Deliverable is a chemical-filled shell. Non-deliverable is a vial...Your point has to do with nothing more than the manufacture date....which you are certain makes hundreds of chemical-filled artillery shells, non-toxic, harmless, and non-deliverable.  A dead duck is not a swan.

 

 

What are you talking about PM? Please learn to write in complete sentences, that follow a logical pattern so I can understand them.  My point, and I will reiterate it again, is that we don't know the condition of those shells, or where they were found.  Were they left exposed to the elements?  Did that cause them to become ineffective?  Were they stored improperly thus rendering the gas ineffective, ala the sarin shell found in 2004?  Were they part of the blast pits and thought to be destroyed, only to be partially destroyed, and did that render them ineffective?  Or if you like, were they found next to Saddam, in perfect condition just awaiting his orders to launch them (which begs the question, why weren't they used)? 

 

We can be fairly certain that these shells were not new, that Saddam's programs were not re-started, thus by default they are old shells.  Old shells will eventually decay, the gas inside will erode, and thus they will no longer be 'deliverable' WMD.  The only question that remains is how effective could these shells have been as WMD (i.e. could they be launched, could they do damage, etc.).  If they couldn't be launched or delivered in some way than they wouldn't be very effective as WMD now would they?  We don't know for sure, so we shouldn't speculate.  All we have is 500 shells that had some gas in them, that may or may not have been deliverable.  So by YOUR definition they are still not WMD, until more is know about them.  Can we get Saddam on a UN Security Council Resolution violation? Perhaps if the UNSC had agreed there was a violation, but they didn't, at least not one that warranted the invasion.  So now we are left with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded and nothing really to show for our efforts except these 500 shells.

 

 

When you prove that you're capable of comprehending the meaning of a word then we'll move onto complete sentences.

 

Trying to help.

 

1441 + chemical-filled artillery shells in Iraq = bad.

"Old shells will eventually decay, the gas inside will erode, and thus they will no longer be 'deliverable' WMD."

 

Since they will still KILL after 50 years of burial, this option requires an unacceptably high level of patience.

 

The fact is, Saddam did not have a functional weapons program.  But when we wanted to verify that fact, he jerked our chain.  Bad move.   Never jerk the chain of a superpower that has just been hit with a massive terror attack. 

 

The other fact is, the weapons program could have been restarted at any time.  Chemical weapons are 1914 tech.  No challenge for any nation with an oil industry, and a few college educated chemical engineers.  And yes, Saddam did have a desire to restart the program. 

 

Now we are 100% certain that he will not.

 

SGTObvious.

 
 

from national review:

 

The whole article is here.

 

swhitebull - beating a dead horse, but hey, we strive for completeness, unlike Lancet. I just LOVE the Soros connection; it REALLY increases the credibility of the study.

 

 

 

 

link