General Zinni on Sixty Minutes

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?


It's literally possible they didn't know, if their role was "Hey Achmed,
do me a favor and bury this in your garden."

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

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

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'.

Nope. Pretty close to that. Most of them have been explosives of other
types.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
How many shells do you think have been used as IEDs? It's not 'dozens'.

Nope. Pretty close to that. Most of them have been explosives of other
types.

How many IEDs do you think have been detonated or disarmed?

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

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

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
How many shells do you think have been used as IEDs? It's not 'dozens'.

Nope. Pretty close to that. Most of them have been explosives of other
types.

How many IEDs do you think have been detonated or disarmed?

Quite a few, but most of them have been made out of much smaller devices
or just plain old plastic explosives.

It takes a lot of work and more skill to make an artillery shell into a
remote-detonated bomb, compared to using the other materials they have
available. Making an RPG into an IED is much, much easier (a piece of
string tied to the trigger), and they have a *lot* of those.

An "IED" isn't always made up of normal explosives, anyway. Cans full
of gasoline, a grenade tied to the gas tank of a bus sitting by the side
of the road, fertilizer and diesel in a plastic bag... there's a lot of
different ways to make them. Artillery shells are popular, but with all
of the explosive crap sitting around in undiscovered bunkers in Iraq,
there's a wide variety to choose from.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.