On one of the BLOGs I've been visiting lately, the writer posted some research he had done. The gist of it is that Iraq probably developed some 170 such shells, with some 150 of them used for live testing, with the balance being inert (nonreactive).
see: http://www.overpressure.com/ This raises a couple of important questions: 1. what condition was the shell in when it was used as an IED? It it was one of these test prototypes, it should have clear evidence of the round being fired (i.e. tooling marks from the rifling of the cannon, expended RAP or base-bleed charge, etc). If not... 2. From what lot was the round taken from? Iraqis normally didn't mark their chemical rounds, so they can be easily secreted into a number of ammo dumps. I haven't seen any follow-up stories (or indeed anything at all in the major newsfeeds) about the alleged find of "leaky" shells found by 1CAV. Curious, I haven't see a lot about this issue at all. The shells found last week (120mm mortar rounds) that were found filled with mustard gas (something Iraq had declared from pre-GW1) were mentioned only piggy-back on this story. Why hasn't the media been focusing more on these stories? Damon. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
