Blowback

"Don’t use bug spray, don’t smoke and don’t drink alcohol."

That's the advice offered by scientists at Duke University who have confirmed that soldiers suffering from "Gulf War syndrome" were exposed to sarin gas in the 1991 war with Iraq. The Army Times has the details.

Research released in early May showed that 13 soldiers exposed to small amounts of sarin gas in the 1991 Gulf War had 5 percent less white brain matter — connective tissue — than soldiers who had not been exposed. A complementary report showed that 140 soldiers who were exposed had the fine motor skills of someone 20 years older — what researchers called a “direct correlation” to exposure.

Note that this sarin gas was not used in anger by Saddam Hussein against American troops. Rather, US forces "destroyed an Iraqi chemical weapons dump in Khamisiyah in March 1991."

Sometimes, those American bombers aren't bringing freedom.

As many as 300,000 US troops were exposed to sarin and 100,000 are at heightened risk of brain cancer.

If you are a vet of the Gulf War, the Pentagon has posted a list of units exposed to sarin gas.


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Iraq WMD update

It has been a busy 24-hour period for news concerning weapons of mass destruction. Here's the latest about Iraq, not to be confused with the "wmd to Syria" claim from a couple of weeks ago:

Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has boldly declared:

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons."

He bases this on several hundred old chemical warheads found scattered throughout the country. Referencing declassified portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center report, Santorum said:

"Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Note that wmd skeptics presumed Iraq had these old munitions in 2002. They still opposed the war.

The Department of Defense is a little more measured in its assessment:

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."

Santorum has his own electoral reasons for pushing this story.




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Filed as: Iraq wmd

Safire's Satire, Part II

Last Monday (May 10), Abu Aardvark commented on William Safire's defense of Donald Rumsfeld:

When I went to the New York Times front page this morning, I swear to god I thought I saw this under the op-ed heading: "Satire: Rumsfeld Should Stay." Only when I followed the link did I realize that of course this was William Safire, not an amusing Satire. But, oddly, the effect is much the same.

Today's Safire column, "Sarin? What Sarin?", is awful.

I blogged about the Sarin Monday, so I'll try to make some new points as I dissect Safire's latest:

You never saw such a rush to dismiss this as not news. U.N. weapons inspectors whose reputations rest on denial of Saddam's W.M.D. pooh-poohed the report. "It doesn't strike me as a big deal," said David Kay.

David Kay, of course, was not merely a "UN weapons inspector." He headed the Iraq Survey Group for the Bush administration.

Safire:

"Sarin Bomb Is Likely a Leftover From the 80's" was USA Today's Page 10 brushoff; maybe the terrorists didn't know their shell was loaded with sarin. Besides, say our lionized apostles of defeat, a poison-gas bomb does not a "stockpile" make. Even the Defense Department, on the defensive, strained not to appear alarmist, saying confirmation was needed for the field tests.

Safire's point: "Confirmation? Ha! Why should we need facts?"

Many field tests in Iraq have identified the presence of chemical weapons and to-date, none have found any upon further examination.

In this rush to misjudgment, we can see an example of the "Four Noes" that have become the defeatists' platform.

The first "no" is no stockpiles of W.M.D., used to justify the war, were found. With the qualifier "so far" left out, the absence of evidence is taken to be evidence of absence. In weeks or years to come — when the pendulum has swung, and it becomes newsworthy to show how cut-and-runners in 2004 were mistaken — logic suggests we will see a rash of articles and blockbuster books to that end.

The tide on WMD didn't turn until Kay said "we were all wrong." No stockpiles have been found and the US didn't even bother guarding many of the mostly highly suspect sites.

These may well reveal the successful concealment of W.M.D., as well as prewar shipments thereof to Syria and plans for production and missile delivery, by Saddam's Special Republican Guard and fedayeen, as part of his planned guerrilla war — the grandmother of all battles. The present story line of "Saddam was stupid, fooled by his generals" would then be replaced by "Saddam was shrewder than we thought."

Is Safire wish-casting? What is very clear is that there was no vast infrastructure of WMD programs and no readily deployable arsenal. The nuclear program was dead. No one denies Iraq had chemical weapons in the 1980s and that scientists could again make them. What is the appropriate level of threat justifying preventive war?

This will be especially true for bacteriological weapons, which are small and easier to hide. In a sovereign and free Iraq, when germ-warfare scientists are fearful of being tried as prewar criminals, their impetus will be to sing — and point to caches of anthrax and other mass killers.

A vial is easy to hide. A lab with equipment, not so easy.

Defeatism's second "no" is no connection was made between Saddam and Al Qaeda or any of its terrorist affiliates. This is asserted as revealed truth with great fervor, despite an extensive listing of communications and meetings between Iraqi officials and terrorists submitted to Congress months ago.

The DoD disavowed the list. As did the CIA. This is the biggest red herring among all the red herrings.

Most damning is the rise to terror's top rank of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who escaped Afghanistan to receive medical treatment in Baghdad. He joined Ansar al-Islam, a Qaeda offshoot whose presence in Iraq to murder Kurds at Saddam's behest was noted in this space in the weeks after 9/11. His activity in Iraq was cited by President Bush six months before our invasion. Osama's disciple Zarqawi is now thought to be the televised beheader of a captive American.

News reports suggest that the administration had several opportunities to kill Zarqawi before making the case to attack Iraq -- but didn't, apparently because it would have weakened their case for war. The terrorist was apparently hiding in Kurdish territory before the war and was certainly no tool of Saddam Hussein.

Moreover, Zarqawi is Jordanian and apparently has a prosthetic leg. The CNN linquist says the speaker on the video was not Jordanian and many viewers say the killer did not have a prosthetic leg.

The third "no" is no human-rights high ground can be claimed by us regarding Saddam's torture chambers because we mistreated Iraqi prisoners. This equates sleep deprivation with life deprivation, illegal individual humiliation with official mass murder. We flagellate ourselves for mistreatment by a few of our guards, who will be punished; he delightedly oversaw the shoveling of 300,000 innocent Iraqis into unmarked graves. Iraqis know the difference.

Outrageous. The DoD is investigating 5, 10 or 12 homicides (depending upon which source can be believed), along with rape and other abuses. This is not sleep deprivation. Did Safire hear Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)?

The fourth "no" is no Arab nation is culturally ready for political freedom and our attempt to impose democracy in Iraq is arrogant Wilsonian idealism.

Imposing democracy is very, very difficult anywhere. Start ticking off successes and then compare the precursor conditions to Iraq. Still optimistic?

What evidence suggests that the best way to democratize a nation is via preventive war? What route was employed for South Africa? Nicaragua? Eastern Europe?

I have a blog read by maybe 75 people on an average day. Safire gets the NYT op-ed page.

Update: Matt Yglesias says this is Safire's "time warp."

Demagogue was on it today too.

Sarin attack?

The BBC has the latest news about the "nerve gas bomb" that "exploded" in Iraq a few days ago.

I put "nerve gas bomb" in quotation marks because it was a binary shell containing two components of Sarin. The agents were designed to combine in flight. Absent the combination, the individual agents are relatively harmless.

I put "exploded" in quotation marks because the conventional explosive agents rigged to the device detonated, but the Sarin elements did not disperse. Two soldiers were treated for minor exposure.

While this could signal something important -- whether the presence of WMD in Iraq or the escation of war by the insurgents -- the BBC quotes a coalition official who does not think it amounts to much:

However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the escalation of insurgent activity.

He said the round dated back to the Iran-Iraq war and coalition officials were not sure whether the fighters even knew what it contained.

Iraq used Sarin against Iran during their war in the 1980s, and had the capability to produce large quantites as the UN discovered after the war. But the arsenal and production facilities were apparently destroyed in the 1990s under UN oversight.

As one talking military head said on MSNBC earlier today, explosives from WW II are still occasionally found across Europe. This may not mean much of anything.

If the insurgents have some more of these old warheads, however, the US has now told them what they have. Thus, I suppose it is possible that they might figure out a way to launch and activate the Sarin.

Let's hope not.