Sunday, May 30, 2010

Ah, bleep. If this is true, things just turned even nastier

Five US troops serving in Afghanistan recently fell ill after a suspected chemical weapons attack. Four or five members fell ill after the attack. One soldier is very sick. They are having trouble breathing.
I am waiting for more information. I should have an update by morning.
...
Earlier this month on May 10, 2010, Stratfor reported on a chemical weapons attack on a girls school in Afghanistan.
Recently, 17 students at a Kabul, Afghanistan, girls high school fell ill and had to be hospitalized, along with several teachers. Doctors at the hospital agreed that it was some kind of poison, but have not been able to identify it yet. All the victims smelled something odd when they got to school, then fell ill, with some of the students losing consciousness. This is the second such incident at this school, and there was a similar attack at a girls high school further north.
If they have actually begun using chemical weapons, we've got two problems:
How are the ROE going to deal with this, and
What will President Lightworker do?
We've got troops in friggin' Afghanistan being ordered to patrol with an empty chamber, and now this. If they spot bad guys setting up a rocket and wearing chemical suits will they be allowed to whack it, or will someone insist they wait for it to be launched and see what comes out of the warhead? Let's say they shoot some rockets full of nerve, blister or blood agent into a FOB or city; what will the President do?

This has the potential to get really bad really damn fast.

3 comments:

Phelps said...

I'm shocked that there haven't been more chlorine gas attacks. When the components can be mixed reliably by a blind guy with a head injury and are in virtually every grocery store in the world, I'm constantly astonished that it isn't a standard terrorist attack.

Keith said...

In my mis spent school days, one of the girls (!!!) showed me how to make some interesting nitrogen halides.

I never worked out how to make the chloride, until a couple of years ago, when a guy on the radio explained why it is a bad idea to mix two common household cleaning products. Apparently the same mix gets used in the patented "Olin Process" for manufacturing hydrazine as well.

I've gone light on the details, but I really hope a few jihadis try to make industrial quantities of nitrogen halides.... it's a really good way to collect a Darwin, without passing go and picking up 75 virgins.

Damn!

Now there's an idea!
a jihadi board game based on Monopoly

Phelps said...

Yeah, this unfortunate combination makes chlorine gas (C2) when mixed in equal amounts. In other ratios, it makes other equally nasty compounds, including some that spontaneously explode while giving off fatally noxious fumes.