Cyanide Salt found in Iraq

chess9

Elite member
Apr 15, 2000
7,748
0
0
Seven pounds. Yes, that's a stockpile alright. And I'm sure it will take him only 45 minutes to get it to London. Maybe 3 hours to the U.S.? This alone is worth $200 billion of your tax dollars.

Good grief, are you also a Cubs fan? :)

-Robert
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
126
If the Iraqis were able to cobble together a bucket of water they could drown people. Four or five buckets and we're talking some real WMD.
 

CaptnKirk

Lifer
Jul 25, 2002
10,053
0
71
Most deaths involved in aircraft fires are caused by smoke inhalation
and the associated cyanide poisoning from incomplete combustion of
the interior plastics on the carpet, seats, and lightweight fixtures of the
aircraft. Few are actually burned to death.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Originally posted by: chess9
Seven pounds. Yes, that's a stockpile alright. And I'm sure it will take him only 45 minutes to get it to London. Maybe 3 hours to the U.S.? This alone is worth $200 billion of your tax dollars.

Good grief, are you also a Cubs fan? :)

-Robert

In the salt form, ingesting as little as 3mg has been shown to be fatal.

At roughly 1 KG / 2 pounds = 3 kg. = 3000 grams = 3000000 mg.
3000000 mg salt / 3 mg lethal level = 1 million lethal doses. Seems like an awful small stockpile :disgust:

/edit - math corrected per ManSnake

And I root for the BoSox and Marlins:)
 

ManSnake

Diamond Member
Oct 26, 2000
4,749
1
0
Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
Originally posted by: chess9
Seven pounds. Yes, that's a stockpile alright. And I'm sure it will take him only 45 minutes to get it to London. Maybe 3 hours to the U.S.? This alone is worth $200 billion of your tax dollars.

Good grief, are you also a Cubs fan? :)

-Robert

In the salt form, ingesting as little as 3mg has been shown to be fatal.

At roughly 2 KG / pound = 15 kg. = 15000 grams = 15000000 mg.
15000000 mg salt / 3 mg lethal level = 5 million doses. Seems like an awful small stockpile :disgust:

Please check my math

And I root for the BoSox and Marlins:)

Check your math again! 2.2 lbs = 1 kg!
 

alchemize

Lifer
Mar 24, 2000
11,489
0
0
The key implication in this is not that it was part of Iraq's "stockpile". Rather, that Al-Qaida is in possession of some nasty substances. To this point it has been speculation based on intelligence gathered from intercepts, paperwork, interviews. Now it's been established as fact (or as fact to most of us).

In my old audit days, we always believed that if we found one guilty person, we were missing 5 others that were getting away with it. I'd imagine this holds true with AQ.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Ok - I am off by a factor of four - will update

Now talking about 1 million doses instead of 5 million.
 

chess9

Elite member
Apr 15, 2000
7,748
0
0
Your math sucks, but you aren't mentioning the obvious delivery problem.

Yes, I agree that 7 pounds is not insignificant. I'll bet Somalia has twice as much. Many countries have Sarin. Better check all the closets in Pakistan, Turkey, Ghana, ad nauseam. :)

If you don't root for the Indians fahgettit. :) (although Boston has long been a secondary favorite)

-Robert
 

GoPackGo

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2003
6,414
468
126
So imagine if that mere 7lbs pounds was used to poison 1 million bottles of water or pepsi or whatever...or a mix of beverages...can you imagine the panic that could create.

One of the things about WMD's that some fail to realize that the poisons themselves don't need to be in very large quantities to create a lot of damage.

So if this was an Al-Queda item in Iraq...then is there a link to Saddam, even if it was providing "safe harbor"?
 

chess9

Elite member
Apr 15, 2000
7,748
0
0
Justin:

I"m not sure how the cyanide salts would be effective in a large water solution that has been chlorinated. You might kill a few hundred people, but I'm just guessing.

Anyway, we are spending our money in Iraq. We can't be bothered to spend our money on water quality inspections, ports, airports, or borders.

-Robert
 

chess9

Elite member
Apr 15, 2000
7,748
0
0
GoPackGo:

We are all just speculating on the real weapons potential of this 7 pounds of cyanide salts. We don't know the purity of it for instance. It could be 10% Cyanide for all we know.

But, we also don't how much of it has been secreted around Iraq. I'm not completely downplaying the importance of this find. If does point out what a scary place Iraq really is and why our boys need to come home sooner rather than later.

We also don't know who brought it into the country and when, or if it was produced in Iraq. This could be AQ, or it could have been SH as speculated.

-Robert
 

GoPackGo

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2003
6,414
468
126
Originally posted by: chess9
GoPackGo:

We are all just speculating on the real weapons potential of this 7 pounds of cyanide salts. We don't know the purity of it for instance. It could be 10% Cyanide for all we know.

But, we also don't how much of it has been secreted around Iraq. I'm not completely downplaying the importance of this find. If does point out what a scary place Iraq really is and why our boys need to come home sooner rather than later.

We also don't know who brought it into the country and when, or if it was produced in Iraq. This could be AQ, or it could have been SH as speculated.

-Robert


All i do know for sure is that I am glad we have it and not Al Queda or any othe number of terrorists
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
126
Monsanto is killing the world but worry about 7 lb of cyanide in Iraq. Even the aligators have lost their dicks and men under 30 are queer in their thoughts.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Originally posted by: chess9
Yeah, our government is so much more trustworthy than AQ or SH. :D

-Robert

I will at least trust our government (Bush or Dems) to not use it against the Iraqi people :Q
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Monsanto is killing the world but worry about 7 lb of cyanide in Iraq. Even the aligators have lost their dicks and men under 30 are queer in their thoughts.

When the cyanide is intended for terror, I will worry.
Is Monsanto killing the world or just removing the ability to outsource jobs to South Asia.
rolleye.gif

This could be a secret plot of Bush to support Monsanto just like HB
 

Spencer278

Diamond Member
Oct 11, 2002
3,637
0
0
Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
Originally posted by: chess9
Seven pounds. Yes, that's a stockpile alright. And I'm sure it will take him only 45 minutes to get it to London. Maybe 3 hours to the U.S.? This alone is worth $200 billion of your tax dollars.

Good grief, are you also a Cubs fan? :)

-Robert

In the salt form, ingesting as little as 3mg has been shown to be fatal.

At roughly 1 KG / 2 pounds = 3 kg. = 3000 grams = 3000000 mg.
3000000 mg salt / 3 mg lethal level = 1 million lethal doses. Seems like an awful small stockpile :disgust:

/edit - math corrected per ManSnake

And I root for the BoSox and Marlins:)

I wouldn't be surprised knew how our goverment likes to do drug math that the 7 pounds of Cyanide is really 7 pounds of apples which have a little Cyanide in the seeds.
 

nutxo

Diamond Member
May 20, 2001
6,749
422
126
Imagine how easy it would be to hide something like that 7lbs per stash..
 

Bitek

Lifer
Aug 2, 2001
10,647
5,220
136
This is a bunch of crap. This a fairly common laboratory reagent, hardly a WMD stockpile. I work for a pharma company and we have tons of far nastier substances sitting in our labs. There are prob at least 50kg of Sodium Azide sitting in this building now (just as poisonous as sodium cyanide, and can form explosives when mixed with metals.) I regularly work with hundreds of liters of acetonitrile (aka cyanomethane [methyl cyanide].) A toxic and highly flammable liquid. And this stuff is relatively safe. Reference standard rooms for drug R&D labs can have substances that are lethal in ug amounts(millioniths of a gram, more than 3 magnitudes of order greater than cyanide.) Are we going to start bombing pharma/chemical companies now?

Hell, my Dad was able to walk into a chemical supply store and easily buy 1 kg of Copper Sulfate because he was told by a guy it could help control the algea in his pond. He didn't even have to show ID, or explain what is was for. 1/4 cup later he had completely sterilized (along with the fish, oops) his entire pond, and a bird who had drunk some of the water. This story is tripe for fools, but I'm not surprised coming from FOX "news."


We also don't know who brought it into the country and when, or if it was produced in Iraq. This could be AQ, or it could have been SH as speculated.

Or they could have just ordered it from Sigma-Aldrich, Fisher, Baker, VWR or a whole host of (American) chemical suppliers for perfectly legitimate uses.