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Syrian govt apparently used BZ gas on rebels
Last week, the U.S. consul general in Turkey wired the conclusions of the investigation to Washington in a secret cable, and yesterday an anonymous Obama Administration official leaked the contents to Josh Rogin, of Foreign Policy magazine. The officials comments were unexpected and confounding. Despite previous accounts suggesting the use of sarin or a similar compound, he told Rogin that the State Department had determined that the chemical used in Homs was not a nerve gas at all but, rather, an arcane drug with a formula that has never been publicly identified. We cant definitely say 100 percent, but Syrian contacts made a compelling case that Agent 15 was used in Homs on Dec. 23, he said. This sensational claim only made matters murkier.The link goes on to explain the difference between nerve gas and agents like BZ. Agent 15 = BZ gas. BZ was originally developed as an incapacitating gas, but ultimately discarded as results were never the same and thus unreliable as a weapon. The Chetniks used BZ from chemical mortars to break up a column of retreating Bosnians in '95. This link is a bizarre, scary story. What do you do when a bunch of scared, armed men start hallucinating and hearing voices? It ain't pretty. You know what roach spray is? You spray it, the bug runs off, starts twitching uncontrollably, rolls over, and dies? Sarin gas is the same thing, just with a few molecules twiddled here and there. High lethality towards insects, low lethality towards humans: bugspray. Low lethality towards insects, high lethality towards humans: sarin gas. Betcha didn't know that! Posted by: gromky 2013-01-18 |
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