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Sarin Confirmed!
Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of the chemical weapon sarin in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, a defense official said Tuesday. The determination, made by a laboratory in the United States that the official would not identify, verifies what earlier, less-thorough field tests had found: the bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the deadly nerve agent on the battlefield.
| That solves the riddle of where the chem weapons went. The rounds were repainted and stashed with convential rounds. |
The origin of the shell remains unclear, and finding that out is a priority for the U.S. military, the defense official said. Some analysts worry the 155-millimeter artillery shell, found rigged as a bomb on May 15, may be part of a larger stockpile of Iraqi chemical weapons that insurgents can now use. But no more have turned up, and several military officials have said the shell may have been an older one that predated the 1991 Gulf War.
| Doesn't matter. The fact that it wasn't color-coded indicates it was concealed on purpose. I'll bet training rounds are still color-coded, aren't they? |
It likewise is not known whether the bombers knew they had a chemical weapon.
| That doesn't matter, either, even though I'm guessing they did. The cat's out of the bag now. We know where to look... |
Military officials have said the shell bore no labels to indicate it was anything except a normal explosive shell, the type used to make scores of roadside bombs in Iraq.
| It may not even have been the first. It may have only been the first we noticed... |
No one was injured in the shell's initial detonation, but two American soldiers who removed the round had symptoms of low-level nerve agent exposure, officials said last week.
| If they'd been standing further away they wouldn't have and it would have been just another boom... |
The shell was a binary type, which has two chambers containing relatively safe chemicals. When the round is fired from an artillery gun, its rotation mixes the chemicals to create sarin, which is supposed to disperse when the shell strikes its target. Since it was not fired from a gun but was detonated as a bomb, the initial explosion on May 15 dispersed the precursor chemicals, apparently mixing them in only small amounts, officials said then. In battle, such shells would have to be fired in great numbers to effect a large body of troops.
Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-25 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33903 |
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