Even the Fox News article you link to it says:
"If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war."

heres a thought, if these two shells are considered by the left circumstantial, how much more must be found or exploded on our troops before its considered evidence? frankly using hyper-left calculations, 20 tons would be enough before they say...gee maybe the coalition was right....> what happens god forbid if a dirty bomb is exploded near our troops, will that be considered circumstantial as well?

Yeah - Sorry Greywar... Brad just brings out the worst in me...

It's probably nothing anyway, the last time the boys cried wolf, it was proven to be nothing as well... another one of those time will tell pieces.

BAM!!!

Saint Ying, I think Bush et al are a bit more cautious these days. The administration got badly burned by the two 'mobile WMD factories' which turned out to just produce hydrogen for weather balloons. I think they are a bit more wary these days. One shell, as you say, is meaningless particularly after 13 months of searching. We shall see what else turns up.

Was Hussein allowed to produce prototypes of banned weapons? If not, then I must say that it doesn't sound that meaningless.

As for the validity of the claim, is it just me, or is assuming the whole thing's fake as bad as assuming the whole thing's real?

I have found the double standard imposed on Bush throughout his Presidency humorous. On the one hand he is a bumbling idiot that can't get anything right, and on the other he is some insidious monster with the ability to make immense conspiracies happen with a mere thought.

If Bush were the sort of person who would hold a single shell until closer to election time, he would have had Halliburton ship in a few hundred tons of the stuff and then conveinently "find" them. Please. The Bush administration has caught hell when it would be insanely easy to manipulate data or outright fake something.

The UN weapons inspectors have said time and again that tons of this stuff was unaccounted for, and the nation is comepletely full of armament that we can't seem to track down. Is the idea we missed a few hundred, or even a few thousand, shells so implausible?

That should read....
"As I said above I believe that, after the mobile chemical labs which were found to be nothing but hydrogen generators for weather balloons that they are now wary about rushing out new finds until they have been further investigated."

If it was in Iraq, and it contains Sarin, then it was an "illegal" bomb.  It doesn't matter how long it has been there as they were supposed to remove all weapons of that nature.

I think it should also be noted that Brad pointed out that they are "starting" to find this stuff.  Maybe they are just now getting deep enough to find the chemicals.

Reply #9 By: stevendedalus - 5/17/2004 11:43:42 PM Draginol, remember how you jumped on the Drudge Report on Kerry's intern? It remained on the "featured article" list quite awhile. I do hope you will remove this one more quickly.

Why should he remove it?  Can you prove that the bomb did not contain Sarin, or that there is not mustard gas in Iraq?  Can you prove that this is only one and that they will start to find more?

 

Yes, it is far more likely to be located in Syria IMHO.

I don't remove featured articles.

Secondly, this article was from the front page of Fox News as well as many other news sources.  Just because something doesn't match your left leaning sympathies doens't make it invalid. I suspect you would have no problem if I featured one of Wakhkonta's kooky conspiracy articles. I read one recently where he was claiming that Bush stated that US troops would begin pulling out of Iraq on June 30. I suspect if I had featured that you wouldn't be complaining.

Third, as I indicated at the beginning of this article - Sarin gas and mustard gas were never the primary reason for the US to remove Saddam. There are idealogues on the right who will use this as some sort of justification but they're just being idealogues. There are also idealogues on the left who were clinging to the lack of finding stockpiles of this junk to argue that the whole point of invading Saddam was based on a false premise. Neither are correct.

If anyone from either side thinks that the reason the US spent billions in blood and treasure to remove Saddam was becaue of canisters of mustard gas and Sarin (or worse, oil) all I can say is I have pity for their lack of understanding of the issues.

Reply #21 By: greywar - 5/18/2004 12:12:17 PM As for the oil issue, apparently we have done a very poor job of raping Iraq for oil. It certainly has not shown up at the pumps!

Amen to that...... 

I seriously doubt the validity of such claims at this point in time. If there were things to find, they would have found them already. I think your first response was the most accurate, a political election. Pay particular attention this fall as I am certain the threat level will be elevated once again in the sept-oct months. Loss in polls = crisis event.