Postive tests for Terror Toxins; Mustard, Cyanide found in Euphrates

And here i thought Mexico had bad water!

In fact, within the last few minutes, CNN has announced this was a false alarm.

I'll just pass along something that struck me.

Dennis(?) Kay, Frmr. UN Weapons Inspector was asked about chemical weapons lifespan. He said that VX would hang around for week, possibly a month or two. Mustard on the other hand, is **FAR** more pervasive. He explained it by telling an anecdote. He said that French farmers, to this day, sometime burn themselves from mustard in the earth when they till the soil. Mustard that hasn't been used sine 1918/9.

Wow.

that sucks

Well, I think perhaps your "it's a false alarm" was a false alarm. The story is still being reported in reputable newspapers. For example:

The (London) Telegraph

no, actually, my "false alarm" was my "confusing one story with another". When I first read this thread, I thought it was in reference to a different suspicious cache of materials found, which were proven to be not WMD.

my error.

That fog of war again.

Have they said anything more about the girl's school with the report by an Iraqi that he saw things being buried there?

Here's another one.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/895185.asp

While no direct evidence is supplied between the terrorists and Saddam yet, I find it hard to believe that Saddam was not aware of what was happeningn there. For a man who has covered his countries with spies and controls every aspect of their life, it would be foolish to say he didn't condone what has gone on in this camp.

Perhaps this next one is the one you got the original poster story confused with

http://www.msnbc.com/news/895392.asp

The false alarm for this was also a false alarm.

No answer from the anti-war crowd on this one? Come on guys you can do better then that.

I wouldn't be surprised if saddam had been giving these guys the materials and training they need.

Of course this would feed right into the fears of the US goverment all along, and add even more legitimacy to this war.

Maybe thats why the guys who scream we are in this for oil are content to let this thread die.

true

I would. Those were Kurds, and they were located in the part of Iraq that Saddam did not control.
Face it, Bush's bogus attempts to link Saddam and Al Qaeda failed.

Ah, no they were not kurds, they were in kurdish territory. And Saddam still controls many parts of that area, he just can't fly ove rthem. If I'm Saddam and I want to give terrorists a place to train and materials, my first thought would be to put them in the kurdish area . Then when it gets found out, I (as Saddam) can say, "gee thats kurdish territory, wasn't me"

Well, guilty until proven innocent - best justification I've ever seen for war.

The world already agrees that Saddam has WMD. That was the point of UN 1441. What they disagree on is how to disarm iraq. The burdern of proof was squarely on Saddam to prove that he had destroyed the weapons, which he failed to do. Even France and Germany agree on that. They just don't agree on how best to disarm.

The US said Weapons inspections have failed for 12 years, its time to move beyond. The Axis of Weasels would rather just keep doing the same thing that isn't working, over and over and over again, in the hope that eventually they will get lucky before Saddam uses the weapons.

I got some news for you sunshine. They were Kurds. There was an interview with a village headman from the Ansar al-Islam controlled area before the fighting started. He was speaking Kurdish. I understand practically no Kurdish but I learned a few words and sentences when I was working in Turkey many years ago and recognise the language, which is an indo-european language not related to Arabic, which the rest of Iraq speaks, or Turkish, which is an Altaic language. It has some similarities to Farsi, but not much.

In the same interview, in a PUK (Kurds now allied with the US, when they're not getting bombed in friendly fire incidents) controlled village. One of their captives was indeed an Iraqi secret service man, who had been sent by Saddam to spy on Ansar Al-Islam. Turned out to be a bad idea as Saddam had managed to send enough spies that the spies were actually trying to denounce one another.

As for your article on Ricin and Botulism, both of these are very easy to make. Ricin is made from castor beans and it seems as if Al-Qaida have been trying to make this for quite a while. If you'ld have read in the news a few months and weeks ago, you'ld have seen that a group of Islamic militants in London had been making their own Ricin and it has turned up in Paris as well.

While I personally think that Saddam has some chemical weapons left (if he hasn't just dumped them into the Tigris and Euphrates in order to avoid detection) I don't think that this article proves much.

You got any proof besides your own personal opinion?

If an islamic fundamentalist group is trying to blend in with the local population, wouldn't it be wise to speak the local language. I never said their was a conclusive link, but that I wouldn't be surprised if there was eventually. Saddam is master of deception. If he can hide his weapons from the UN weapons inspectors, which we have defectors who said he was doing exactly that, don't you think it s possible he could probably hide them from somebody in Zurich Switzerland, sitting behind their computer posting to this board?

Thanks. I had a good laugh at this one.

LOL. The reason why other reputable newspapers not owned by R. Murdoch ignored this news item is simple: every major river in the world is polluted enough to test positive to almost any poisonous chemical.

Just do a google search for cyanide+your favorite river.

Yes, but usually these are from leach mine operations run off. Iraq doesn't have these. In addition the amounts found were much higher then normal rivers. And how sir do you explain the mustard gas? Yes the previous poster made the mention of the french ground, but we are talking a river here. Dissipation would be much faster here. The best way to decontiminate from mustard gas is lots and lots of water.

Heres some news organization not owned by Murdoch

http://www.canada.com/national/feat...2F-332ECED238DE

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20030406-15015960.htm

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/lo...-home-headlines

http://www.forbes.com/markets/newsw.../rtr930535.html

http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/33549.htm

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/...40601391400.htm

You are right. MS-NBC also reported it, but their source was the same "briefing from Marine officials". Reuters cannot confirm it.

All articles you linked to are reporting second-hand; when/if real proof of WMDs will be found, we'll see it all over the place - until now, we had a lot of false alarms like this one.

Of course its going to come from a Marine official. Who else is over there? Do you think Saddam is going to announce it? Are international journalists going to be wandering around with a mobile testing lab, running around iraq unaccompanied testing for WMD? Somehow I think Saddam would try and stop that.

Your point was that all "respectable" media outlets were ignoring the issue. I was just calling b*llsh*t on that claim.