Update [2004-11-26 11:23:32 by N in Seattle]:A day later, this crapola is spreading and mutating. From
CBS News and reprinted rehashing in scores of newspapers, we learn of "
plastic sacks full of some powdered substance labeled in Arabic potassium cyanide". So was it NaCN or KCN?
At least Hans Blix is publicly sceptical of the import of this story. Too bad no American news sources have run his comments.
[Note: Adapted from a recent entry at my own blog, Peace Tree Farm:]
When I'm dancing close to her
"blinding me with science - science!"
I can smell the chemicals
"blinding me with science - science!"
"Science!"
"Science!"
--- Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science (1982)
Leading the teasers at the top of the CNN.com homepage this afternoon:
Iraqi forces find chemical materials in lab
If you click on that provocative link, you'll find a story that starts with the following (below the fold):
Iraqi forces find chemical materials in lab
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraqi soldiers have discovered chemical materials in a Falluja lab, while a top aide of wanted terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been arrested in Mosul, Iraq's interim national security adviser said Thursday.
The reports came as U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted anti-insurgency operations in Falluja, Mosul and south of Baghdad in the province of Babil.
Iraq's interim National Security Adviser Kasim Dawood announced discovery of the lab with chemical materials which he said was "manufacturing death, intoxication and assassination."
"We have also discovered in this laboratory a pamphlet and instructions showing how to manufacture explosives and toxins," Dawood said. "And they also talk about the production of anthrax."
In Washington, a U.S. military official confirmed that materials found in the laboratory included instructions for making anthrax, as well as formulas and ingredients for making explosives and chemical blood agents.
Also found in the lab were hydrochloric acid and sodium cyanide, which can be used to make the blood agent hydrogen cyanide, the military official said.
This report is so completely inane that I don't know where to begin. Start at the end, with the two named chemicals. Any freshman chemistry lab, anywhere in the world, would stock hydrochloric acid (HCl) and sodium cyanide (NaCN). They're standard simple compounds, easily available. Yes, you can combine them to produce hydrogen cyanide (HCN), along with sodium chloride (NaCl). This last chemical is known somewhat more widely as salt ... the stuff you sprinkle on food. Also found in any self-respecting chem lab would be notes on synthesis of products, perhaps as student exercises. So much for those weapon-making instructions.
A chemistry lab doth not a weapons factory make. Helpfully, CNN provides us with a photo of this ostensibly-ominous discovery:
How 'bout those large quantities of dangerous chemicals!?! (Note that a later portion of the CNN story discusses a "huge weapons cache", conveniently permitting a careless reader to infer that the cache included these chemicals.)
Even more bizarre is the phrase about how "materials found in the laboratory included instructions for making anthrax..."
MAKING anthrax???? Who are they trying to fool with that joke?
Anthrax is a living microorganism, not a compound that can be constructed from the chemicals found in a college chem lab. Nor can it be "made" in a college microbiology lab, or a biotech research facility, or by any process devised by humans. It can be grown in sophisticated biological materials facilities, and processed into a weapon in a few extremely-sophisticated facilities, but the idea that this newly-revealed chem lab has anything whatsoever to do with anthrax is beyond ludicrous.
I don't fully blame CNN's Ayman Mohyeldin, Kianne Sadeq, Cal Perry, Kevin Flower, and Barbara Starr for the propagandistic report. They're just dumb reporters who don't know a thing about even the rudiments of science. Though, of course, they could have checked the story's basic assertions with someone who does know something ... a college kid would do, and even high school science nerds could have told them that there was something really wrong in this one. Maybe it's the military shills who decided to create a scare story, one they knew would be swallowed easily by the dumbies at CNN.
They probably chose Thanksgiving Day for it because they knew that the real minor leaguers were running the show at the networks. That, or they didn't want to sit on it all the way until April Fools Day.