ISIS Chemical weapons chief captured
Fox News reports that Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, a fifty-year-old left over from Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapon program, has been captured by Delta Force raiders on an operation in Al-Tafar where he was overseeing the development of chemical weapons for ISIS;
He told U.S. interrogators ISIS had converted banned mustard gas into powdered form to launch in artillery shells.
[…]
The weaponized mustard gas that ISIS has developed would not be concentrated enough to kill, but could badly wound its victims, a defense official told The Times.
An initial assessment of the U.S. airstrike conducted in Syria last week showed that it likely killed commander Omar al-Shishani, also known as Omar the Chechen, along with 12 additional ISIS fighters, officials added.
Beyond intelligence value, the capture in Iraq could strike a blow to what Iraqi and American officials have described as a determined effort by the Islamic State group to develop chemical weapons.
From the New York Times;
Mr. al-Afari was captured last month, shortly after the arrival in Iraq of a new Special Operations force that is made up primarily of Delta Force commandos. They are the first major American combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
Wait…Saddam Hussein had a chemical weapons program? How was that possible?
It was unclear how the Islamic State obtained sulfur mustard, a banned substance with a narrow chemical warfare application. Both the former government in Iraq and the current government in Syria previously possessed chemical warfare programs.
Next thing you know, we’ll be reading about al-Afari being deposited in Guantanamo.
Category: Terror War
Unpossible!!!
I’m sure Bush must have planted those chemical weapons to support his illegal war on the peaceful, indigenous people of the land!!
But I’ll let Lars tell us how stupid we all are and how he knows everything about this.
Yeah. We’re did they all come from???
Obviously the false accusations of WMDs inspired aspiring “young” jihadi’s to investigate these “WMDs” and see if there was anything worth pursuing down that avenue. That makes it still Bush’s fault so it must be true!
Speaking of Chechynans there was a Heavyweight Championship match in Grozny this past weekend,
It was for the WBA version of the belt held by Ruslan Chagnaev, an Uzbeki Muslim. The president of Chechnya one scary dude was there. He was wearing a boxing club t shirt and was condstantly yelling into the corner of the champ.
An Australian, Lucas Browne, KOed Ruslan. You could smell the hostility in the air.
This guy could give a detailed account of a very real pre-war Iraqi WMD program, and it would be buried in the middle of an article on page 12 of the NY Times. If he tells interrogators that Joe Wilson was right about the yellow cake, on the other hand, that would be front page news.
Is this deja vu all over again?
The real question has always been what happened to Saddam’s WMD’s.
Hmmmm,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6czeTuNEU
Make the punishment fit the crime.
The punishment fit the crime…
Kill them. Kill them all. Kill their wive and children. Kill their fathers and mothers, their brothers and sisters. Kill them all, backwards and forwards for six generations in both directions. Kill them all, burn the bodies, scatter the ashes and drive herds of cattle over the ground until all remnants of their existence has been wiped off the earth. Let their slaughter be a warning to all evil men that “Homey don’t play that game!”
“We should bomb ’em back to the Stone Age, and then make the rubble bounce.”
Gen Curtis LeMay
There is some fuckery afoot in the details as mustard cannot be converted to a powder. That goes completely against how it works as a persistent agent and vesicant. Sulfur mustards being H, HD, HS, HT or HV are a liquid whether it be weaponized or not. Nitrogen mustards, HN-1 and HN-3 are liquids as well. That aside, if anyone thinks there was no CWM in Iraq from the onset in 03 they have their heads in the sand, or up their ass. Yeah, probably up their ass. There have been numerous reports of CWM being found in IZ but it was always considered not CWM enough. Some animals (and CWM) are more (or less) equal than others.
Probably mixed it with a substance to create the dreaded //sarc// “dirty” mustard and increase it’s persistency. Yep Iraq had plenty of WMD, it just never got reported in the mainstream media for some reason.
Dusty Mustard.
Can and has been done.
Dusty mustard, my mistake. It’s been a few years since I was in the CBRN community. Yep it’s been done repeatedly by more than one country. The sarc was for the word “dreaded.”
Wouldn’t a sufficiently fine powder react with moist tissue to form nastiness in the lings, eyes, mouth, etc?
Lol boots on the ground.
Obama lied people died.
Where is code pink and every other “anti war” scumfuck hiding at these days when their buddy is on the war path?
Surprised the D Boys weren’t ordered to immediately release M’ Balz Es Hari. So where are these guys being sent to if not Gitmo?
Had Saddam Hussein been left in place, he would now be running neck and neck with Iran in the nuclear bomb race and his chemical weapons stockpile would be enormous. Under Saddam’s rule, Iraq had no greater enemy than the hated Persians, so we would really be witnessing a WMD arms race that could threaten the entire region.
On the other hand, mutual assured destruction of those two powers might not be so bad.
Trouble was, Iraq was likelier to seize some of its weaker, wealthy neighbors in the process. Iran operated by sponsoring terrorist groups; Iraq by seizing territory; neither of them was stopping the other from doing its evil. Hezbollah was founded during the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq didn’t stop it; Iran didn’t stop Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait.
I could never buy the idea that Iraq and Iran served as “counterweights” to each other…though it would have been nice if we could somehow have arranged a stable balance without constant U.S. enforcement.
First catch them, then dispatch them.