The sarin shell - from the top
I've had several posts on this topic, and it has gotten significant notice in the blogosphere. But given the nature of blogging, permalinks, etc., there is a little disjointedness, so I want to recap what I've posted.
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First, the shell was announced by BG Kimmitt, the CPA military spokesman, and he was reporting an announcement by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). During the press conference, he said<font size=3> (and I am paraphrasing! See other comments for the inside joke) <font size=4>that the round was an old binary shell, and described its function - two components contained within the shell that are mixed by the action of firing the shell, and that since the shell wasn't fired, but used in an IED, the mixing was not complete, only a small amount of sarin was produced, and a couple of soldiers (EOD) were affected. Field testing showed sarin, and not said by BG Kimmitt but later reported, higher level testing confirmed it.
This is a significant announcement, yes, because it is a chemical round, but more importantly, because of the technology it uses. That is the use of cells or canisters of separate components that mix in flight to create the sarin. This is big news because the Iraqis were not known to have this technology prior to the Gulf War. Yes, they had sarin. And yes, they did use binary chemicals (and a note, here, on something I missed before - the Iraqis never declared binary artillery shells, but UNSCOM did find some in 1996), but as this interview with Scott Ritter - yes, that Scott Ritter - conducted in 2000 shows that the technology was crude - it was not "mix in flight":
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BRG: They were also using very crude binary munitions.
Ritter: They called them “binary,” but what that meant was that they had a warhead full of isopropyl alcohol and at the last second they mixed in the difluor. [32]
BRG: “Mix-in-flight.”
Ritter: It’s not even “mix-in-flight.” They mix it before they launch. [33] At the Muthana State Establishment, which was responsible for developing Iraq’s chemical weapons, whenever they would mix these things Iraqi workers would get up there and then pour the agent in and stir the Sarin by hand in the warhead. Invariably there’s an accident and you’ve got guys writhing, convulsing and dying because of the nerve agent. The Iraqis killed more of their own people loading the chemical agent into the warhead than they did with the warheads themselves.
The Iraqis didn't use binary because it was safer, obviously. They did it because of shelf life. As I understand it, Iraq had a problem with their production that made their sarin ineffective after 3 weeks. So they used this crude binary so it wouldn't sit and degrade. If this was a unitary sarin round from pre-Gulf War days, it wouldn't have had any effect on the soldiers.
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In short, this type of artillery shell is one that the Iraqis never declared, and the UN inspection teams on the ground never discovered. It introduces something entirely new into the WMD story of Iraq. Here is the nub - this type of weapon has never been found in or attributed to Iraq before, where did this one come from? This isn't quite an airplane in King Tut's tomb, but it is highly significant. Was it produced in Iraq right under the noses of the inspection regime? Was it purchased from outside in violation of UN sanctions? Did it come in from some outside country after the fall of Hussein? I don't know the answer to those questions, but whatever the answer, it changes the narrative of the WMD story in Iraq.
Or it should. While this has gotten a lot of notice in the
blogosphere, there is nothing moving in the mainstream
media. Why is that? Some of the reason is that the
mainstream media quite obviously are uninterested in
changing the narrative. That the LA Times fabricates the
assignment of the production of this weapon to the 1980's
is a sign of that - BG Kimmitt never said it, yet the LA
Times writes that he did. This is having the desired
effect, in the comments over at Washington Monthly's blog
(Kevin Drum's deal), some one writes "General Kimmitt
claimed that the ordinance was of Gulf War vintage,
meaning that the bomb had to be at least 13 years old."
No, he didn't say that at all about the ordnance (ahem).
So how did that notion get in this guy's head? I'm
guessing from reading a story in the LA Times or the like
that has decided not to spin this one, but to simply print
untruths. No one ever goes back to check the primary
sources, right?<font size=3>
pittspilot raises some good questions below, and probably the one that is most poignant is this: If blaster picked it up, and it would require someone with a background to understand the implications at first, then surely others will know as well. That is a good question - the easiest answer is to say, hey look, this is some random internet guy, what does he know? I think I've provided firm documentation of what I am saying, though. I may have a head start on what to look for because of the training and studying I did on Iraqi munitions in 1990, but <font size=4>surely Blix and Kay know that this is significant. And surely the US government does, too. Why aren't they trumpeting this find as vindication?
This, too, is a very good question. But notice a couple of things. When it was first announced, some administration people were surprised because they thought the information was classified (I know, World Net Daily, but that is how I first heard it reported on network radio, too). And it wasn't until this was announced that the administration also announced that a mustard filled shell was found 2 weeks ago. As Instapundit wrote the other day:
It's hard and -- as various bizarre news stories seem to indicate -- we're in a situation where it's likely that lots of stuff is going on beneath the surface that we don't and can't know about. Add to that the tendency of the media reporting from Iraq to focus on superficially bad news, at the expense of both good news and non-superficial bad news, and it's really hard to tell what's going on.
What does that mean? It means that there is a lot more going on than we are going to know - more than what the "open sources" tell us. We aren't going to find the answer to Iraqi WMD with Google. I've heard some surprising things from people who know more than open source. If what I've heard is true, there is a whole lot more that we have yet to find out. And this is also important - both President Bush and Tony Blair stand by their WMD claims from before the war. Still.
I have some guesses at what the larger picture might be, but it still seems kind of strange that probably the most damaging thing to the war effort right now is the lack of credibility arising from the "failure" to find WMD in Iraq. It is curious, and exasperating, that apparently every "find" is dismissed.
Blix and Kay are both dismissing this round as pre-Gulf War - when clearly it cannot be. And I don't buy the "we got burned on yellowcake" so we are being superduper cautious on anything else theory, because in the end, even Joe Wilson admits that was right.
So I would like to see the questions pittspilot raises asked, and answered. You don't have to be an ordnance technician to figure out what they are - he's got it right. Now if only our press were more interested in this than in damaging President Bush. <font size=3>
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