Chemaical weapons found...(perhaps)

I found a toy rat in my boot last night. Cheryl's cats always leave toy presents in my shoes.

And that has been confirmed.

Unconfirmed, but linked.

......

You are just trying to beat me in the most useless post in this thread aren't you?

Oh yeah? I can beat both of you!

(+1)

::sigh::
+1

Washington Post link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5-2003Apr7.html

It just refers back to the original NPR source.

Yeah, but it's another stamp of reputation, such as it is. Plus, if NPR retracts, I'll never know.

Bush and Blair are looking better day by day. The more the find the more they will be justified and vindicated and there will be a lot of egg on anti-war and france,Germany Russia and China and others who said there was nothing there.

And another report...different find, same topic.

I don't think this will be all they find either.

Boots: what are the toxic effects of mild nerve gas poisoning? If those troops and journalists got a mild dose, what long term effects (if any) might they have?

mild dosage???? how do you do that? use smaller warhead? exposure is exposure... there is no "mild."

they found chemical weapons..... all you liberals were wrong. he had them, was gonna use them.... YOU WERE WRONG.... BUSH WAS RIGHT.

hate to crush your egos. get over it. Gore lost, Bush won.

Mild = person is still breathing. It comes from getting a very small dose, not enough to kill. Soldiers learn the symptoms - things like a sudden headache, runny nose, muscle twitching, nausia, "strange and confused behavior" tightness of chest causing difficulty in breathing, difficulty seeing. I don't remember all of them.

The severe symptoms are more of the same but worse. So you have vomiting, convulsions, and so on - culminating in death.

i have no idea really, but i would be willing to bet those suffering from gulf war syndrome were exposed to mild doses of wmd

I'm not boots, but this may help.

Mustard gas can cause skin burns and blisters, especially around sweaty parts of the body. It is more harmful to the skin on hot, humid days, or in tropical climates. Mustard gas makes your eyes burn, your eyelids swell, and causes you to blink a lot. If you breathe mustard gas, it can cause coughing, bronchitis, and long-term respiratory disease. Exposure to a large amount of mustard gas can cause death. Some men exposed to mustard gas during war have experienced lower sperm counts.

mustard gas tox facts

Sarin/nerve agents in general: Even in very small amounts, nerve agents are highly toxic if you inhale or swallow them, or if they come in contact with your skin or eyes. In general, the manifestation of toxic effects is faster if you inhale or swallow nerve agents than if they contact your skin. The initial effects also depend on the amount you are exposed to. The onset of mild to moderate effects after dermal exposure may be delayed for as long as 18 hours.

Regardless of the route of exposure, the manifestation of nerve agent exposure includes runny nose, chest tightness, pinpoint pupils, shortness of breath, excessive salivation and sweating, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, involuntary defecation and urination, muscle twitching, confusion, seizures, paralysis, coma, respiratory paralysis, and death. Incapacitating effects occur within 1 to 10 minutes and fatal effects can occur within 1 to 10 minutes for GA, GB, and GD, and within 4 to 18 hours for VX.

Fatigue, irritability, nervousness, and memory defects may persist for as long as 6 weeks after recovery from an exposure episode.

We do not know if exposure to the nerve agents GA, GB, GD, or VX might result in reproductive effects in humans.

nerve agents tox facts

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83449,00.html

fox reports now too.

Not that it would matter to you, but I have never doubted the high probability of chemical weapons. All I wanted was better provenance before disarming, and I never wanted pre-emptive invasion and regime change without sufficient support from other countries or the UN.

I know, I know, its easier to stratify the world into black and white for those with low brain wattage, so they can remember "liberal ...BAD....conservative....ME..er...GOOD" , but there are a wide variety of thoughts and opinions that fall under the umbrella of "liberal".

New Scientist has the current issue all about mild exposures to chemical weapons. By and large it isn't pretty. It apparently damages the part of the brain that regulates anger. It can also cause uncontrollable fatigue and many other problem. The Gulf War Syndrome is now thought to be due to very mild exposure to serin when a weapons depot was blown up during the Gulf War.

Any soldiers (or civilians) exposed to chemical weapons will probably be permanently mentally disabled in the sense of having severe problems.

I'd link to the articles, but they are on the subscriber only section.

Just as general background: link

Sarin binds to acetylcholine esterase in a non-reversible way. Acetylcholine esterase is an enzyne in the synapse that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine into acetate (vinegar is dilute acetic acid..but it is a normal biological byproduct) and choline, which gets reabsorbed by the nerve ending to be recycled.

Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that signals for muscle firing. If it is not degraded, the nerves continue to fire...think spasms like an epileptic. The most immediatet problem is in the diaphram...if it can't function properly (can't relax to expell air) the subject suffocates.

Atropine bumps the sarin off of the acetylcholine esterase. Atropine is a reversible binder, so it will come off. Because the sarin has been modified when it bound to the acetylcholine esterase, it cannot "rebind" so it is now relatively harmless.

This is for accute exposure. It can also bind to things other than Acetylcholine esterase...things like DNA, for example....

There aren't many studies (that I am aware of) studying the long term effects of small doses.

There may be increased susceptibility (possibly inherited) to future nerve agent exposure. link

However, the CDC says that most effects last no longer than a couple of weeks.

I don't know the details of this, but there is an agent that "caps" the reactive site of Acetylcholine esterase such that sarin can't bind. It is a slowly reversible reaction, so the effects are not supposed to be permenant. This is supposed to be administered immediately prior to exposure.

Some gulf-warsoldiers were given this agent. There are a lot of people who think that this might be the (or one of) the sources of Gulf War syndrome.

I'll see what else I can find on it.

Germany et al. didn't say there wasn't anything there, they just disagreed with the U.S. on how to go about finding it.

What was Germany's way of disarming Saddam?

I must have forgotten.

Containment+inspection+supervised disposal=removal of WMD.

Given time, they though that the inspections would turn up this stuff....It may have, but I'm not sure. I've worked in enough restaurants to know how a kitchen looks before and after inspection....I don't eat out much anymore.

You're probably right. 12 years wasn't nearly enough time.

In the interest of fairness, I should say that many pesticides are phosphate based nerve agents similar to sarin. Initial tests (based on antibody or reactivity data) would turn up positive for these pesticides. That could cover the barrels of stuff at the ag. site.

It would be a lot harder to explain war-heads on the missles.

Also, I need to make a correction: the BM-21 missiles only have a range of 15 miles...not 300. I don't know if it was mis-reported earlier or if I just mis-heard the reprot.

Thanks for the chemistry lesson, Boots.

By the way, on the atropine stuff, I could tell a story about a mislaid live atropine injector, horseplay in the barracks, and a rapid trip to a medical clinic. But I won't because it is kind of embarrassing.

They don't half giggle on that stuff, though!

well, lets see: I believe it was to better support inspectors.

What was Bush's way?

well, the method and goals have shifted, haven't they?

-- first the stated goal was to make saddam correctly report disarming weapons to the UN
-- Then it was to set a deadline the UN didn't want to set to make him comply (goal: compliance with reporting)
-- Then it was we were going to force him to disarm
-- Then it was we were going end his regime
-- then it was he should leave or be invaded
-- Then it was decapitate the regime
-- Then it was to prevent the oil wells from being torched
-- Then it was to free the Iraqis
-- Then it was to institute a democratic government using expatriots we had chosen
-- Then it was to warn other countries in the region not to get involved
-- then it was to warn other countries in the region that "they were next"
-- then it was to have a sort of updated plan to control the entire middle east and replace all governments there with versions that were more palatable to the west.

so......

I found one of the New Scientist articles available in a non-subscriber section.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993546

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991674