Did Saddam try to hide shells with nerve agents in stockpiles of legal weapons?

abcnews.go.com...

"Often chemical and biological weapons are marked to differentiate them from conventional artillery rounds, so people know how to handle them. Officials have said Saddam may have disguised his alleged weapons as conventional rounds to fool weapons inspectors."

I don't want to come off as making a partisan statement, but things like this make me believe that there were WMDs in Iraq that have become mixed in with things we've captured but probably won't be able to go through for years.

The unmarked nature of this nerve agent-carrying shell (and, yes, I know it was just one shell.... but if there was 1 there;s probably 1,000) makes me think that, indeed, some type of emergency stockpile of nerve agents was being maintained by the Iraqis. Keep in mind that even a few liters of this stuff can kill a great many people.


Confirmation of the sarin (and, yes, I know it's from Fox)
www.foxnews.com...

i don't think this is really possible, especally since things like sarin require the operator to mix in additional chemicals to make it active and lethal....

what good would chem weapons be if you didn't know to "turn them on"?


**edited** this because there is NO need to quote entire posts.
ABOUT ATS: Warnings for excessive quoting

[Edited on 18-5-2004 by Seekerof]

I think the shell in question had some sort of system wherein the chemicals were supposed to be mixed in the air after detonation....

and I'm not saying that the guys who would've been shooting these things wouldn't have known that they were chemical weapons. I mean... it's not hard to remember that every Xth shell is chemical... and that it should be sorted out of the stockpile when fighting starts...

Originally posted by onlyinmydreams


I think the shell in question had some sort of system wherein the chemicals were supposed to be mixed in the air after detonation....

and I'm not saying that the guys who would've been shooting these things wouldn't have known that they were chemical weapons. I mean... it's not hard to remember that every Xth shell is chemical... and that it should be sorted out of the stockpile when fighting starts...

A self mixing chem mortar would be interesting, but i really don't think that's the case. it would be an awful complex system, and may risk either making the round bigger, or reducing the payload.

As for the "every Xth shell is chem", you'd have to train people to do that, and if the iraqi military WAS trained to do that we'd have known about it very early in the invasion.

it's probably just a fluke man.

Well..

My edition of the Chicago Tribune, this morning, had a diagram explaining that this was the case with this shell. I admit that I am not a technical expert when it comes to this subject.

So far as the other thing goes... I think it'd be pretty easy to train a few guys well enough to know where these kinds of weapons were stored and how to use them. For all we know they were all killed during the war or are working at the Baghdad Arby's right now.

So far as it being a fluke... I really don't see how an unmarked chemical weapon can be a fluke. Sure, if it was marked and found, alone, in the ground near Iran... I'd dismiss it as a fluke. But it was unmarked and being used bu insurgents... which means it must come from some secret stockpile somwhere...

Yes.
I believe that this is a plausible scenerio and most likely the case, as well.
All chemical and biological weapons (WMD) are to be marked, I have shown pictures of this before. As such, what better way to hide a certain amount of undisclosed/disclosed WMDs? To not mark the shells, etc. and then to place them within current regular artillery stockpiles, etc. The problem with this is that up-to-date records must be maintained as to the shell serial number (production number) number and type and to which munition(s) stockpile it was placed in.

This is not even counting in the shells and munitions that have been buried in-the-field, those moved out, stolen, or buried. Iraq was known for their exemplery record keeping, but even with such, with the off and on and off UN inspections, records can get mixed or lost during hasty evacuations of information.

Edit: btw, the shell was a binary shell.



seekerof

[Edited on 18-5-2004 by Seekerof]