politics once again

I have been avoiding political commentary for quite a while, but the Blandus/Jake combo has sucked me back in.

Sarin is the Crystal Meth of WMDs...

The topic is, Sarin gas, which is the easiest to synthesize of all nerve agents. Hence its use in the Tokyosubway , the Iran-Iraq war, etc.

As Blandus readily insinuated, Sarin is powerful stuff. However, the shelf life of Sarin is quite poor as chemical weapons go. In fact, a matter of a few weeks totally degraded Iraqi Sarin manufactured in, and around the Iran-Iraq war. So, unless the Sarin found happened to be of very late production, say immediately before Gulf War 1.0, it has been basically inert for many years. (Note, when I say Inert, I should say very weak...it probably would be as lethal as concentrated Chlorine bleach or Nitric acid fumes.)

In any case, as far as WMD's go, Sarin found in Iraq is a pretty insignificant threat to us. Why? Because terror organizations would just make their own Sarin here, if they wanted to use Sarin. In fact, I would say that in moderately skilled hands, making Sarin is a about as easy, and less detectable than making methamphetamine.

So, even if you buy a significant link between Iraq and al Qaeda
(big hint, neither the Tawhid, nor Ansar al-Islam cut it) the amount of threat, to America, posed by Iraqi Sarin is and was insignificant. If we ever are attakced with Sarin, it will certainly be made right here. Fun factoid o' the day: It would cost our friends way less money in chemicals supplies than it did to buy their plane tickest on Sept.11 if they wanted to synthesize the amount of Sarin used in the subway attacks.