[mog]

Originally Posted by August

No longer a threat?! Really? Would you care to take a sniff of them yourself? Maybe have some with your cheerios? Seriously, speaking of evidence do you have any saying these were just hapazardly strewn around?

These soldiers were hit by an IED blast from an old sarin gas shell and all they suffered was dilated pupils and a bit of nausea:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120268,00.html

That story also describes how US forces found a mustard gas shell just lying on the side of the road. These incidents occurred two years ago.

I recall a BBC story where half a dozen or so mustard gas shells were found under a few feet of dirt and silt, strewn about in an unorganised fashion along a river, however I can't find the link. I'll keep looking.

Conversely, do you know of any evidence that an organised stockpile was uncovered? If there existed such a stash, don't you think the Baathist insurgents would have used them at some point in the last 3 years?

Originally Posted by The Avon Lady

Watch the video and listen to the former UN weapons inspector in the clip's 2nd half.

He says that the mustard shells probably aren't a threat, but the sarin is worse.

hat's why I said on another thread to pay attention to this excerpt from the Powerline Blog:

This is certainly significant, but what they're talking about is old munitions left over from, presumably, before the first Gulf War. This doesn't appear to constitute evidence that Saddam's regime had continued to manufacture chemical weapons in more recent years. What it does demonstrate is that the picture with respect to Iraq's WMDs is much more nuanced than the usual "he didn't have any" mantra. There is no doubt about the fact that Saddam had, and used, chemical and biological weapons. Nor is there any doubt about the fact that he eagerly pursued nuclear weapons. Further, the Iraq Survey Group report says that he had every intention of resuming his programs as soon as the coast was clear and the U.N. sanctions were behind him. Add to that the fact that hundreds of chemical weapons, at a minimum, were secreted in various locations around Iraq--as also shown by this document--and it is reasonable to conclude that, even though the CIA and nearly all other observers over-estimated Iraq's WMD capabilities, the fear that Saddam might use such weapons, or slip them to a terrorist group, was well-founded.

Based on what evidence was available at the time, I think invading Iraq was the correct decision. I think it would have been reckless to leave Saddam Hussein in power after he had proven so many times that he couldn't be trusted and the UN couldn't touch him. However, I refuse to pretend that these relics are the WMDs that we claimed he had. I don't think that any party - not Iraq, the Coalition nor UNSCOM - would ever have denied pre-invasion that the unaccounted for weapons were still in Iraq somewhere. The question is whether they were servicable and whether Iraq knew where they were.