone -- including
the
United Nations, as well as most leading Democrats -- believed Saddam had
hidden, the Left has suddenly gone strangely silent on the subject. The
"mainstream" media has been tiptoeing around the discovery of a 155-mm
mortar shell containing Sarin gas in Iraq, the contents of which have
been
confirmed. The shell was used as part of an improvised explosive device
(IED) on a road near the Baghdad International Airport, and exploded as
it
was being disarmed.

The shell contained three liters of Sarin -- nearly a gallon. It was a
type
of shell designed to mix chemical components during flight, which was
why
the explosion didn't kill anyone (though two soldiers were treated for
exposure). Three liters of Sarin is enough, if the components are mixed
properly, to realistically kill hundreds, and potentially thousands. A
concentration of 100 milligrams of Sarin per cubic meter of air is
enough
to
constitute a lethal dose for half the people breathing it within one
minute.

This type of chemical warfare shell had never been declared by Iraq --
it
was not even known that Iraq had ever made them. The 1999 UNSCOM report
on
Iraq reported that thirty binary/Sarin shells were known to exist, and
stated that all had been accounted for. According to UNSCOM, "Iraq
developed
a crude type of binary munition, whereby the final mixing of the two
precursors to the agent was done inside the munition just before
delivery."
Someone actually had to physically pour the components of the Sarin (or
other type of G-series nerve agent) into the shells before they could be
fired. At least, that's how the ones we knew about worked.

So, a previously-unknown type of artillery shell is found in Iraq,
containing an actual, verifiable chemical weapon. This is front page
news,
right? Should we expect apologies from formerly doubting Liberals?
Newspapers filled with retractions from prominent Democrats?
Conciliatory
visits to President Bush from Jaques Chirac and Gerhardt Schroeder? Not
so
fast. Remember: it's an election year. Liberals, Democrats, terrorists
and
appeasers all want President Bush to lose the election so everyone can
get
back to business as usual. Terrorists want to get back to their
implacable
war against Western civilisation, and the others want to get back to
trying
to placate them. The media, as long as we let them get away with it,
will
only run stories that attack President Bush and undermine support for
him.
In fact, Liberals already have their spin on this Sarin find ready to
go.
The vast majority of them -- when you can get them to admit that the
Sarin
and the shell are real -- argue that it doesn't matter for one of four
"reasons."

A. The shell is old, from before the 1991 Gulf War, so it's not what we
were
looking for.

Since the cease-fire that suspended the Gulf War depended on Saddam's
handing over to the UN "[a]ll chemical and biological weapons and all
stocks
of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research,
development, support and manufacturing facilities", this shell is
precisely
what we were looking for, especially if it predates 1991. This shell and
others like it is why the UN passed 17 resolutions demanding that Saddam
disarm. No matter how old it was, it was still lethal. There is no
statute
of limitations on weapons of mass destruction.

B. There is only one shell, not a stockpile, so it doesn't mean
anything.

This one shell contained enough WMD material to potentially kill as many
people as died on 9/11, all by itself. Is it logical to assume that this
is
the only one in existence -- or just wishful thinking? The fact is that
we
still don't know how much Sarin Iraq actually produced. "At first, Iraq
told
UNSCOM that it had produced an estimated 250 tons of tabun and 812 tons
of
sarin. In 1995, Iraq changed its estimates and reported it had produced
only
210 tons of tabun and 790 tons of sarin." (Yes, that's tons.) At the
very
least, it tells us that we haven't nearly finished looking for the WMDs
that
Saddam was supposed to surrender, and didn't. Besides... a shell
containing
mustard gas was also found. Well, maybe there were only two WMD shells
in
all of Iraq.

C. Just because Saddam had WMDs after all, it doesn't mean Bush didn't
lie
about them.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this appears to be the instinctive,
defensive
reaction of many Liberals to this news. They so badly need to believe
that
President Bush lied in order to legitimise their hatred of him that
they're
capable of this sort of twisted reasoning. The rationale seems to be
that
WMDs don't count if they aren't exactly where the CIA told us they were,
as
if they couldn't be moved.

D. The terrorists didn't even know it was a chemical shell.

Well, they do now. And they know where they found it, too.

We need to redouble our efforts to stop the terrorists and find Saddam's
WMDs, before they're used to derail the new Iraqi government's
formation.
The media's refusal to give this news the coverage it deserves can only
be
due to a calculated attempt to reduce American support for our efforts
in
Iraq, including that of tracking down Saddam's banned weapons. The
Left's
deliberate silence on this subject for the purpose of influencing our
election only helps our enemies.


Excerpted - click for full article ^
Source:
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive...iani052804.htm