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

Thanks. Very insightful and thought provoking. Like I said, low dose exposure hadn't been studied well. This is "cutting edge" stuff, and I'm sure more will come out.

One word of caution, however, is that epidemiology is very difficult. By that I mean that it is hard to isolate causative agents without effecting other variable. This is not to say that they are wrong, they help narrow the search considerably...but we are in the begining phase, really, of these studies. Initial results will have to be independantly confirmed and actual pathways of identified.

It is a scary picture that is emerging, though. (note the conflicting info in my above post)

Lerkfish, well it looks like the reports of the iraqi's rising up in the streets and the chemical weapons finds are making your position a very shaky one at best. You can talk about how inspections were working, but 12 years of history have proven that wrong as well.


Of course you can blindly hold on to your misguided beliefs for here to eternity, but that doesn't make you right.

Thanks for playing, Don Pardo, tell him what what kind of fabulous parting gifts we have for him,

In Lerk's defense, the inspectors wheren't in for the whole 12 years, and they have had their hands tied behind thier backs while they were in Iraq. Part of the problem (as I saw it, at least) is that both sides were intractable in their positions: Status quo Vs Blow-em up.

I'm just curious: what do you perceive as "my position"? It doesn't appear you have a good handle on it, just your knee-jerk assumption of what it is.

btw, though on the other hand, I DO appreciate your attempt at humor...something sorely needed in the politics forum. Bravo!

We've got Rice-A-Roni! Rice-A-Roni combines rice, vermicelli pasta and the perfect mix of seasonings to create classic side dishes and main dish recipes. With the variety of flavors available, there's bound to be a flavor to please your entire family! Rice-A-Roni ... the San Francisco Treat!

Very good point. The policy of containment was intended to offer security and protect the economic/strategic interests. In that regard it succeeded. Iraq didn't make a peep for 12 years for the most part.

It's only in light of the War on Terror that suddenly Containment seems like such a questionable policy. If we suspect that Iraq might be festering in it's box, but offering aid and support to outside enemies, then we have a problem.

Some interpret 9/11 as some kind of new threat or new conflit. If you believe that, it's easy to see Iraq as central to the problem.

If you think 9/11 was essentially another horrible event in what's been decades of horror and conflict, Iraq doesn't seem the immediate threat some would portray it to be.

Did Containment keep Saddam from attacking anyone? Yep.

Did Containment cause Arab Nationalism to fester even more than we ought to have allowed? Definitely.

I've always said I thought there were lots of options between "status quo" and "blow 'em up". Too late to wonder about it now. At this point I'm hoping we can recognize how Containment failed (in respect to Arab Nationalism) and take the necessary steps after the Ba'ath regime is gone to prevent the same mistake all over again.

Indeed. People will find it more difficult to hate and blow themselves up when they are fattened up on Mcdonolds and watching dubbed episodes of Baywatch on Fox. ...

Except that regime change has been the policy of the United States since before Bush became President. Clinton was ready to do what Bush was doing now in 1998 (and had more justification for doing so). After a great deal of negotiation with Kofi Annan, we ended up with Operation Desert Fox instead, which didn't do much of anything.

LOL, well I suppose there is a silver lining in that dark, miserable cloud of diminishing cultural diversity

I've always said that nobody (or hardly anybody) will miss the Ba'ath regime, but how we handle post-Ba'ath Iraq matters a helluva lot more than simply removing them.

Kind of like Afghanistan. Nobody misses the Taliban (except maybe Pakistan) but post-war Afghanistan isn't exactly what was promised. In fact, you might say that the first 2 years of "liberation" have been quite a failure. It's just easy to ignore Afghanistan so no one talks about it (in fact, they keep putting it in the list of "successes":rolleyes

I don't think Iraq will be ignored. To many countries will be all too eager to point it out if we screw it up. Then again, that doesn't mean that anyone in the US will be listening.

Regime Change might have been a new policy, but the means of achieving it are certainly different.

After all, Perle recommended ousting Saddam and running it ourselves (and quite a few more aggressive ideas) after Gulf War I. That administration was so alarmed at his ideas that they were leaked to the press and Cheney was asked to rewrite it into something less "crazy".

Clinton was stupid to believe anyone (if, indeed anyone actually recommended it) who thought Regime Change could happen militarily without a land invasion.

Some have been advocating Regime Change in Iraq for 30 years. We just didn't think it should be done militarily.

Do you genuinely think that Clinton would have attacked Iraq entirely by air had he gotten his way back in 1998?

Bill Clinton may have been hesitant to send in ground troops, but removing Saddam Hussein from power militarily would certainly have taken more than airstrikes. I'm sure Clinton knew this.

Which is why I'm skeptical that Clinton ever really bought into the idea of regime change through military means. I mean, if they did counsel him to use the military to oust Saddam, they certainly did a poor job of briefing him on what it would take

Rather, I suspect that Clinton thought he could bully Saddam back to the negotiating table with a quick and painless airstrike. Or perhaps they had reason to believe they could decapitate the regime.

Wolfowitz wrote that document didn't he? Certain Perle and Rumsfeld were contributors....

Wolfowitz wrote the original draft. Cheney helped with the final version.

Not that it matters. Regime change was not an official policy of the United States until well into the Clinton Administration.

Just incase I missed this being posted.

false alarm

[Edit: Still doesn't explain the missiles?]

Yes, sorry. It was Wolfowitz. Brain cramp

Thanks for the correction. You too, BasketofPuppies

Thanks for the link.

Thanks...As I posted above (probably got lot in the chemical biology lesson), many pesticides have the same basic structure (and same basic mode of action) as these nerve gases. It is not suprising that the first level tests, which are either antibody or reactivity tests, would mis-identify them.

It does not, however, say anything about the missiles. This is still not corraborated, and the officials are being pretty tight-lipped. curious.

Actually the report you just linked to has not been confirmed either. Rumsfield said that the AFP report was too early to be sure of anything.

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

The exact quote is as follows.

"Agence France-Presse reported that the substances had turned out to be pesticides, but Rumsfeld said it could take several_days to get a positive identification of the chemicals."

For the record, the AGP is just as biased as some claim Fox news is.

[drool]maybe the allies haven't corroborated the missile story cause they're planning to use them on a bunch of Iraqi wimmin and chiddren.[/drool]

Where's my sign that sez "No War for Oil"? I'm going to protest! Or maybe I'll go bowling. Tough choice.