How ironic the first report comes from National Palestinian Radio.

*Gulp*

Well if this is correct, I'll be able to tell my grand children I saw it here first!

How ironic the first report comes from National Palestinian Radio

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs. I forgot, I'll go put that up now.

This is exciting news, if true. However, I notice a troubling technical flub in the report:

"the cache was discovered by Marines with the 101st Airborne Division"...?

I didn't know that Marines were attached to the 101st. Is there a military expert here who could enlighten us?

This is a dangerous situation now. These chemicals would only be actually placed into the missiles if their launch was emminant. Whats more, if this report pans out, the Iraqis will lose any incentive not to use these weapons since their cover story will be blown. I hope the reports of marines taking off their suits arent accurate.

Great! Congressional saddamites take note - you are next!

Expect denials from the usual suspects. And don't gloat until we get 100% confirmation.

re Marines with 101st Airborne. There was a report the other day that some armored units were being attached to the airborne units to give them more firepower. this could be the case here.

Headline should say "The FIRST smoking gun"; I'd be amazed if this was all

Indeed. DO NOT gloat yet. How many of these reports have we heard thus far, and how many turned out to be nothing?

24 hours, Ladies & Gents. 24 hours.

But oh, God, if it was on NPR, it must be true, right?

Sorry, sarcasm.

But the amazing thing was who broke the story...NPR!

There was a post here yesterday saying that the 101st Airborne and journalists had to be decontaminated because of exposure to nerve agent.

Is this the same story or another site?

Noteworthy article found via newsnow "iraq" newsfeed:

"Rumsfeld: Saddam may use WMDs after death"

http://www.deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2003_04_07_4553.php

:-)

Different story, George...that was barrels of chemical in a warehouse...

Reuters via NPR? Be nice if true, but these two... I'll have to wait for someone to post a better source.

http://news.npr.org/

You can listen to the story on NPR's website. Source is their embed, John Burnett. He had a military guy tell him that the inter-service intelligence net had the information. Sarin and mustard gas in warheads.

Story plays 4 minutes long.

NPR broke this story because an NPR embedded journalist was in the right place at the right time. Are they really that biased about the war? I had to tune them out around election times, but it seems their war coverage has been as honest as anybody else's.

One apparent error in the report, the soviet BM-21 is not a 300-mile "medium range" missile, it is a 5-20km "rocket launcher" system. (note, this was originally pointed out by quinn in another thread on c-p)

Also it's still not confirmed by officers or CENTCOM.

I still don't buy it. I agree that we must wait at least 24 hours before any of this is to be believed. It's simply because these 101s. members are NOT WMD experts.

Little Tommy Daschle will be very disappointed.

it's ==STILL== all about the oil

Re: the NPR reporting in general. NPR's reporting has actually been among the best. The lefties are listening not to NPR but to Pacifica.

I am surprised at the early mistake they made on the range of the rockets (although everyone has been making some mistakes, I heard colonels on Fox and MSNBC both call an iraqi t-55 an Abrams last night). But overall if you scan the NPR stories they seem quite balanced and their accuracy is way above average. Even the Wall Street Journal, in a lead editorial, was saying we were making all the mistakes of the Germans at Stalingrad.

oil? They've only got 6% over there. Hardly worth all this effort.

Please use /sarcasm delimiters (All About OIL) , or people will assume you are a troll

While the story still exists, any link to it from the reuters site seems to have disappeared (am I just missing it?). Why aren't ppl all over this? Why aren't anti-war folk changing their tune? Why when the mission is validated isn't it investigated and either confirmed or dismissed? Weird.

Here's a link to the list of stories - the 10:25am missile story is MIA.

http://reuters.com/newsEarlierArticles.jhtml?type=focusIraqNews&articlePage=firstpage

It still comes up for me.

We should remember that even if it's true, it may not be authenticated for a while due to fears that once it's public, Saddam will have nothing to lose by using WMD.

...which may also be why the link isn't in the list of Reuters stories any more. Unless they've found it's bogus.

it's not true until Hans Blix says it's true

Reuters combined it into the story "U.S. Says It May Have Found Iraqi WMD Storage Site " which is timestamped 12:03 ET

Seems to be a different story on reuters, stamped 1:06 ET: "Initial Tests Suggest WMD 'Cocktail' Found in Iraq"

Relax, they're probably just pesticide missiles. Since Iraqis had been prohibited from flying in the no-fly zones, they had to figure a way to replace their crop dusters.

Guess we'll see if it's true soon enough. Finding these weapons also justifies the work of UN inspectors that was taking place - won't convince many that this war is needed right now.

"Pesticide missiles." That line really made me chuckle. :)

another chemical story turns out to be nothing. Is anyone counting?

houston, has the missiles-with-nerve-gas story been disproven?

Shawn, you got both facts you stated wrong. Not missiles, but rockets (quoite different) and not nerve gas but a claim of blister agent. It turns out that this was a report given to a reporter by a soldier who heard if from another soldier who heard it on a radio. Perfectly likely that several stories of a rocket installation being found and the disproven "chemicals" being found combining after being related fourth hand.