VX is incredibly lethal, and 20 tons of it could, in theory, wipe out the entire population of Jordan.

Al-Jayousi said he received about $170,000 from al-Zarqawi to finance the plot and used part of it to buy 20 tons of chemicals. He did not identify the chemicals, but said they "were enough for all the operations in the Jordanian arena."

Less than $170,000 bought 20 tons of VX?! Crap, crap and triple crap. If that's what's going on in Syria then we should be invading them now.

Was it actually 20 tons of VX though? The reports are uniformly unclear on that. "20 tons of chemicals and explosives" and so on.

is apparently incapable of asking where the hell did this guy get twenty tons of VX nerve gas? OH COME ON MAN. This is so obviously a Rove plant that only you right wing nuts could be sucked in. To get the low down on this you need to read the democratic underground blog. Its a conspirqacy the whole way. Where's Turbino to help flesh out the narrative? he's such a fair weather lefty. Sincerely yours from the reality based community,

Syria has VX. It's more a question of who the hell supplied the would-be terrorists with 20 tons of it. Syria very efectively controls its stockpiled weapons so no way this could have happened without someone high up authorizing it.

John, take your conspiracies and shove 'em up your ass.

I forget, is John a lefty, or just pretending to be one? It all looks the same to me.

It's hard to tell the parody of lefties from the real thing isn't it?

The democrats in this country have made it IMPOSSIBLE for us to broaden the war on terror. Short of Syria (or anyone else) shooting a nuclear missle at us, we have to fight this fight in Iraq only.

As Bush has said many times, this is a different kind of war, but the Democrats either don't understand that or winning elections are more important to them than winning a necessary war.

I was wondering the same. The left has become largely immune to parody thanks to the vaccine of unintentional self-parody.

It is hard to parody the left because they're such fruit cakes you can't get loonier than they already are.

John, you are a douchebag

I don't know, but $ 170K seems low for a State to sell that much VX. It is an odd sum to me, too low to cover the costs of development, storage and production, and too high to be sponsoring terror.

After an attack of this magnitude, everyone would be asking questions. Is Assad that dumb or that broke?

Another possibility is that a Bathist General, say, knows where Saddam kept the Iraqi VX that was never accounted for, either in Syria or Iraq.

I think Assad knows that if he was involved in VX'ing Jordan he would be toast.

Robert - Yeah, it is odd. Also there's the point that they never seem to say how much VX there was (though I can understand why they might not want to be specific on that).

I strongly suspect that there is twenty tons of stuff in all, including some VX, but that the VX is a relatively small component.

I still don't want terrorists getting their hands on any VX, but I think if twenty tons of it had shown up there would have been major troop deployments the same day. The stuff is that bad.

RWS is dead on target. No way can we hit Syria now that the peace monkey crowd has worked themselves into such a frenzy undermining the Iraq war effort. To Bush's credit, if there is evidence that this crap came from Saddam, he's not letting it be declassified, even though it would deflect a lot of heat off him.

$ 170K seems low

hey, it's the holidays. 24 month no interest financing, same as cash.

To Bush's credit, if there is evidence that this crap came from Saddam, he's not letting it be declassified, even though it would deflect a lot of heat off him.
Posted by UGAdawg at December 1, 2005 08:18 AM

Eh, not to put down Bush, but if a huge amount of VX gas was intercepted on its way to Jordan, there's a good chance there's more out there. If we were unable to stop this stuff being moved out of Iraq, that's something Bush wouldn't want to publicize any more than the Dems.

I second that - Syria does have VX, and a well-developed arsenal at that.

As far as the amoun of cash paid goes, it doesn't really matter. You can't beleive that someone smuggled 20 tons of nerve gas into a totalitarian state without them knowing about it. In either case, the money is a fig leaf. Think of it as a cut-out. If it was paid to 'Iraqi' folks for their stockpile, Assad buys deniability, but it doesn't change the basic facts much.

If we were unable to stop this stuff being moved out of Iraq, that's something Bush wouldn't want to publicize any more than the Dems.

That depends on when it got moved, now doesn't it?

Any chance that the amount was actually 'metric tonnes'? Rather than real tons?

I mean, 20 tons is a crap load of VX. More VX than Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery could handle together

But 20 metric tonnes is, probably, like a water balloon's worth. Something Keanu Reeves by himself could dispose of.

Uh... I do believe that a metric ton is pretty close to a long ton, about 2200 pounds. That's a pretty large water balloon!

DRK

That's a valid point, adolfo, but if Syria somehow got it from Iraq, pre-invasion (while we were dithering at the UN), and we have intelligence to prove that, Bush could point to that as proof the war was just. If the intel is classified and the Administration is keeping it as such rather than using it to keep the wolves at bay, that's a fairly stand up move in my book. All this is pure speculation of course, but theories based on nothing have never stopped the media before, so why not us?

If we really had an efficient UN or allies that were as serious about this as we were or an investigative press that had no agenda we could probably get to the bottom of this pronto.

The VX didn't just create itself. This isn't even like anthrax where it could be argued that they just harvested a naturally occuring substance. Somebody made this. And it was discovered being smuggled into Jordan from Syria.

If enough world pressure was put on Syria to help us get to the bottom of this Syria would have to either admit that it was theirs or more likely, it was smuggled into Syria from Iraq and Syria was as "shocked" as we are.

But we don't have serious allies, a working UN or a press that is interested in getting at the truth and potentially ruining their "Bush lied' mantra. People are still not convinced that this is a real war and that winning this war is more important than cheap political points.

What? An investigation that leads to proof of WMD's that went to Syria in one of the 5000 truckloads of stuff from Iraq just before the war?

Not a chance. Not by our press anyway.

If they had the info, they would destroy it. If they had sources, they would be silenced. Heck, even if they had an actual VX warhead in their hands standing in Baghdad, they would probably bury it.

Heck, even if they had an actual VX warhead in their hands standing in Baghdad, they would probably bury it.

Or, knowing our press, open it.