Free Republic

Taleban using white phosphorus, some of it made in Britain An eight-year-old girl, injured during an airstrike in the Afghan village of Garni in western Farah province, recovering in hospital in Herat city Michael Evans, Defence Editor Taleban fighters have been using deadly white phosphorus munitions, some of them manufactured in Britain, to attack Western forces in Afghanistan, according to previously classified United States documents released yesterday. White phosphorus, which can burn its victims down to the bone, has been found in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in regions across Afghanistan including in the south, where British troops are based. It...

Military personnel exposed to chemical warfare agents should be "reassured".Chemicals such as as sarin were tested on military personnel at Porton Down.Chris Ison/PA Archive/PA Photos The first ever studies of veterans exposed to chemical warfare agents in controversial experiments at the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) Porton Down laboratory has found little evidence that they suffered any long-term health effects, despite a small increase in mortality in the test group.Nearly 500 different chemicals, including nerve agents such as sarin and blistering agents such as sulphur mustard (mustard gas), were tested on military personnel at the Porton Down laboratory near Salisbury...

As if he doesn't have enough domestic issues to deal with, Barack Obama is being forced to confront the escalating drugs war in Mexico that threatens to spill across the US border. In interviews with regional newspapers yesterday, the President revealed that he had contemplated the idea of sending an armed American force to patrol the border. "We're going to examine whether and if National Guard deployments would make sense and under what circumstances they would make sense," said Obama, who also praised Mexico's President Felipe Calderon for "taking some extraordinary risks under extraordinary pressure to deal with the drug...

Nuclear and biological terrorism is the emerging threat the next US President should focus on, the US security chief has told Sky News. In an exclusive interview, homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff said sources of radioactive and biological materials must be properly secured "at all costs". He warned terrorists are actively seeking to acquire such materials. Mr Chertoff said he did not think a weapon of mass destruction, like a biological or nuclear bomb, was a danger that could be just months away. But he warned: "It may be years away and we can't afford to waste this time waiting...

HOUMA, LA (WAFB) - Houma police officers and Terrebonne Parish sheriff's deputies say an attractive woman named Patches has been arrested after her "calogne samples" made at least two men pass out. One of the incidents prompted a statewide alert to Louisiana law enforcement agencies. The first complaint happened in early June. Police say an 18-year-old man says he was leaving a Houma restaurant at lunchtime when he was approached by a woman who said she was selling cologne. Police say the woman asked the victim is he was interested in buying some cologne she was selling. "The suspect produced...

Have you ever REALLY wondered about those lead-painted toys the Chinese flooded us with ? Here's a (paranoid and xenophobic ?) look.

Baghdad, Sept 7, (VOI) – Three of the six defendants in the Anfal case will be executed by hanging on Saturday, a Saudi newspaper quoted the lawyer of former Iraqi deputy premier Tareq Aziz as saying. "The Iraqi Criminal Court notified Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias Chemical Ali, former defense minister Sultan Hashim and former chief of staff Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti that they will be executed tomorrow," lawyer Badie Aref Ezzat told Saudi newspaper al-Watan, published on Friday. The lawyer said he was told by the three convicts that they only wanted to meet their families before the executions. Ezzat said...

WASHINGTON, May 16 — Scientists working with the Defense Department have found evidence that a low-level exposure to sarin nerve gas — the kind experienced by more than 100,000 American troops in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 — could have caused lasting brain deficits in former service members. Though the results are preliminary, the study is notable for being financed by the federal government and for being the first to make use of a detailed analysis of sarin exposure performed by the Pentagon, based on wind patterns and plume size. The report, to be published in the June issue...

When Iraqi insurgents this week blew up trucks carrying chlorine, the attacks conjured up frightening images of chemical warfare and soldiers choking to death on the battlefields of Belgium in World War I. The explosions also raised concerns the insurgents in Iraq have the know-how and flexibility to adopt new tactics, including the pursuit of chemical bombs in an increasingly deadly and chaotic war. Chlorine gas attacks the eyes and lungs within seconds, causing difficulty in breathing and skin irritation in low-level exposure. Inhaled at extremely high levels, it dissolves in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid that burns lung...

BAGHDAD, Feb. 21 — A truck bomb that combined explosives with chlorine gas blew up in southern Baghdad on Wednesday, and officials said it might represent a new and deadly tactic by insurgents against Iraqi civilians. It was at least the third truck bomb in a month to employ chlorine, a greenish gas also used in World War I, which burns the skin and can be fatal after only a few concentrated breaths. The bomb killed at least two people and wounded 32 others, many of them sent to hospitals coughing and wheezing, police and medical officials said. Iraqi and...

Saddam regime document CMPC-2004-003406 contains a memo that talks about importing “Chemical Materials for Very Special Usage” from the “Office in Morocco”. The deal according to the memo was based on the “Gentlemen Accord” and the condition was to pay cash and directly but they decided later on to pay it through a Syrian company called Seess and according the “Iraqi-Syrian Commerce Agreement”. This document is of great importance because the “Chemical Materials for Very Special Usage” are very unlikely to fall under the civilian applications and much more likely to fall under the “Chemical Weapon Usage”.The page where...

Hundreds of Iraqi policemen fell sick from poisoning tonight at their base in the southern part of the country after the evening meal breaking their daily Ramadan fast, raising fears of a new type of terrorist attack – perhaps even involving chemical, biological or nerve agents. Some of the policemen reportedly began bleeding from the ears and nose immediately after the meal... The suddenness and severity of the mass poisoning immediately raised fears of a new kind of terrorist attack for the nation of Iraq where weapons of mass destruction have not been used since Saddam Hussein was in power....

BRITISH police investigating a terror plot by Islamic saboteurs have found chemical warfare protection suits in a north London mosque. The discovery has shocked detectives, who believe the find confirms supporters of Osama bin Laden were planning a poison attack on civilian targets in Britain. Scotland Yard and MI5 detectives had kept the discovery of the nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) suits secret. They feared disclosing it would spark panic. Government ministers have warned any suggestion that the Finsbury Park mosque had been involved would have worrying racist overtones. Police initially revealed they had seized a cache of weapons, including...

Excerpt - GAZA, June 29 (Reuters) - A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. ~ snip ~

The Science of Medical Marijuana Prohibition USA -- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently opined that smoked marijuana has no scientifically accepted medical uses. The FDA received much criticism for this decision because in 1999 the Federal Government’s own scientists concluded that even in smoked form marijuana has medical uses. At the heart of the debate about medical marijuana is the question of science. But what, exactly, is science? Since modern civilization bases itself on a belief in the ability of science to solve any and all problems (human or otherwise), prudent people are obligated to at least try...

United States authorities in 2003 were concerned that Al Qaeda operatives had made plans to carry out a chemical attack on the New York City subway system, according to two former counterterrorism officials. But American intelligence authorities concluded that the plot ultimately had been abandoned, the officials said. Plans for the attack, which some officials came to believe was called off by a senior member of Al Qaeda, called for using an improvised device to release cyanide into subway cars or other public spaces, said the officials, who would not be named because of the sensitive nature of the information....

US intelligence analysts misunderstood intercepted Iraqi communications, believing the orders were meant to deceive UN weapons inspectors searching for chemical or biological agents, a new report says. Instead, the conversation between two Iraqi Republican Guard Corps commanders that included the order to remove reference to "nerve agents" from "wireless" communications was intended to ensure the regime was in compliance with international demands to disarm, the Foreign Affairs magazine reported in its online edition this week. That conversation was intercepted by the United States in 2002. The article was based on a recently declassified US Joint Forces Command report assessing Iraqi...

See for example this thread first. Despite all the efforts to hide We know Iraq sought cyanide We fell for their tricks (and so did Hans Blix) who knows what we'd find if we TRIED!

MADRID (Reuters) - An al Qaeda cell based in France planned a chemical attack on a U.S. naval base in Rota, Spain, newspaper ABC reported on Tuesday. Algerian Said Arif, extradited to France from Syria last year, has admitted his cell was plotting a chemical attack on the southern Spanish base controlled by the United States since 1953, the Spanish daily reported. The paper said Arif was considered a lieutenant of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Zarqawi himself was accused of planning a chemical attack last year in his native Jordan, which authorities thwarted. Arif was...

<p>The former number two official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.</p>

BURG, Switzerland -- Albert Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the window. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday, a milestone to be marked by a symposium in Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and which...

After the “Ho-ho-ho” Ends We keep a little ceramic Christmas tree on a table near the living room window. It’s one my wife made –with my daughter’s help – when they were “doing ceramics” ,and when its tiny bulbs are lit, we can share the spirit of Christmas with anyone who passes by. We haven’t put up outdoor decorations for a number of years. For one thing, we’re both a bit long in tooth to be climbing ladders, and stringing lights outdoors . For another thing, we tired, some years ago, of having the neighborhood delinquents steal them ! So...

Governor Set to Push Anti-Marijuana Legislation Again The Murkowski administration will "hit the ground running" next session on a bill proposed last year to overturn a court decision on marijuana use, said Alaska Department of Law spokesman Mark Morones. Alaskans are allowed to possess up to 4 ounces of marijuana in their homes for personal use but the bill could lower that amount to less than 1 ounce if it passes. The Senate Health, Education and Social Services Committee heard from experts last session on both sides of the issue - some arguing marijuana is a threat to society and...

By Ellen Knickmeyer Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, August 13, 2005; 2:09 PM BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 -- U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical-weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday

The War on the Womb There is a war on the womb...both children and women are its victims. By: Deacon Keith Fournier © Third Millennium, LLC On December 15, 2003 - ten days before the world paused to celebrate the birth of a homeless child whose life, death and Resurrection forever altered the course of human history - the “Food and Drug Administration” (FDA), an agency of the United States Government, held a public hearing to consider what was called the “Plan B” Pill. This agency is charged with ensuring that Americans are protected from harm caused by dangerous drugs...

AMMAN, Jordan - Islamic militants planned to detonate an explosion that would have sent a cloud of toxic chemicals across Jordan, causing death, blindness and sickness, a chemical expert testified in a military court Wednesday. Col. Najeh al-Azam was giving evidence in the trial of 13 men who are alleged to have planned what would have been the world's first chemical attack by the al-Qaida terror group. The accused include al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi, and three other fugitives who are being tried in absentia. Jordanian security services foiled the plot in April last year. Jordanian officials say that...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR TIMOTHY McVEIGH'S bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City seems as if it happened less than 10 years ago, but its 10th anniversary, which happened a week ago, seems as if it didn't happen at all. And for practical purposes it didn't. Lots of stories made a bigger ripple in the week's zeitgeist - some of them understandably (new pope chosen), some less so (on "American Idol," Anwar's journey ends). This attention deficit is partly explained by what took place in Lower Manhattan six years after the bombing. Osama bin Laden's atrocity dwarfed Timothy McVeigh's along...

WASHINGTON, March 15 - The Department of Homeland Security, trying to focus antiterrorism spending better nationwide, has identified a dozen possible strikes it views as most plausible or devastating, including detonation of a nuclear device in a major city, release of sarin nerve agent in office buildings and a truck bombing of a sports arena. The document, known simply as the National Planning Scenarios, reads more like a doomsday plan, offering estimates of the probable deaths and economic damage caused by each type of attack. They include blowing up a chlorine tank, killing 17,500 people and injuring more than 100,000;...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

If you can get past the guards and fences, the ingredients for a chemical attack are available off the shelf at a crumbling military base called Shchuchye in south-central Russia. There, stacked like dusty wine bottles on wooden racks, is a collection of 1.9 million artillery shells filled with nerve agents such as VX, an oily yellow liquid so deadly that a single drop on the skin can kill. The smallest shells, each containing enough poison for at least 85,000 lethal doses, could be slipped easily into a backpack. But while U.S. officials fret about possible theft, Russia insists that...

I have been writing to numerous people ever since September 11, 2001. That event changed me. Before September 11, 2001 I assumed our government knew what it was doing in the world and I never questioned anything it did, but after September 11, 2001 i started to think ,why would anybody hate us so much as to try to kill as many Americans as possible. My quest for the truth lead me to one very sobering conclusion.........our policies, even before our independence in 1776, has gradually created a world in which we do not realize what people around the world...

In ordering a new $877 million anthrax vaccine last month, the federal government said it was a major step toward creating a "bioshield" to protect Americans from germ warfare. But delivering that protection may be difficult: the vaccine is unproven in humans, the maker has legal and accounting troubles, and health officials are not prepared to distribute the vaccine quickly if it is needed. Bush administration officials, as well as the top executives at VaxGen, the manufacturer in California, say they are confident they can fulfill their promise. "This program needs to be a success for all of us -...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) Prosecutors said on Tuesday they will charge a Dutch chemicals dealer as an accomplice to genocide for supplying Saddam Hussein with lethal chemicals used in the 1988 chemical attack on a Kurdish town that killed an estimated 5,000 civilians. Wim de Bruin of the national prosecutor's office said the suspect, who was arrested in Amsterdam on Monday, will face charges ''for violating the laws of war and involvement in genocide.'' Prosecutors said Frans van Anraat, a 62-year-old chemicals dealer, had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan, Italy, at the request of the...

WMD hunters ambushed in Baghdad By P. Mitchell Prothero Published 4/26/2004 1:32 PM BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 26 (UPI) -- An explosion that killed al least three U.S. personnel in Baghdad was an ambush of a top-secret unit detailed to search for weapons of mass destruction, United Press International has confirmed. The military initially claimed that a detail of U.S. Army soldiers were about to raid a suspected bomb making factory when two were killed after an explosion. Several Iraqis in the area at the time told UPI that the building exploded when the soldiers tried to enter the house. Although...

The New York Police Department, the F.B.I. and the city's health department have agreed for the first time on a set of rules that will govern investigations of suspected biological attacks in the city, detailing the roles the agencies will play as well as how confidential medical information is to be shared. The "protocol," a six-page document that officials regard as something of a remarkable cooperation agreement, resulted in part from lessons learned in New York during the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, which killed five people in Florida and the Northeast and infected more than a dozen others in the...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - The government will spend $15 million over the next year for research on the illnesses of veterans of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the secretary of veterans affairs, Anthony J. Principi, announced Friday. He said it would concentrate on the role of neurotoxins, and not the stress and psychological conditions often implicated as a cause of the veterans' health complaints. Mr. Principi also said the department would establish a research center to develop treatments for gulf war illnesses. "The men and women who fought there deserve our undivided attention to their questions, to their symptoms, to...

You'll need speakers to hear this. Embedded NPR reporter with Bravo Company, 1st Marine Battalion, 3rd Regiment, found suitcase with Sarin nerve gas. Unclear where it came from. In either case, war is justified because WMD have been found, or if it's Al Qaeda's I'd much rather it brought to Iraq to fight our military than brought to New York. http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=4164561

As the military advances closer to Baghdad, signs of Iraqi chemical preparedness are multiplying, although there is still no conclusive evidence Saddam Hussein's regime possesses weapons of mass destruction. On Friday, troops at a training facility in the western Iraqi desert came across a bottle labeled "tabun" -- a nerve gas and chemical weapon Iraq is banned from possessing. Closer to Baghdad, troops at Iraq's largest military industrial complex found nerve agent antidotes, documents describing chemical warfare and a white powder that appeared to be used for explosives. U.N. weapons inspectors went repeatedly to the vast al Qa Qaa complex...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 - In a development that could undercut reporters' ability to obtain confidential information, Justice Department officials agreed Thursday to distribute to dozens of federal investigators in the 2001 anthrax case a document they can sign to release journalists from pledges of confidentiality. Lawyers for Steven J. Hatfill, a former Army bioterrorism expert, had sought the releases as a step toward questioning reporters about their sources in the case. Dr. Hatfill, who has been described by Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "person of interest'' in the anthrax investigation, is suing the government over leaks of a variety...

OP-ED COLUMNIST Saddam Hussein saw his life as an unfolding epic narrative, with retreats and advances, but always the same ending. He would go down in history as the glorious Arab leader, as the Saladin of his day. One thousand years from now, schoolchildren would look back and marvel at the life of The Struggler, the great leader whose life was one of incessant strife, but who restored the greatness of the Arab nation. They would look back and see the man who lived by his saying: "We will never lower our heads as long as we live, even if...

Breaking, no details

ROME (Reuters) - Italian police said Saturday they had arrested three Egyptian fishermen suspected of plotting to attack a cemetery of American war dead south of Rome. Explosives and maps highlighting the Nettuno American Cemetery and Memorial in the town of Anzio were seized in an apartment in Italy belonging to one of the men, a police official said. "They were preparing a symbolic attack against the American cemetery," the official said, adding police suspected the men were tied to Islamic terrorism. The Egyptians, aged 30 to 45, were arrested Friday but have not been formally charged. Police said they...

excerpt - Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Roger Hedgecock, Newsradio 600 KOGO Q: Secretary Don Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense. A couple of other issues I want to get to were weapons of mass destruction and the Supreme Court rulings. And so quickly, on the weapons of mass destruction, obviously, the opposition to the administration says we should never have invaded. The Bush administration lied about the WMD, never found any, never were any, etcetera, etcetera. Now, I’m reading recent reports in fairly easily accessible published accounts that Syria is holding the weapons of mass destruction or some of them, that...

<p>ROME (AP) -- An Italian prosecutor said Wednesday he had provided U.S. authorities with transcripts of phone calls between terror suspects, including one that reportedly refers to a woman ready to carry out a chemical attack in the United States.</p>

TYLER -- An itinerate gun dealer caught with a cache of poison gas, machine guns and other weapons in an East Texas storage facility was sentenced Tuesday to more than 11 years in federal prison. But William J. Krar's motives, and those of his common-law wife, Judith Bruey, remain unknown to federal officials, who cast the case as a victory against domestic terrorism. "To the extent there was any plot to use these weapons, that plot was thwarted," said U.S. Attorney Matthew Orwig of the Eastern District of Texas. The couple has given only limited statements to investigators since their...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - Al-Qaida plotted bombings and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan, two conspirators said in a confession aired Monday on Jordanian state television. Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of the Jordanian cell of al-Qaida, appeared Monday in a 20-minute taped program and described meeting Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in neighboring Iraq to plan the foiled plot. A commentator said the plotters wanted to kill "80,000" Jordanians and had targeted the prime minister's office, intelligence headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Another Jordanian suspect, car mechanic Hussein Sharif Hussein, was shown saying...

SUDAN ORDERS SYRIAN WMD OUT OF COUNTRY LONDON [MENL] -- Sudan has ordered the removal of Syrian missiles and weapons of mass destruction out of the African country. Arab diplomatic and Sudanese government sources said the regime of Sudanese President Omar Bashir has ordered that Syria remove its Scud C and Scud D medium-range ballistic missiles as well as components for chemical weapons stored in warehouses in Khartoum. The sources said the Sudanese demand was issued after the Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry confirmed a report published earlier this month that Syria has been secretly flying Scud-class missiles and WMD...

LONDON (AFP) - Intelligence services have warned that the British parliament faces a "specific threat" of a chemical or biological attack by the Al-Qaeda network. Members were alerted over a possible strike using anthrax or the deadly chemical ricin on the House of Commons, the lower chamber of parliament, by MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, newspapers said. Details of the warning emerged during a debate Thursday on whether to spend 1.3 million pounds (2.3 million dollars, 1.9 million euros) on a permanent glass security barrier between the House of Commons and its public gallery. The vote was passed. Peter Hain,...

The legacy of a mass murderer.A field outside Baghdad THE DEAD DON'T TALK in Iraq but their graves do. In northern Iraq, a grave was unearthed last July with several thousand bodies, mostly women and children. From the bullet holes in the top of the skulls, it was clear the deaths weren't natural. The victims had been shot from above while kneeling or after being forced into a mass grave. They had personal household items with them like baskets. They had their clothes on. These were clues that helped identify their hometown and led to the conclusion they'd been compelled...

(AP) - Once again, President Bush misspoke on a weapons issue, telling the nation that 50 tons of mustard gas were found in Libya - twice the amount actually uncovered. The White House moved quickly Wednesday to correct the record, with press secretary Scott McClellan seeking out reporters to point out the mistake. The president should have said in his Tuesday night address and press conference that 23.6 tons of mustard gas were found in Libya, instead of 50 tons, McClellan said.Bush used the 50-ton figure twice.The first time, he was making the case that his decision to go to...