Tests rule out suspect bio-labs

CNN ^ | 4/15/2003

[SCR1]

"You don't bury labs ... . Something smells."

Unless you know that your enemy is watching your every move.

[browardchad]

I'd like to blame CNN too, but there was a high ranking military guy (Freakley, can't remember his rank, but up there) who came on the air in an interview with CNN correspondent and stated they had 11 dual use (biological and chemical) mobile labs, 20x20 feet, and 1000 pounds of documents.

If you read today's whole story, CNN is quoting Warrant Officer 2 Monte Gonzalez as saying "The 11 cargo containers were filled with new laboratory equipment apparently intended to make conventional weapons."

I wonder what "conventional weapons" would be made with this equipment: "test tubes, water baths, sand baths, ph transmitters, explosive-proof lights, ethyl alcohol gauges, shakers, test tubes, test tube holders, and temperature and pressure gauges." There is apparently some equipment missing here -- such as that on which you would use a pressure gauge, for instance.

This story is either intentionally incomplete, or the reporter is an idiot.

[jlogajan]

I wonder what "conventional weapons" would be made with this equipment: "test tubes, water baths, sand baths, ph transmitters, explosive-proof lights, ethyl alcohol gauges, shakers, test tubes, test tube holders, and temperature and pressure gauges."

Sounds like standard chemistry gear. Explosives manufacture is a chemistry process.

[SSN558]

Who did the anthrax attacks on the U.S. and what are we not being told ?

[WOSG]

I hope you are right ... we have had suspect find after suspect find. they even showed a warhead in northern iraq and an excited journalist saying some colonel knew where the chemical warheads were buried ... last week. followup? zip nada nothing.

it really makes no sense. UNless Iraq worked real hard to bury the evidence so it couldnt be found at all.

[Illbay]

What you say?

[Cold Heat]

Notice how CNN always reports these lack of evidence stories.............................LOL!

Patience fellow FReepers. The WMD story is being written. It is just not published for us to read yet. When it comes, it will be complete and detailed enough to pass all the legal crap they can throw at it.

[Cold Heat]

This story is either intentionally incomplete, or the reporter is an idiot.

The military is handeling this investigation like a grand jury. They are waiving off any snoopy reporters and will bring everthing out when their ducks are in a row and the legal papers are ready to be filed.

(Don't want France, Germany, Russia, or Syria to get a heads up on what we have really found)

[EERinOK]

You are probably dead on with that assesment. It completely makes sense and is the adult way to go about it.

The fringe benefit of the strategy is going to be watching the dims and hollywierd leftists carp for a couple months, and be made complete fools of once again when the evidence is unleashed en masse. the lefties can't resist screaming that we went to war for no good reason. Bush is going to let them dig themselves another hole and then throw dirt in it on top of them once its too deep to crawl back out of.

[PFKEY]

My hope is that this complete and detailed report will name all the states that aided Iraq in the production of these WMD. i.e. Russia, France, Germany...etc. and that this information will be the catalyst for the sun setting of the UN.

Those silly boys wont be able to hide behind resolutions and charters of the UN that they have all willfully and knowingly violated for their own purposes.

[ISawIt]

Well, for all the hand-wringing about the back-and-forth of discovery-nondiscovery of chemical this or bio-that, I find it most telling that no one is mentioning the several -=>BILLION REMs<=- of nuclear materiel already secured at Al-Tuwethea. Yes, I know the IAEA already "knew" about it, and that they went through the trouble to put Blue Tape on the canisters, and inspected the canisters every six months.

This is basically the same principle as putting tape to mark the level on the liquor bottles in your liquour cabinet, to make sure that your delinquent teenager(s) don't imbibe. It's Idioitic. You inspect six months after the tape has been broken, by that time it's too late, half of Manhattan's population has gotten a 1000 REM dosage. And that's assuming the delinquent hasn't tried to FORGE the tape.

I don't know about you, but the prospect of several kilos of Radio-Strontium over NYC would give me a hell of a lot more reason to stay away than Anthrax. Anthrax has a shelf-life of a couple years -- radio isotopes, especially from a nuclear reactor can last a good spell longer.

That was all the reason we needed to run roughshod over Iraq, IMHO. Botulinium is amatuer crap. Now, several kilos of highly radioactive waste is NOT.

[Cold Heat]

I was, as everyone else, concerned about the so called finds disappearing as news reports stated contrary tests. It seemed somewhat disappointing.

The reality though is that Chem/bio finds are all legal and treaty violations of huge magnitude, the ramifications of which will be serious legal and financial consequences to those that aided and abetted the production.

Now, with this in mind, this statement that modern test and lab equipment was used for conventional weapons is laughable. but CNN printed it!

The fact is that the providers of this gear are in serious doodoo, as they likely violated U.N. sactions. They cannot be tipped off until police, Interpol, and governments have seized records before they can be destroyed.

All of this will be kept under wraps until a thorough investigation get every scrap of information needed to make a good solid legal case.

This is my assessment.

[Cap Huff]

I made these remarks on the original thread reporting about the 11 containers:

"I have noticed that the only ones hyperventilating about not yet finding WMD are the internationals, most particularly the news media, and of course many impatient denizens of FR (I've found myself drifting into this mode a time or two myself). Bush, Rumsfeld, Franks, et. al. have been calmly saying things like nothing yet has been found, but it is still very early. They don't seem to be worried one bit."

It would seem that the Bush Administration and the military are working this thing methodically. My guess is that they have found some for sure and are just making sure that the case is unequivocal.

[Cold Heat]

Yes, can you imagine the media frenzy around the finds if information was dribbled out unverified and undocumented.

They have to treat this like a grand jury investigation and MUM is the word of the day with these folks.

[Rain-maker]

And why the need for mobile labs?

 

Exactly, this doesn't make any sense to spend millions of dinars on mobile lab testing of agriculture and food products,

when over half the people are malnourished and struggling through supply shortages.

 

They barely have an infrastructure to warrant ridiculous expenditures like mobile lab equipment, and were it would be more feasible to have a centrally located stationary lab and ship in the products.  

 

Anyone thinking these mobile labs are for commercial use and Saddam was a nice guy taking care

of his people is sorely lacking any resemblance of  intelligence.

 

Saddam Hussein did not disclosed the location of:

26,000 liters of anthrax - enough to kill several million people;

38,000 liters of botulinum toxin;

500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents;

More than 30,000 munitions including missiles capable of delivering chemical agents; and

Mobile biological weapons labs.

 

[If6was9]

My sense is more that we are sanitizing finds. Let's face it: WMD finds will end up pointing to formerly or future 'friendly countries' and it would be impossible to repair relations in the event they were providers.

"Well, yes the French wanted to keep us out of Iraq, and it turns out they provided components that Saddam used to build his weapons... But we can still work with them in on multilateral issues?!"

Whatever people want to think about going it alone, we will have some relationship with the Weasels, and GWB may have to sacrifice disclosure as a tool for political negotiation.

[MrNeutron1962]

"BILLION REM"

REM is a dose rate, curie is a quantity. Giving half of Manhattan a 1000 R dose, with no one noticing would be a neat trick. I for one am tied of the Dirty Bomb hysteria.

[DannyTN]

"Unless you know that your enemy is watching your every move."

So what if your enemy is watching your every move. Would you bury a perfectly legit lab just to make your enemy suspicious? I don't think so. You only bury something that you want to hide. And there's only a handful of reasons to have a mobile lab. So the question is... what was it about the lab's that they wanted to hide?

The most obvious answer is whether or not the labs were used in the past to make chemical weapons. You hide the labs so you have the ability to ramp up chemical/biological weapon production as soon as inspections and sanctions are over.

[AFPhys]

LOL... "... standard chemistry gear. Explosives
manufacture is a chemistry process."

Yeah... Right... they are going to manufacture explosives in a small mobile lab... tell me another one. I wonder how many batches of "explosive" made in 500ml beakers it would take to fire one artillery shell... Sheesh... act like you have some sense! These mobile labs were not built and kept around to make "conventional explosives" ... that is done in large immobile facilities, and any ditz should know that - even a CNN reporter.

[jlogajan]

Yeah... Right... they are going to manufacture explosives in a small mobile lab... tell me another one.

They didn't turn out to be mobile labs, they were simply large storage containers with equipment in them.

I'll be happy when they find the WMD and any labs, but wishing doesn't (yet) make it so.