I basically agree with this point of view. If it's anthrax spores in the air or a cluster bomb coming down on my ass, I'll take my chance with the anthrax risk, thank you. Seriously. Cipro won't do much. Anyway, point is this for me: if something like a daisy cutter isn't a WMD, then a kabob of anthrax launched on the battlefield doesn't sound like one to me either. Just my two cents.
Argh. I meant to say "Cipro won't do much once a bomb has blasted me into 80 or more pieces" or something similarly grim.
Agreed, but i think most people would accept the discovery of shoulder-launched chem, bio, nuke, weapons in Iraq as evidence that Iraq possessed WMDs, but you may have opened up a whole tack for Sam, RR, and their fellow travelers: "He said they were weopons of mass destruction, and you can only kill a few thousand with a battlefield weapon! Bush Lied!!!"
C'mon Basso, read what I've been saying this thread. Any nuke found in Iraq would fall under WMD as far as I'm concerned. Chem and Bio don't get that level of presumption, but certainly if they were operational and shown to be able to kill "a few thousand" that would qualify. What doesn't qualify is vials in a fridge. The Bush administration has continually tried to diminish the accepted definition of WMD since we got into Iraq but didn't mind increasing the fear to build support for the war before we got into Iraq.
I thought the smoking gun was going to come in the form of a mushroom cloud? That's what the President told me...
Actually, you've just made my point. i think most reasonable people would accept vials in a fridge as proof that Iraq had WMDs.
PS, has anybody here considered that these alleged shoulder launched tactical biological/chemical weapons are such a r****ded idea that they probably don't exist? What do you do, creep up behind somebody till you're about 50 yards away, fire an anthrax RPG at them, then sit down and wait for 4 days until they die? That's not a very good plan, especially since those other people probably have guns. Not much better with chemicals. If your going fire weapons at tanks and vehicles, you're going to kill a lot more people a lot quicker with explosives than with nerve gas, and hence the chances of them shooting back at you is lessened, and you don't have to worry about which way the wind is blowing. This is just kind of stupid at this point.
I disagree. I don't think most people would think that the New Mexico State Health Department has a horde of WMDs even though some of the vials in the fridges contain hantavirus and plague.
You can visit the site twice a year... On the morning of July 16, 1945 at 5:29 a.m., the desolate peace of a remote New Mexican valley was incinerated by the fire of a powerful man-made star. From that spectacular flash of eternity, the world changed forever. No more wars of spears and bludgeons, no quaint "lines of fire" by brightly dressed troops. War was now a strange, new beast, identified by the fascinating, violet-hued mushroom cloud after a collection of the U.S. Army's most brilliant physicists detonated the first atomic bomb. A visit to this historic site in the middle of a beautiful but austere landscape, prophetically named Journey of Death (Jornada del Muerto) by 17th-century Spanish settlers, combines the severe gravity of history with one of the West's loneliest and most historically significant outposts. The Trinity Site lies isolated in the northern section of White Sands Missile Range about an hour and a half due south of Albuquerque. The first atomic bomb was exploded atop a 100-foot steel tower at this spot. The 19-kiloton blast melted the desert sand into a crust of shiny green glass called Trinitite. The kiloton designation of an atomic-blast measurement helps provide perspective on the enormity of this first firecracker and the much more powerful hydrogen bombs that came later. The shock wave from the bomb broke windows 120 miles away and was felt by others 160 miles distant. The gates to the Trinity Site open only twice a year, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the first Saturdays in April and October. Part of the site tour is a bus ride to the McDonald Ranch where the plutonium core was assembled. Accommodations are best had in Albuquerque or Alamogordo, near White Sands National Monument (with luxurious dunes of baby powder-like gypsum deposits) and farther south, Carlsbad Caverns.
I thought this thread would have ended with woofer's article about the claim being rebuffed by the higher ranking Iraqi military commander. Someone else also posted the point about this guy being part of the governing council and not coming out with this info sooner. The Col. also claims they could have been fired in 30 min, but weren't be cause the units chose not to resist. So somehow the units chose not to resist, but did choose to allow the WMD's to be hidden, and none of these people who didn't care enough about Saddam to fight for him, are willing to just let the WMD's stay hidden? It doesn't make sense.
mwah mwha ha ha ha Personal weapons of mass destruction. Whoa. Iraq scientists created man portable WMD! Next up, pocket nukes. Heck, let this guy sell the Brooklyn Bridge to whomever buys his story on WMD. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=471130 . . . However, last night, question-marks were gathering around the story, not least over the man's claims that the Iraqi-made WMD warheads were to be fired on the battlefield by hand-held rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a weapon of very limited range. . . .
