Posted on 09/19/2007 12:06:09 PM PDT by mojito
An explosion at a Syrian military complex in July which killed 15 soldiers was a bid to arm a chemical warhead and was not caused by a heatwave as Damascus said, according to Jane's Defence Weekly.
Syria had said temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) caused an ammunition dump to explode, killing the soldiers and wounding another 50.
But Jane's Defence, quoting Syrian defence sources, said the blast occurred as Syrian weapons experts, with Iranian backing, were attempting to activate a 500-km-range (300-mile-range) "Scud C" missile with a mustard gas warhead.
"The explosion occurred when fuel caught alight in the missile production laboratory," the magazine said, quoting the sources.
"The blast dispersed chemical agents (including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent) across the storage facility and outside. Other Iranian engineers were seriously injured with chemical burns to exposed body parts."
The sources said dozens of Iranian missile engineers were killed along with the 15 Syrians.
The magazine also pointed out that the explosion occurred at about 4:30 a.m., two hours before sunrise, when temperatures have barely begun to rise, let alone reach 50 C.
Syrian officials were not immediately available to comment on the Jane's story.
The article, to be published in the Sept. 29 edition, said the Syrian-Iranian cooperation at the classified military production facility in Aleppo, northern Syria, was the result of a two-year-old weapons agreement between the two nations.
Under the deal, the magazine said, Iran agreed to supply Syria with weapons and ammunition, train Syrian personnel, and help transfer technology for weapons of mass destruction, including chemical-warfare systems.
It said the agreement, signed in November 2005, had led to the establishment of five pilot facilities in Syria aimed at producing chemical weapon precursors.
As a result of the explosion on July 26, Jane's said an Iranian-Syrian programme to arm short-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads had been aborted.
“the explosion occurred at about 4:30 a.m., two hours before sunrise”
Maybe there’s a sat-photo available?
I can’t think of a more deserving group of people to have something like this happen to.
I’m only sorry that so few were killed and injured.
Yeah, Right. Perhaps only at that one site...
Couldn’t happen to a nicer country.
Ballistic missiles, even short range, should really go further than 0 feet.
Next Al Gore will blame it on Global Warming which means it's all Bush's fault.
These a-holes get a nice big fat posthumous Darwin award.
There’s one word missing from this article. Anyone know what it is?
If this is true, Syria just developed crosshairs.
“dozens of Iranian missile engineers were killed along with the 15 Syrians.”
good.
re: # 1Could this have been one of those WMDs tht Saddam didn’t have and somebody saw being moved out of Iraq?
Saddam must not have shipped out the Owners Manuals with his WMDs. Here’s hoping for lots more “Work Accidents” in the future...
The Darwin principle seems to be working on a number of the Islamic terrorists attack plans....unfortunately not fast enough.
We may to have to intervene...to help nature along..... don't you understand.
“The blast dispersed chemical agents (including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent) across the storage facility and outside. Other Iranian engineers were seriously injured with chemical burns to exposed body parts.”
So they were putting a mustard warhead on the missle but there were containers of VX & Sarin sitting nearby that were damaged by the blast? Sounds a bit improbable - you’d think that agents like VX & Sarin would be secured far away from any activity like this.
And if the nerve agents were in the mix those exposed would suffer something more serious than “chemical burns” - more like “death”.
Just a couple of details that start the needle on the BS meter to quiver a bit.
Whee! This is getting tense.
The blast dispersed chemical agents (including VX and Sarin nerve agents and mustard blister agent) across the storage facility and outside. Other Iranian engineers were seriously injured with chemical burns to exposed body parts.”
But Saddamn “never” had nerve gas & WMD’s, nor did he “ever” transport them secretly to Syria while te lierals were stalling Bush’s invasion of Iraq to specifically FIND such weapons, nor did Syria “ever” cooperate with Iraq and other Arab states to continue work on WMD’s after Saddam n was removed from office.....
Nah.
Waiting for ABBCNNBCBS to report this.
Waiting for Newsweek to report this (instead of fawning over HIllary’s lies.
Still waiting.
Still waiting..
Still waiting...
Still waiting....
Still waiting.....
Still waiting......
Still waiting.......
Good news comes in small packages..............
This delivery platform - I'm assuming it was a generic Scud type and not literally a Scud missile - isn't particularly accurate for testing purposes; that is, you wouldn't just park a herd of sheep out in a test facility somewhere and expect to hit it. Either the story isn't anywhere near complete or something rather nasty was in the offing. Inquiring minds want to know...
MOSSAD............
“As a result of the explosion on July 26, Jane’s said an Iranian-Syrian programme to arm short-range ballistic missiles with chemical warheads had been aborted.”
Yeah, Right. Perhaps only at that one site...
I am inclined to believe it was less Darwin at work but rather something else. Unless of course an alternate spelling for Darwin is M-O-S-S-A-D.
A single secret facility, possibly/probably stocked with what weapons were shipped from Iraq while the liberals and the UN fought Bush for a year before he invaded.
At the time they arrived, everything was secret, nothing was planned for loading or re-work or research or launching missiles from the storage site. You’d WANT everything in one place.
Move missile warheads in later. Or get them later, and move them to the nerve gas and mustard gas storage area. Again, logical place to store them. (Maybe not a good place to LOAD the warheads (in the same building or even the same room!) but a good place to keep secrets together.
Find out Saddamn is dead, US is winning, Areal is getting uppity - so you try to load weapons PRIOR to 9/11 anniversary! - and do so with the “small” explosives in a mustard gas warhead that disperse the agent into small droplets. (This size explosive would be much less than 15-20 lbs - like a small device inside the mustard gas tank. After all, you want to blow up the tank, disperse the mustard gas liquid into a cloud of particles, not destroy the mustard gas in a large explosion.
Everybody in the room is killed when the warhead or fuze to the dispersal warhead goes off.
I’m thinking they never stopped working on arming the chemical warheads. If it was an accident, they’d blame it on Israel. Thinking it was a cover to make Israel think Syria doesn’t have these mounted on missles, so that Israel won’t bomb them like they bombed the nuclear facility.
I’ll give you a hint...
WMDs
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
..................
Kozak,
I was going to write a beautiful piece on how our enemies get trapped in their own schemes and blah blah blah.... but I think you made the point much more elegantly. Bravo!
There are these things called test ranges that are normally used that sort of thing.
Cant have the sky looking at you.
One seems to be taken out now. Wonder if Israel is working on the others? They were arming it, but where was it pointed? Israel, Lebanon or Iraq?
I thought of that, but you mean they’re too cheap to build “facilities” at the range?
Maybe the CIA put a Owners Manual for the Chemical Scud on the Internet, instructing the Weapons Techs to fit the fuse to the missile using a 5 pound sledge...
Maybe they had the missile pointed down? ;)
This remarkable piece of information, courtesy of YNET News:
“The scientific arm responsible for Syria’s knowledge and missile production is the Scientific Study Research Center (SSRC). They can be contacted at POB 4470, Damascus. They can also be reached by phone at: 963-11-772-603, or faxed at 963-11-2223771. Yet behind this seemingly innocent name hides the agency in charge of the manufacture of ballistic missiles. The center also handles a great part of the knowledge and acquisition of equipment worldwide.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3451415,00.html
Yes, tell Chloe to send it to my screen.
That's a pretty good start.
L
It's Syria.
L
Since the Syrian experts were killed, we can assume that future warhead arming will be by guys that come to play off the bench.
They are down to second string and the coin toss beginning the game hasn’t happened yet.
Somebody be sure to send this story to Ms. Pelosi - so she can send belated condolences, no doubt.
Does this mean what I think it means...
And thus, Syria had a motive to order Nuclear Take-Out through their favorite Chinese restaurant, Norkies.
Israel must be on red alert.
Syria and Iran are playing high stakes poker, almost all the chips are on the table.
Someone is going home broke pretty soon.
The accident may have put some of the Iranian chem specialists out of business. That could force the Iranians to heavily invest in nuclear WMD. It appears that the Chem warheads are just a little too dangerous to work with. Also interesting that we really have 2 proxies in the mix here. China’s proxy North Korea ships nukes to Iran’s proxy Syria. My guess is the Israelis had a nuke sub parked off the norkie coast just in case the mission failed. The Israelis did go all in, especially considering that if the mission failed the Syrians probably would have launched since they would have expected a followup attack. Use it or lose it. We now have the Mahdi Wannabe making a song and dance trip to New York trying to save the Iranians. This all points to the probability that the Iranian Nukes are not operational yet, which means we still have the chance to stop them. What I have found interesting is no one really knows what the North Koreans shipped. All we have been told is nuke material or nuke equipment. If that is all the Israelis knew, they had to have assumed the worse.
Scud-C’s can’t reach Israel from Aleppo (in Northern Syria where the missile mishap occured). Scud-C’s are just 300 mile range weapons.
The more reasonable answer is that it was 800 mile range No Dong missiles that cooked off, one way or another (Israel has stealth UCAV’s, for instance).
It’s the shipment(s) of No Dong’s into Syria, badged as Iranian Shaheeb-3’s, that has ramped up tensions in the region.
So be it...
Well shoot Luke, there's your problem...
Regards,
GtG
PS Maybe we can count on a little less cooperation between the Persians and the Arabs, yes?
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