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General Zinni on Sixty Minutes



 
 
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  #1  
Old June 1st 04, 09:21 PM
Paul J. Adam
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In message , Ed Rasimus
writes
How many WMD rounds does it take to equal possession of WMD in your
convoluted logic?


To quote something I wrote earlier...

Let's - for the sake of simplicity - assume the munitions and facilities
have a trustworthy date stamp, however ascertained. Hard to do, but it
simplifies the terms.

1998 and earlier, I'm willing to accept a few (call it three, offhand)
"WME stockpiles" that are - for a rule of thumb - a pallet or less of
shells, 122mm rockets, or precursors each. 1991 or earlier, I'd raise
the bar quite a lot higher, because they prepared to fight a defensive
war and then lost it massively and that's where large amounts of kit go
missing. (We're still occasionally digging up buried caches of 1940s No.
76 grenades here in the UK, which is a problem because they're beer
bottles filled with a benzene, rubber and white phosphorous mixture -
not nice to accidentally put a spade through one)

Post-1998, "a pallet" of filled basic munitions or of filler for them,
or a single weapon that was a significant advance on their previous
capability, would be conclusive proof. Less than that would be a very
unwelcome surprise, though not decisive (we know they *wanted* to keep
their programs going, but the claim was that the programs existed and
were an immediate threat)



Opinion, assayed at $0.02 exact.

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

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk
  #2  
Old June 1st 04, 09:42 PM
Chad Irby
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In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

Let's - for the sake of simplicity - assume the munitions and facilities
have a trustworthy date stamp, however ascertained. Hard to do, but it
simplifies the terms.

1998 and earlier, I'm willing to accept a few (call it three, offhand)
"WME stockpiles" that are - for a rule of thumb - a pallet or less of
shells, 122mm rockets, or precursors each.


....that could be found, accidentally, by militias? When there are
*millions* of similar pallets of conventional weapons floating around in
Iraq right now?

The math is way against you here. Literally millions-to-one odds.

On the other hand, if there were a lot of unreported and uncatalogued
chemical weapons in the mix, you'd have a much better chance of someone
turning up one or two out of a random ammo dump. Which is what seems to
have happened.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.
  #3  
Old June 1st 04, 10:25 PM
Howard Berkowitz
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In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

Let's - for the sake of simplicity - assume the munitions and
facilities
have a trustworthy date stamp, however ascertained. Hard to do, but it
simplifies the terms.

1998 and earlier, I'm willing to accept a few (call it three, offhand)
"WME stockpiles" that are - for a rule of thumb - a pallet or less of
shells, 122mm rockets, or precursors each.


...that could be found, accidentally, by militias? When there are
*millions* of similar pallets of conventional weapons floating around in
Iraq right now?

The math is way against you here. Literally millions-to-one odds.

On the other hand, if there were a lot of unreported and uncatalogued
chemical weapons in the mix, you'd have a much better chance of someone
turning up one or two out of a random ammo dump. Which is what seems to
have happened.



If more don't show up, I'd be inclined to suspect some participant in
the research program that took one, or a few, prototypes home for
safekeeping. We know this was done for some nuclear and biological
components. Said somebody may have decided he didn't want this in his
backyard, and gave it to insurgents, possibly with an explanation they
didn't understand.
  #4  
Old June 2nd 04, 12:32 AM
Chad Irby
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In article ,
Howard Berkowitz wrote:

If more don't show up, I'd be inclined to suspect some participant in
the research program that took one, or a few, prototypes home for
safekeeping. We know this was done for some nuclear and biological
components. Said somebody may have decided he didn't want this in his
backyard, and gave it to insurgents, possibly with an explanation they
didn't understand.


But someone from the research program would know that this sort of round
needs to be fired so the chemicals would mix correctly, and wouldn't set
it off the way they did.

So it was someone *outside* of the program who had this one at hand.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.
  #5  
Old June 2nd 04, 12:42 AM
Howard Berkowitz
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In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

In article ,
Howard Berkowitz wrote:

If more don't show up, I'd be inclined to suspect some participant in
the research program that took one, or a few, prototypes home for
safekeeping. We know this was done for some nuclear and biological
components. Said somebody may have decided he didn't want this in his
backyard, and gave it to insurgents, possibly with an explanation they
didn't understand.


But someone from the research program would know that this sort of round
needs to be fired so the chemicals would mix correctly, and wouldn't set
it off the way they did.

So it was someone *outside* of the program who had this one at hand.


Or, someone inside the research program, first and foremost wanting to
get it out of his closet, and is anti-American, gives it to an insurgent
on the theory it MIGHT do something. Not everyone in a program fully
understands the details -- consider a cross between a Dilbertian
pointy-haired boss and Saddams second cousin's third cousin's
brother-in-law.
  #6  
Old June 1st 04, 10:29 PM
Paul J. Adam
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

Let's - for the sake of simplicity - assume the munitions and facilities
have a trustworthy date stamp, however ascertained. Hard to do, but it
simplifies the terms.

1998 and earlier, I'm willing to accept a few (call it three, offhand)
"WME stockpiles" that are - for a rule of thumb - a pallet or less of
shells, 122mm rockets, or precursors each.


...that could be found, accidentally, by militias? When there are
*millions* of similar pallets of conventional weapons floating around in
Iraq right now?


Yep. Note that this was apparently employed in a standard roadside IED,
as if it was just an ordinary HE shell - about as suboptimal an
employment as you can get, if you assume the insurgents knew what they
had.

The math is way against you here. Literally millions-to-one odds.


Thousands-to-one odds, anyway. The existence of that round is a pretty
good fact: so is the absence of any source for it, or any stockpile of
its brothers and sisters.

On the other hand, if there were a lot of unreported and uncatalogued
chemical weapons in the mix, you'd have a much better chance of someone
turning up one or two out of a random ammo dump. Which is what seems to
have happened.


Trouble is, that doesn't say "significant organised and controlled
stockpile", it just says "bad bookkeeping".

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

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk
  #7  
Old June 2nd 04, 12:37 AM
Chad Irby
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Chad Irby
writes

Yep. Note that this was apparently employed in a standard roadside IED,
as if it was just an ordinary HE shell - about as suboptimal an
employment as you can get, if you assume the insurgents knew what they
had.

The math is way against you here. Literally millions-to-one odds.


Thousands-to-one odds, anyway.


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

At worst, hundreds of thousands to one.

Not very much in your favor...

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?

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.
  #8  
Old June 2nd 04, 03:10 AM
Howard Berkowitz
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Default

In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

....

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?


Or something in between. There were some prototypes hidden away, and one
or more was given to people setting up IEDs. We know prototypes or
samples of nuclear and biological components were hidden in residential
areas; why not chemical?
  #9  
Old June 2nd 04, 05:08 AM
Chad Irby
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Posts: n/a
Default

In article ,
Howard Berkowitz wrote:

In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

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?


Or something in between. There were some prototypes hidden away, and one
or more was given to people setting up IEDs.


....but the people handing them out didn't bother to mention that they
needed to be fired out of a cannon to work?

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.
  #10  
Old June 2nd 04, 05:45 AM
Howard Berkowitz
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

In article ,
Howard Berkowitz wrote:

In article , Chad Irby
wrote:

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?


Or something in between. There were some prototypes hidden away, and
one
or more was given to people setting up IEDs.


...but the people handing them out didn't bother to mention that they
needed to be fired out of a cannon to work?



Quite possibly not, if it was a manager that didn't understand the
details.

If I had an engineering knowledge of the weapon, and wanted to throw
fear into the Americans, I might suggest they use a small charge --
really just a burster, and hope for some local mixing. GB is more
likely to work that way than VX -- binary VX is far more likely to burn.
Again, my purpose is terror, not wiping out a large force.
 




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