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Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by dropping it on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the Cold War have been uncovered in Australian Government archives. Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and Prime Minister’s office files show that the United States was strongly pushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB — better known as Sarin — nerve gas. The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow’s SUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combat troops to...

NEWPORT, Ind. (AP) - Army contractors halted operations Saturday at a western Indiana complex built to destroy a deadly nerve agent after nearly 500 gallons of caustic wastewater spilled in a contained area. No workers were injured or exposed to the hydrolysate, a byproduct of the destruction of the agent, when it leaked onto the floor of a sealed area at the Newport Chemical Depot, depot spokesman Dennis Lindsey said. The facility was to be shut down until the spill was cleaned up and its cause determined, Lindsey said. The western Indiana facility destroys the Cold War-era chemical weapon VX...

<p>On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.</p> <p>We do know that Israel carried out an airstrike. How then do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret. Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.</p>

<p>Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.</p>

Okay, you can come out from under the bed now. The United Nations says the nerve gas stored - unmarked and unidentified - in one of its offices for about 10 years posed "no immediate risk or danger." Neither were "toxic vapors" found in the air. Is this not completely reassuring? No one seems to know why the stuff - believed to be phosgene, which killed a lot of folks back in World War I and, due to Saddam Hussein, more recently in Kurdish villages - was at UN headquarters instead of locked away in a lab. Apparently it had...

<p>ABC reported on their website blog about 20 min ago that United Nations weapons inspectors discovered six to eight vials of a dangerous nerve gas, phosgene, as they were cleaning out offices at a U.N. building in New York this morning, federal authorities tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com. The federal authorities said the office, in a U.N. building near headquarters, was being evacuated and the White House had been notified at 10 a.m. New York police and fire officials said federal authorities had not notified them of any problem at the U.N. building, as of 11 a.m. A U.N. spokesperson said a statement would be issued shortly.</p>

Nerve gas found at UN.

By Tim Ripley NEW satellite images of an Iraqi nerve gas plant show that the site has been rebuilt after being bombed by the United States, but there seems to be little sign that production of chemical weapons is under way. The site, named Fallujah I, some 38 miles north-west of Baghdad, is one of three similar facilities built in the late 1980s around the town of Habbaniyah to mass-produce elements, known as precursors, of the nerve gases used in the Iran-Iraq war and against the Kurds in 1988 and 1991. Images taken by an American company, DigitalGlobe, and published...

<p>Satellite pix show that three chemical facilities in Iraq - Fullujah I, II and III - wrecked in the 1991 Gulf War are back in business.</p> <p>August 19, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - These mysterious chemical factories northwest of Baghdad are a major reason the Bush administration thinks war with Iraq is inevitable.</p>

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...

Saddam Regime Document CMPC-2003-016083 dated in 2001 contains a series of Top Secret memos that address the production of Nerve Gas Detectors which was prohibited by the United Nations resolutions concerning Iraq according to the document itself. The importance of the production of the Nerve Gas Detector is shown by the top secret letters exchange between the Presidential Office and the head of the Iraqi Military Industrialization Commission (M.I.C). This documents is yet another indication that Saddam Regime never stopped his WMD programs, and the nerve Gas Detector which some can see it a “defensive in nature” is not to...

Original Title: MAKE THE DIAGNOSIS CLASSIFIED. CONSIDER THE PATIENTS TO BE FAKING The preliminary documents concerning the mass poisoning in Chechnya have been confiscated, and physicians are compelled to choose between the Hippocratic Oath and a non-disclosure agreement.                      Throughout December there were reports of mass poisonings at schools in the Chechen region of Shelkovsk. Just before the New Year's holidays, a government commission which was created in order to 'determine the causes and liquidate the results' of the events there published its official verdict: no need to worry, there were no poisonings, but a mass psychosis due...

More than 70 people -- most of them schoolchildren, and all but a handful of them girls -- have now been affected by a mysterious ailment in an eastern district of Russia's war-torn republic of Chechnya. During the past week, residents have been struck by sudden bouts of tremors, nausea, and shortness of breath. Some doctors have reported incidents of psychotic episodes, with patients experiencing panic attacks or mania. Some regional authorities have said the illness is suggestive of nerve-gas poisoning. But toxicologists have reportedly found no evidence to substantiate the claim. RFE/RL reports on what may be behind Chechnya's...

"More than 35 people, most of them children, in the Russian republic of Chechnya have been hospitalized with illness that preliminary diagnosis indicates could be nerve-gas poisoning, officials said Tuesday. The ill include pupils, teachers and workers at a middle school in the town of Starogladovskaya, according to Vladimir Gerasin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Emergency Situations' office for southern Russia."

NEWPORT, Ind. (AP) -- Army contractors halted operations Saturday at a western Indiana complex built to destroy a deadly nerve agent after nearly 500 gallons of caustic wastewater spilled in a contained area. No workers were injured or exposed to the hydrolysate, a byproduct of the destruction of the agent, when it leaked onto the floor of a sealed area at the Newport Chemical Depot, depot spokesman Dennis Lindsey said. The facility was to be shut down until the spill was cleaned up and its cause determined, Lindsey said. The western Indiana facility destroys the Cold War-era chemical weapon VX...

U.S. military forces have discovered a smuggling ring moving copious quantities of explosives and weapons from Iraq to terrorist training camps constructed by the Saddam Hussein regime inside Syria prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The Pentagon also announced that the structure bombed by U.S. warplanes last week, described by many major media outlets as a wedding celebration at a private ranching operation, was actually a "dormitory-like" facility used as a "safe house" to facilitate the clandestine movement of foreign terrorists into Iraq from Syria. According to Pentagon officials, small arms, explosives, and bomb making materials are being removed from...

SCOTLAND Yard believes it has thwarted an al-Qaeda nerve gas attack aimed at ministers and MPs in the British Parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded emails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 later identified an al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video-recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the terror attack. The encrypted emails are said to have been decoded with the assistance of an al-Qaeda "supergrass". By revealing the terrorists' code, he was also able to help MI5 and GCHQ - the...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

ARIS, May 29 — Italian and German investigators have disclosed fresh information suggesting that hints of an attack involving aircraft and the United States were more widespread among European law enforcement agencies before Sept. 11 than previously suspected.The disclosures come after weeks in which the Bush administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which announced a shake-up today, have come under sharp criticism that they did not pay sufficient heed to signs of Al Qaeda plots in the United States that may have alerted them to the Sept. 11 attacks.A Central Intelligence Agency spokesman said today that before Sept....

On March 16, 1988, 5,000 residents of Halabja, a Kurdish city in eastern Iraq, were killed and 10,000 injured when Saddam Hussein's army attacked with chemical weapons -- perhaps the largest-scale use of such weapons against a civilian population in modern times. That morning, Iraqi Air Force planes bombed the city with a lethal chemical cocktail of mustard gas and sarin, tabun and VX nerve agents. Two days ago, the man accused of overseeing the attack, Gen. Ali Hasan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, appeared before a judicial tribunal in Baghdad. He is likely to go on trial next...

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...

A MAN suspected of helping former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein commit war crimes and genocide by supplying him with materials for chemical weapons, has been arrested by the Netherlands authorities. Prosecutors said the 62-year-old man, identified as Frans van Anraat by Dutch television, was arrested at his Amsterdam home on Monday as he prepared to leave the Netherlands. "According to the United Nations, the Dutchman is one of the most important middlemen in Iraq’s acquisition of chemical material," Dutch prosecutors said in a statement. "The man is suspected of supplying thousands of tonnes of raw materials for chemical weapons between...

Eight workers at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility have been medically cleared after tests showed they were not exposed to chemical agents. (Nov 12, 2004) -- STOCKTON, Utah (AP) -- A scare for eight workers at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Stockton. Tests show the workers were not exposed to chemical agents. That word today from officials at the Deseret Chemical Depot. The workers were given medical evaluations for possible exposure to VX nerve agent. Those were conducted after entries into the toxic area were suspended last Tuesday with the discovery of a contaminated breathing air supply...

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...

I'd like to get some discussion going in advance of the Iraq Survey Group's final report. The topic: the finds of large numbers of drums of substances that field tested as nerve agents, but were later pronounced to be pesticides, at several Iraqi munitions dumps. There is a Frontpage article which was posted here back in April when it was new. I added a post to it's thread, but knowing that many FReepers probably do what I usually do and read the threads index to the Forum rather than the messages index, I though a new thread would be in...

SEOUL, Sept. 24 (Yonhap) -- A toxic chemical used to make nerve gas has been shipped from South Korea to North Korea via China, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said Friday. A South Korean company shipped 107 tons of sodium cyanide to a company in China without government approval between June last year and September this year.

Breaking, no details

The discovery of an Iraqi artillery shell armed with nerve gas has the liberal community and mass media in a panic. The 155mm nerve gas shell was rigged to kill U.S. troops but it failed. U.S. Brig. General Mark Kimmitt confirmed the discovery during a news conference in Baghdad. Yet, the discovery of nerve gas was followed by a second revelation. A second shell, equipped with mustard gas was found two weeks ago. The mustard gas shell identified by the special WMD inspection team in Iraq appears to be one of 550 declared by Saddam to U.N. inspectors during the...

AUM founder Asahara found guilty of all 13 charges TOKYO, Feb. 27, Kyodo - (EDS: UPDATING WITH INCLUSION OF 1995 SARIN GAS ATTACK, LAWYERS' STATEMENT) Shoko Asahara, the founder of the AUM Shinrikyo cult, is guilty of all 13 charges against him, including the 1995 sarin gassing on the Tokyo subway system, the Tokyo District Court ruled Friday. The guilty verdicts handed down against the 48-year-old guru boost the likelihood of a death penalty since any one of the cases carries a death penalty. Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, faced charges in 13 criminal cases that resulted...

THREE STAFF TAKEN ILL Police are checking one of BP's offices in Moscow after three female workers fell ill when they opened a bag of letters. Officers in the Russian capital said the employees "got sore throats, their eyes watered and one of them got red spots on her skin". A police spokesman added: "They packed the letters back in the bag and called emergency workers and chemical experts, who are now studying the letters." Russia's Emergencies Ministry said it had sent experts to BP's oil trading office. It was not clear what caused the employees to feel ill. But...

Politics: 15 December 2003, Monday. US troops used nerve gas as they broke into Saddam Hussein's hiding place to capture him, ITAR-TASS reported Monday, citing Saudi press. The substance's effect was felt also by some local people, the agency said. Saddam was captured in a US raid on Saturday, and reportedly showed no resistance when they found him in a mud hut basement near his hometown of Tikrit. The ousted dictator, however, insisted for negotiations. I am Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, and I want to negotiate, the man has told US soldiers as they broke into the underground hideaway....

June 4 — By Gilles Castonguay BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgian investigators found a nerve gas ingredient in letters addressed to the Belgian prime minister's office, and the U.S., British and Saudi Arabian embassies, officials said on Wednesday. Two postal workers were briefly hospitalized after being exposed to the chemicals. The brownish-yellow powder contained phenarsazine chloride, an arsenic derivative used in nerve gas, as well as hydrazine, an agent used as a rocket propellant, said Health Ministry spokeswoman Anne-Francoise Gally said. In the amounts contained in the letters, the two chemicals are not life threatening, but can cause irritation to the...

Syria is aiming at least 100 long-range ballistic missiles equipped with VX – the most lethal nerve gas – at central Israel, according to a senior Israeli defense source. Damascus now has achieved its goal of balancing Israel's nuclear advantage, said the source, quoted by Jane's Foreign Report this week. U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources have said they believe Syria hid evidence of Saddam Hussein's deployment of weapons of mass destruction among its own arsenal of unconventional weapons. In April, the Defense Department said Syria had conducted a series of chemical-weapons tests to exploit the transfer of Iraqi expertise. A...

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A senior U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Monday that a soil sample from the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory destroyed last week by U.S. missiles has tested positive for a chemical that is "one step away" from deadly VX nerve gas.</p>

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion. Belgians Detain Iraqi Suspected Of Mailing Nerve Gas Chemical Reuters The New York Times Section A; Page 16; Column 5; Foreign Desk June 6, 2003, Friday, Late Edition - Final BRUSSELS, June 5 The Belgian police said today that they had detained an Iraqi man after 10 letters containing a nerve gas ingredient were sent to the prime minister's office, the American and British Embassies and a court trying suspected members of Al Qaeda. Inside the letters was a brownish-yellow powder that contained phenarsazine chloride, an...

Reporters who cover the Pentagon were assigned gas masks Monday as a security precaution in case the US military's main headquarters comes under chemical attack. The masks, which resembled plastic hoods fitted with visors and rubber mouthpieces, filters out nerve agents, allowing people to breath for about 65 minutes, said Colonel Mandy Lopez. They do not protect against exposure through the skin. But respiratory protection was given priority because nerve agents kill fastest when inhaled, he said. More than 25,000 masks have been distributed to people who work in the Pentagon since February, said Lopez, who heads a Pentagon...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The government miscalculated the number of U.S. troops who may have been exposed to nerve gases when Iraqi weapons were destroyed during the first Gulf War, congressional investigators say.</p> <p>The General Accounting Office was expected to testify in a House hearing Monday that the Pentagon and CIA used a flawed computer model to estimate the fallout from the weapons. The models were created with inaccurate data, and the height of the plume resulting from the 1991 weapons explosions was underestimated, according to a memo sent to members of a House Government Reform subcommittee.</p>

U.S. to Screen Troops Returning From Iraq Russ Bynum - AP FORT STEWART, Ga. - Col. Paula K. Underwood, an Army doctor, had just returned to her post in Germany from the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites) when she saw a patient whose condition baffled other doctors. The patient was a soldier, also just back from the war, who complained of memory loss. He could no longer find his way from home to work. He had trouble remembering how to make his morning coffee. He was the first of 72 patients with unexplained illnesses Underwood would see before...

BERLIN: The German government has intercepted a cargo of 30 tonnes of sodium cyanide, which can be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons, at the request of Washington which believes the shipment was bound for North Korea, according to the German weekly Der Spiegel. The substance, commonly used in the treatment of metals, can also be in the manufacture of the deadly nerve gas Tabun. The cargo was officially being shipped by a German company to a warehouse in Singapore. Meanwhile, a North Korean trade official cast doubt on Sunday on a news report that a close aide to...

A METAL drum found in Iraq that initially tested positive for a nerve agent could in fact contain rocket fuel, a US expert has said. Two mobile chemical laboratories found nearby might also have been used for mixing the fuel and not making banned weapons, the chief chemical weapons officer of the 4th Infantry Division added. Further tests on the tan 209-litre drum were expected in the coming days, said Lieutenant Colonel Valentin Novikov. Initial tests showed that the contents of the barrel tested positive for the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be a precursor of...

Anybody hear about this?? I`m at work, not near a radio or TV..I got it off a message board saying it`s the real deal (not that the libs will believe it. You just know the "They planted it" protests are coming up next

U.S. Said to Find Iraq Nerve Agent Traces By LOUIS MEIXLER, Associated Press Writer BAIJI, Iraq - U.S. troops found about a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near this northern Iraqi town, and initial tests indicated one of them contained a mixture of a nerve agent and mustard gas, an American officer said Sunday. Lt. Col. Ted Martin of the 10th Cavalry Regiment said troops went to the site at midnight Friday after having been alerted by U.S. Special Forces teams, which were suspicious because of the presence of surface-to-air missiles guarding the area. A chemical team checked...

U.S. soldiers on Saturday found 14 barrels of chemicals in a vast weapons storage area in north-central Iraq, and three initial tests indicated that they contained a deadly mixture of cyclosarin nerve agent and mustard gas. Previous finds of suspect chemicals in Iraq have turned out to be false alarms, and a Pentagon spokeswoman Saturday said defense officials had no conclusive evidence that the barrels contained chemical weapons. She said samples from the barrels would be sent to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for further testing, a process that could take a week. An international team of chemical weapons...

Soldiers find Iraqi chemical 'dump' 27apr03 US SOLDIERS may have found banned chemical weapons in a number of barrels in a weapons dump in north-central Iraq. Three initial tests indicated that they contained a deadly mixture of cyclosarin nerve agent and mustard gas. Previous finds of suspect chemicals in Iraq have turned out to be false alarms, and a Pentagon spokeswoman today said defence officials had no conclusive evidence that the barrels contained chemical weapons. She said samples from the barrels would be sent to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for further testing, a process that could take...

<p>April 22, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - An Iraqi scientist has led U.S. forces to a secret new trove of ingredients and equipment to make chemical weapons - the most promising discovery to date in the search for Saddam's banned weapons, it was revealed yesterday.</p>

U.S. faces repercussions if weapons are not found Wednesday, April 16, 2003 BY JOHN HASSELL Star-Ledger Staff [Newark, NJ] -- The list of banned Iraqi weapons cited as the central reason for war by President Bush was lengthy and specific: Anthrax. VX. Botulinum toxin. Nerve gas. R-400 aerial bombs. Bush's assurances that U.S. troops will unearth these weapons of mass destruction, however, have not been borne out by searches at suspect sites in Iraq -- so far. The dilemma for Washington, according to foreign policy analysts, is that with each passing day, the failure to produce evidence of Saddam Hussein's...

Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammaed may have been exposed to nerve gas or chemical agents during his military service in the Persian Gulf War, his attorney told a judge Friday.

Americans May Have Found Mustard Gas V CORPS HEADQUARTERS, in northern Kuwait, April 7 ? American soldiers searching an empty military training camp in the Karbala area have found several drums that, according to preliminary tests, may contain deadly nerve agents and mustard gas. Officials here promptly notifed the Defense Department about the discovery, which was made on Sunday. "We're treating it as real, we're reporting it as real," said Col. Tim Madere, the top chemical warfare officer in the V Corps of the Army. But additional tests must be conducted before the possibility of a false reading can...

ALBU MUHAWISH, Iraq - This small village on the Euphrates River could turn out to be the site of the first confirmed discovery of banned chemical agents that were the U.S. justification for invading Iraq. Field tests Monday confirmed the presence of toxic nerve and blister agents at an agricultural warehouse. Maj. Bryan Lynch, chemical officer for the 101st Airborne Division, said samples taken from barrels in the warehouse, about two miles from a military compound, are being flown to the United States to determine of they are of weapons grade. The discovery is the strongest indication so far...