Chemical weapons do have a shelf life and are pretty useless after the expiration date. Any munitions from the first Gulf war would have been long since rendered useless. I forget the guy's name, but he was the head of Iraq's NBC program prior to the first Gulf War. After the War, he defected to the US and he stated that they destroyed whatever stockpiles they had of chemical weapons and had ceased production of any WMDs after the first Gulf War to comply with the UN sanctions. Any talk of using Chemical or biological weapons was Hussein saber rattling with the typical middle eastern machismo.
-----Original Message----- From: Judah McAuley [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:36 PM To: cf-community Subject: Re: White House alters drilling safety report They did find some depleted stocks left over from the first Gulf War and the time right after that. It is certainly the case that the Saddam government had an active chemical weapons program at one point. It seems to be have decimated by the first Gulf War and subsequent sanctions. The program itself seems to have been abandoned (which sources had told us), though I've no doubt that Saddam would have re-instituted it had he been given the chance. So when right-wing apologists say "they were found", they mean that there were remains of old weaponry found and caches had been set up long ago. Did they find caches? Yes, they did. Did they find any evidence of an active program or any caches of chemical weapons that could have been used in a current conflict? No, they didn't. The Bush administration harped on about chemical weapons programs that were an active, building threat. They talked about dirty bombs. They said they "knew where they were". All of those things were utterly false. Judah On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Larry C. Lyons <[email protected]> wrote: > > What weapons? Or did the Iraq study commission, the British house of > parliament special committee, etc etc. lie about that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:331731 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
