General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Thousands-to-one odds, anyway.

Nope. Millions. Out of the couple of dozen artillery rounds

How many shells do you think have been used as IEDs? It's not 'dozens'.

that have
been set as roadside IEDs, versus the tens of millions of rounds of
artillery shells they had available.

Trouble is, you're into sample size. They might have umpty-squadrillion
shells still sitting in depots (and probably do - Iraq has some _huge_
arms depots that still defy proper securing) but only one shell so far
has been filled with sarin instead of HE.

(Out of interest, has anyone *reported* cases where IEDs were rigged
with smoke shells, leaflet shells, or blue practice shells? If you think
only a few dozen shells have been used for IEDs, you have a serious
learning curve to climb)

So which is more likely? That someone hid a pile of chemical weapons (a
medium-sized arsenal of the things would fit in a building the size of a
house) in a country the size of California, versus your contention that
they didn't have any and were complying with the UN sanctions?

Where was that my contention?

You want a debate, you need to stop telling me what I think.


If they *had* a decent chemical weapon stockpile, why have they waited
so long to use it, why have they used it in such an ineffective manner,
and why weren't we able to find it in the last year-plus since our
leaders claimed to know that these weapons existed and exactly where
they were?


If there's a lesson here, it's "don't overrrule the analysts".

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk