300 Sacks Castor Beans Found In Iraq By U.S.Troops[per MSNBC]

MSNBC ^ | June 25, 2003 | vanity

[Lady In Blue]

I was watching TV this evening and started to flip cable channels when I saw a streaming on MSNBC on our forces finding castor beans. The following is a part of what their website said about it.

NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski that within just the past week, U.S. investigators had found two shipping containers filled with millions of much more recent documents relating to chemical and biological weapons.

One of the documents, from 2001, was titled “Document burial and U.N. activities in Iraq,” the sources said. It gave detailed instructions on how to hide materials and deceive U.N. weapons inspectors, the sources said.

Other documents related to the concealment of VX nerve gas, the sources said.

The sources said U.S. troops also discovered about 300 sacks of castor beans, which are used to make the deadly biological agent ricin, hidden in a warehouse in the town of al-Aziziyah, 50 miles southeast of Baghdad, the capital. The castor beans were inaccurately labeled as fertilizer.

U.S. search teams have also been led to a site near Nasiriyah, a key Euphrates River crossing 200 miles south of Baghdad, where Iraqi informants said Scud missiles were buried.

Anybody else see this?

[arete]

Great, now we're down to beans

The administration is getting increasingly desperate. Pretty soon we'll be hearing FOX "news" shouting about how nitrous oxide was found at a dental clinic. I have more dangerous chemicals under my kitchen sink that they've located in the whole darn country so far. Geez.

Richard W.

[Lee'sGhost]

Castor beans CAN be used as fertilizer. Of course, you would need to hide them because castor beans were always being stolen in Iraqi during Saddam's rule. A big commodity, don't ya know.

[arete]

Do you remember where traces of ricin was found? A few months ago? I think it was in Paris in one or more of their subways

The story was later proved to be false, but like so many of these nutty stories, the propagandists know that prople only hear the initial headline and take that as truth.

Richard W.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Things are starting to tun up. I expect to hear these stories very regularly.

[kinghorse]

No it's great. I hope it's enough to sway world opinion. We are on the same side on this one. I think the media is making the administration look bad by feigning interest in ludicrous finds. Rusted barrels of pesticide, 2 goofy mobile trailers, a flange under a rose bush. Castor Beans. Not exactly stop the presses finds.

[freeperfromnj]

I don't think there was anything to the Paris story but I believe the apartment raid in London a few months back resulted in the arrest of several Algerians and confiscation of castor beans and the equipment used to manufacture ricin.

[First Amendment]

True. Do you remember where traces of ricin was found?

They did find it in the Paris train station, they also found it in an aprtment in London. Then in a training camp in Northern Iraq, they also found some - and they could tell it was from the same batch.

[eyespysomething]

Terror police find deadly poison

Seventh Man Arrested in London Ricin Case

Google search on London and Ricin

[eyespysomething]

Please see post #88 ;-)

[billbears]

Why weren't they accurately labeled"animal feed" or "cosmetics" or "rubber" or "soap" when they could have been made in to any of those as well.

Hmmmmm, perhaps because the only thing they planned to use it for was I don't know, maybe fertilizer? It was still in the bags!!! When they produce castor beans do they send just the coats and waste? Maybe the Iraqis had the capability to produce the fertilizer? Ever think of that? Or are you so blind you believe every word FOX news tells you to believe about the war?

[VRWC_minion]

Hmmmmm, perhaps because the only thing they planned to use it for was I don't know, maybe fertilizer?

With all that looting of everything that isn't nailed down, its a wonder the struggling farmers didn't run off with their "fertilizer" as sson as the war was over.

How do you Bush haters put reality on hold ?

[billbears]

From the rest of the document you said you didn't have time to read

---The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax
---materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
---had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent

Sad to say he didn't say anything about 300 bags of castor beans. Lord knows that fertilizer was probably about the most deadly of all!!

How do you Bush haters put reality on hold ?

How do you reality haters keep the administration (not necessarily Bush) above reproach ?

[VRWC_minion]

How do you reality haters keep the administration (not necessarily Bush) above reproach ?

I haven't. I believe that if Bush exagerated the threat he should be accountable and I personally won't trust him again. However, all my instincts tell me that the adminstration is both withholding information regarding its findings as well as deliberately down playing what it does release.

I believe that makes sense in that the investigation has just begun and its dumb to make information public when an ongoing investigation is taking place.

All the signs are present. The facts leading to the war indicate the WMD existed. Saddam's actions indicatd the WMD existed. Bush and Blair being smart politico's are not about to set themselves a trap for themselves. The reports that are getting isssued are being issued with the reporters explaining that such information had been embargoed. Even the Clintons are not going out on that limb.

just like the foolish critics committed credibility suicide over the iraq war getting bogged down, they (and you) are now ruining their own credibility on harping on this issue.

[Sacajaweau]

"Nonetheless, Ricin has been one of Saddam Hussein's favorites. In the 1990s, United Nations inspectors uncovered a decade-long drive to grow and process castor beans for what Iraqi scientists belatedly acknowledged was for Iraq's weapons arsenal. The country's ricin stashes remain unaccounted for." Bernadine Healy, M.D.

[Dilbert56]

This is NBC news trumpeting these discoveries. The Administration has been and will continue to counsel patience. Both the President and SecDef showed nothing but confidence that their conclusions will be validated. If they are desperate, it's not showing. On the contrary, they act as if they've got something up their sleeve and these stories support that. A bit of perspective. We're not talking warehouses upon warehouses of the stuff. Whenever we hear 10,000 liters of this or that we need to remember it requires only fifty, 55-gallon drums to hold that much. Picture how easy it is to hide that much. One backyard could do it.

[Fiddlstix]

Castor Oil!
Yuk!

[Sacajaweau]

The Henry L. Stimson Center "Biological Weapons Proliferation Concerns"

Thought this was worthwhile reading.

[freeperfromnj]

Thanks for the links

[homeschool mama]

**You just know they are as well as the Saddam brigade on Freerepublic,I'm sad to say! It's really pathetic to think that there are a few on this site that make excuses for such a dictator as Hussein. **

Exactly, Lady. :o/

[cake_crumb]

LOL...in the meantime, Dem politicos and pundits are still harping on the WHERE ARE THE WMD? theme.

Nice of MSNBC to say the bags were 'mislabeled'. Just a mistake. Only a clerical error. If Saddam were still alive, he'd be the first one unable to recall anything about it...

And the components for uranium enrichment that Iraqi nuclear scientist allowed troops to dig up out of his backyard were really just medical equipment, right?