[Angelus Errare]

Al-Hayat claims that there was and at least some of their information regarding the car and truck bombs appears to have panned out as genuine. I don't take a lack of official confirmation as being too disturbing in this instance, given that the Jordanians may not have the facilities necessary to analyze whatever it was they found. Zarqawi's last planned round of chemical attacks was also in Europe, so the European agencies are likely to have the best hands-on experience in dealing with these folks. We have been told very, very little about the specifics of this plot even on the conventional angle, suggesting at least to me that the possibility of a Jordanian-mandated news blackout should not be ruled.

Regarding the 20,000 casualty count figure, I think that's more of an expression of the intended scale of the attack rather than any kind of a scientific figure. Everything we've seen from official Jordanian sources (including the king, and you don't get more official than that) suggests that thousands would have been killed had these attacks gone through, a definitively an indication that whatever this was, it was something major.

[Boot Hill]

Your sniffer suggests that this story may, in fact, be true (about the chemical weapons), while my sniffer detects the faint odor of BS. We'll see. Actually, I'd prefer that your hypothesis be the true one.

--Boot Hill