Via Powerline:
Joseph Shahda has translated another Iraqi intelligence document, which appears to indicate that Iraq procured equipment to detect nerve gas in or about December 2000. This equipment is described as “prohibited” and as “similar to the required quality compared with the Russian equipments,” which are described as having “expired.” It appears that the equipment was tested in December 2000 and was found to detect “nerve agents” successfully. Which certainly seems to confirm that Iraq had some quantity of nerve gas as of early 2001.
[my emphasis]
Certainly nothing like a smoking gun here—after all, as Ace notes:
Many nerve gases are chemically similar to pesticides; a lot of the early false-positive detections of “nerve gases” by US troops turned out to be detections of cyclocyanides (I think) found in pesticides.
So, it’s possible the “successful test” really only detected the similar chemicals in pesticides, and was treated as successful for doing so.
Still, as Ace also asks,
[..] would that be a “successful test,” really?
And why exactly was Iraq attempting to detect nerve agents at all?
Good questions, but they may not be quite so loaded as Ace intended them to be.
After all, we mustn’t forget those crazy scary giant Camel spiders running wild through the deserts of Iraq at speeds up to 60 miles an hour, leaping upwards of 20 feet to attacking humans by anesthestizing them and then chewing off hanks of their immobilized flesh.*
I mean, you don’t simply step on monsters like that and expect to kill them. In fact, I think were Saddam to have justified his nuclear ambitions by dumping a crate of these things into the UN General Assembly, he’d have met with little to no resistance whatsoever.
Hell, I’d have told him to go for it, and unlike many in the UN, I’m no big fan of tyrants who feed dissidents into industrial plastic shredders.
Because nature just scares me, man.
Pesticides are nerve gas precursors. That’s why we kept finding hundreds of barrels of them buried in concrete bunkers with three-feet-thick walls. Can you say dual-use, children?
Either that, or they needed the bunkers to protect them from the giant mutant spiders. Both explanations are equally plasuible.
BECAUSE OF THE ORGANIC CHEMISTRY!!
Great! I’ll file this under “Things That Will Be Overlooked And Ignored.”
I think I need a bigger file cabinet.
Lots of pesticides ARE nerve toxins, just targeted at a different species. Raid Ant & Roach spray is a good example. Whatch them bugs do the dance of death, baby…
Well, if you don’t DROWN ‘em in it. Sheesh.
Jesus fucking Christ! Do those things have acid for blood?
SDA covered this in some detail a while ago.
Iraq did have WMD, they were just dual-use WMD: human or insect, take your pick.
And the camouflaged bunkers? So the giant spiders wouldn’t see them, of course!
BECAUSE OF THE ENTOMOLOGY!!
I really can’t offer an opinion on any of this until I’ve heard George Clooney’s take.
“Great protective system – you don’t dare kill ‘em!”
— Alien
My question is don’t you need nerve gas to successfully test this equipment? It appears that they were quite sure of the success.
Oh..ignore acthole.
Please don’t feed the acthole.
According to Snopes they are only big enough to prey on birds and mice. I feel so much better now.
Sleep well.
When I was in, the issue antidote to nerve gas was a package of three atropine injectors. So if somebody started doing the funky chicken, this might save him.
I got an unpleasant feeling the first time I saw, on a can of bug spray–“ANTIDOTE…ATROPINE”.
Gotta mean something, ‘cause it can’t mean nothing.
Mmmmmm….mice.
Maybe the camel spider stories aren’t true, but if they were, they’d be scary.
And in the end, isn’t that the real truth?
Wait, is that a run-up to war analogy? Because Dick Cheney doesn’t cotton to it if it is.
So Jeff, maybe next Friday, the camel spider can dance for us.
Or maybe spray a threadjacker with Raid and he can dance.
Tw: easy—as in, “I’m…”
If Saddam had wanted to dump a crate load of those things on the U.N. General Assembly, I’d have a hard time resisting that myself.
We had a couple of those solpugids wander into some of our areas in Bagram. God knows I wish we had more. F’ing mice…
Some real sick dudes down at one of the FOBs would put a couple of them into a box and they would take bets on them, ala cock fighting. Apparently the fights were usually 2-3 seconds long. One lunge, a killing bite and that’s all she wrote…
Hmmm.
Well zyklon-B was originally created to kill roaches in farms.
Gasses that kill off whole communities and allow the nice folks to come through in the morning, picking through all the valuables while stepping gingerly over expired bodies, are clased as WMD.
I have a VERY real looking tarantula on my Cherokee Jeep dash.
**NOTICE: Big 8 legs like cars,
if you feed them there** =
small bumper sticker on dash.
So far, no auto break ins….touch wood. TG
http://www.pmw.org.il/
Under bulletins, upper right. Click April 25th.
TG