Posted on 09/23/2007 4:01:12 PM PDT by enough_idiocy
July 13-16: The 329th Chemical Platoon worked in conjunction with Marines from Multi-National Force-West and Soldiers from Multi-National Division-Center to secure approxomately 40,000 gallons of nitric acid that was found in a cache in Fallujah, Iraq, for disposal. The 329th Chemical Platoon is support reserve unit for Task Force Phantom, Multi-National Corps-Iraq. HQ is Winter Park, Florida. (U.S. Army/Spc. Fernando Gonzalez)
(Excerpt) Read more at northshorejournal.org ...
“Nitric acid is a dual use precursor chemical”
Big deal, can you believe what Britney like did last night OMFG?
Yes! Yes I did! She got arrested for hit and run and driving with an invalid license! Can you believe it!!!!!!!
Now, back to the dreary business of this thread. Sigh. ;^)
Nitric acid, mixed carefully with glycerin, makes nitroglycerin. I’m sure there are chemists on FR that can elaborate even further on the use of nitric acid in the creation of explosives.
Just because it isn’t a WMD yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the capability of becoming a WMD if scientists (like Saddam had plenty of) manipulate it enough. Also, there were those chemicals from Iraq they found at the UN. They were WMDs, weren’t they?
or in Syria either...cough cough
There have been and always will be WMDs in Iraq!
We will keep finding them.
I suppose it depends on the defition used and how broadly you interpret it.
This definition is from US law, 18 U.S.C. Section 2332a and the referenced 18 USC 921:
(1) Any explosive, incendiary, poison gas, bomb, grenade, or rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces [113 g], missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce [7 g], or mine or device similar to the above. (2) Poison gas. (3) Any weapon involving a disease organism. (4) Any weapon that is designed to release radiation at a level dangerous to human life.
“Indictments and convictions for possession and use of WMD such as truck bombs, pipe bombs, shoe bombs, cactus needles coated with botulin toxin, etc. have been obtained under 18 USC 2332a.”
“The US FBI also considers conventional weapons (i.e. bombs) as WMD: ‘A weapon crosses the WMD threshold when the consequences of its release overwhelm local responders’”
The plain language of the phrase suggests it maybe shouldn’t be included since it perhaps can’t cause mass causalties, or can it?
“The sodium cyanide was found inside an ammunition canister, next to hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids and formulas for making bombs. If acid were mixed with the sodium cyanide, an analysis showed, it would create a bomb powerful enough to kill everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility, investigators said.”
As in April 1915, with the first uses of chlorine gas on the Western Front in World War I, these explosions sowed widespread panic, underlining — as the bombers no doubt intended — the inability of the Americans to protect potential allies in al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. (The recent discovery of stocks of chlorine and nitric acid in a Sunni neighborhood of west Baghdad will hardly assuage those fears.)
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/49871/
“Chemical weapons expert Gert G. Harigel considers only nuclear weapons true weapons of mass destruction, because ‘only nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate by their explosive power, heat radiation and radioactivity, and only they should therefore be called a weapon of mass destruction’ He prefers to call chemical and biological weapons ‘weapons of terror’ when aimed against civilians and “weapons of intimidation” for soldiers.”
“Nitric acid can be used to make conventional explosives, but could have chemical weapon applications as well. ‘It’s an acid and causes chemical burns to the skin and burns the lungs and esophagus if it is inhaled,’”
http://nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2007/4/16/b99bcffa-b841-48dc-9e76-e5e1cedc9a29.html
You may be right about the timing though, but not necessarily.
Al Qa-Qa State Establishment
Other Names: Latifiyah Double Base Propellant Plant; Latifiyah SSM Equipment Production Facility, Al Qa-Qa Establishment Salah Al-Din Plant; Salah Al-Din Powder Factory, Khaled Plant, Al Qa-Qa Ammo and Explosives Plant
Location: Baghdad, Latifiyah, approximately 60km south of Baghdad
Subordinate to: Military Industrialization Commission
Primary Function: Production of double-base propellants, NITRIC ACID, explosives.
The site contained five main production sub-areas, including those for double-base propellants, explosives, and nitric acids as well as smaller facilities for warhead filling, isomer separation, engine static testing, storage, etc. The agreement to build the nitric acid plant was reached with a Yugoslav firm in 1974 but much of the equipment was bought from Germany.
http://nti.org/e_research/profiles/iraq/missile/2967_3018.html
January 2, 2003
A UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) chemical team travelled 280 kilometres (175 miles) northwest from Baghdad to inspect the Al-Hadar State Co., formerly known as Ash Sharqat Uranium Enrichment Facility, a chemical plant that produces nitric acid and ammonium nitrate
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/030104inspectiraq.html
memo number 384 on 3/10/2002
1. Name of material: Nitric Acid. Unit: Liter. Quantity: 600. Origin: Iraqi.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1637240/posts
see also post 23.
Based on the above, and this good counter-point: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10535.html, I think it depends on how you define WMDs.
“Nitric acid was monitored by the UNMOVIC and UNSCOM (particularly IRFNA) because it is an essential element of missile fuel (like the SCUD, NO DONG and GHAURI) restricted by the UN resolutions and a violation UN res 687 and others”
I think this sort of thing, “Acid truck bomb,” would case mass destruction.
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?D=2007-04-18&ID=186087&TINDEX=1
In sum, you’re a bit too quick to dismiss.
HN03 is used for making Nitrogen Mustard gas..a very nasty blister agent which targets mucous membranes. Eyes, nose, throat, lungs, etc..
I have heard it explained more than once on this forum that there were WMDs, but the administration was embarrassed that many WMDs were stolen out from under the noses of the military. Accordingly, the administration was content to take the bad wrap in exchange for no investigation on how our military managed to lose them all to scavengers and other opportunists ready to make a buck selling them on the black market.
Should be, "US reveals Iraq nuclear operation".
It was low-enriched Uranium, not remotely "weapons-grade" that had been under IAEA seal, regularly inspected before the war, everbody was aware of it, and was left in Iraq with the permission of the IAEA and did not violate any UN sanctions.
The danger of that uranium would be pretty much limited to someone dropping some of it on your head from a window.
The whole story has been unfortunately twisted in the repeating by people that desperately want the facts to be different.
This is from 2003.
http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/MediaAdvisory/2003/ma_iraq_0606.shtml
IAEA Media Advisory 2003/0606 (16 June 2003)
IAEA Safeguards Inspectors begin inventory of nuclear material in Iraq
For full coverage, see the pages on IAEA and Iraq.
6 June 2003 — On 7 June 2003, a team of seven IAEA safeguards inspectors will begin taking an inventory and securing nuclear material at the nuclear material storage site at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex. The nuclear material - 1.8 tonnes of low enriched uranium and 500 tonnes of natural uranium - had been under IAEA seal since 1991. It was last visited by IAEA inspectors in February 2003.
Nitric acid is NOT a WMD.
Neither is chlorine, amonia, or sulfuric acid.
Don’t dilute the definition to suit your wishes.
There is a great difference between WMD and TIC (Toxic Industrial Chemicals) which maybe weaponized but are not WMD.
In any case, this is the BBC article dated July 7, 2004.
Is it this type of acid that Saddam used to have his enemies dunked into or was that sulfuric acid?
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