STARTED! Baghdad Being bombed - Post made by Mr. OverclockerBloke, War Fanatic

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Originally posted by Balddog
Twasnt your statement i had a problem with mate :)

You were right about the pumas and the other one flown by the RAF..unfortunately the gazelle is built by both westland and aerospatiale(sp?) and the french sold to iraq. As for spare parts, I dont think that would be a problem. While the UK and possible france wouldnt have sold parts direct to iraq, the gazelle is in service with a lot of nations who would happily sell despite the sanctions.
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Either way, I'd have thought it was highly unlikely that the Iraqi's have had any helicopters in the air for some time.

If the Americans wheren't sure, and the helicopter was not attacking them, they should not have opened fire.
 
Originally posted by Bungee
Either way, I'd have thought it was highly unlikely that the Iraqi's have had any helicopters in the air for some time.

If the Americans wheren't sure, and the helicopter was not attacking them, they should not have opened fire.
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It will be unlikely right up until the point where it happens.

Helicopters dont always have to be attacking..Gazelles are used for recon over in NI by the army..

Im not saying this is what happened, just putting forward possible reasons..There are plausible reasons but if people wanna brand the US as gung ho and trigger happy then at least they should wait until they have a clue what they are talking about.
 
Originally posted by Balddog
There are plausible reasons but if people wanna brand the US as gung ho and trigger happy then at least they should wait until they have a clue what they are talking about.
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Hasn't that already been established that some of them are?

Anyway, neither of us know what happened.
 
Troops, journalists undergo cleanup for nerve gas exposure

Mercury News
ALBU MUHAWISH, Iraq - U.S. soldiers evacuated an Iraqi military compound on Sunday after tests by a mobile laboratory confirmed evidence of sarin nerve gas. More than a dozen soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had been sent earlier for chemical weapons decontamination after they exhibited symptoms of possible exposure to nerve agents. The evacuation of dozens of soldiers Sunday night followed a day of tests for the nerve agent that came back positive, then negative. Additional tests Sunday night by an Army Fox mobile nuclear, biological and chemical detection laboratory confirmed the existence of sarin. Sgt. Todd Ruggles, a biochemical expert attached to the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne said, "I was right" that chemical agents Iraq has denied having were present.

In addition to the soldiers sent for decontamination, a Knight Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman and two Iraqi prisoners of war also were hosed down with water and bleach. U.S. soldiers found the suspect chemicals at two sites: an agricultural warehouse containing 55-gallon chemical drums and a military compound, which soldiers had begun searching on Saturday. The soldiers also found hundreds of gas masks and chemical suits at the military complex, along with large numbers of mortar and artillery rounds.
Chemical tests for nerve agents in the warehouse came back positive for so-called G-Series nerve agents, which include sarin and tabun, both of which Iraq has been known to possess. More than a dozen infantry soldiers who guarded the military compound Saturday night came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to very low levels of nerve agent, including vomiting, dizziness and skin blotches. A hand-held scanning device also indicated the soldiers had been exposed to a nerve agent. Two tests at the compound were negative, but further testing indicated sarin was present.
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Note not confirmed by official sources.

Edit:

MSNBC reports that the suspected Sarin find above was actually pesticide. Its an easy mistake as some Nerve agents are chemically very similar to some pesticides.
 
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Suicide bomber who surrendered

BBC
The elderly Iraqi man walked gingerly towards the checkpoint set up by Royal Marines on the outskirts of Basra. Then he dropped six grenades on the floor. One by one they fell from his Arabic tunic, clattering to the ground. All hell broke loose as I, and dozens of others in the area, dived for cover.

For a few seconds it was still - the grenades hadn't gone off, the pins remained intact. All that could be heard were the gentle moanings of the Iraqi man, repeating the words "Surrender, surrender." As he lay on the ground members of 40 Commando ran over and seized him, stripping off his clothes and checking for more weapons. He was then arrested and led away for questioning.

Later the fisherman's tragic story emerged. He told Marine commanders how he had been forced at gunpoint by Fedayeen militia to stage a suicide attack against their base. Living alone, and with no family, they had deemed him a perfect choice to carry out their attack. "The [Fedayeen] special operations team said I had three choices, they kill me, the British kill me, or I kill myself," the man, who wished only to be identified as Abdullah, said.
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BREAKING NEWS: Just coming in.

Possible WMD site found in central Baghdad.

Nothing else available at present
 
Reports coming in that 2 US journalists have been killed in South Baghdad

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ABC (Australia)
Two US soldiers, two journalists killed near Baghdad

Two US soldiers and two journalists were killed and 15 people wounded on Monday in an Iraqi attack on a US communications centre on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, military sources said.
Among the wounded, two people were in critical condition, a US military official told Reuters.

There were no further details.

"Some sort of a rocket hit near the 2nd Brigade's tactical operation centre south of the city," said Major Michael Birmingham, chief public affairs officer for the US 3rd Infantry. Earlier, troops of the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade burst into the heart of Baghdad and seized two of President Saddam Hussein's palace complexes.
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One Spanish and one German Journalist
 
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More on that possible WMD site......

A possible weapons of mass destruction storage site has been found near Baghdad, according to a US military official.There are unconfirmed reports there could be Sarin - a chemical agent that causes death by suffocation -at the site south of the central Iraqi town of Hindiyah, a US military officer said.

"Our detectors have indicated something," said Major Ros Coffman, public affairs officer with the US 3rd Infantry.
"We're talking about finding a site of possible WMD storage. This is an initial report, but it could be a smoking gun.
"It is not as if there is a cloud of gas hanging everywhere endangering soldiers lives. We're talking about a facility," Coffman added.

The report follows a find of a thousands of boxes containing viles of suspicious white powder and liquid on Friday at a site south of Baghdad.However, a US officer said on Saturday that initial tests suggested both substances were not chemical weapons.Over the weekend US Marines began digging up a site where chemical weapons are suspected of being hidden at a girl's school in the town of Aziziyah.The soliders were acting on a tip-off from an Iraqi who said he was a former special forces member.The informant told Marines that material had been trucked into the school and buried under new concrete about the size of two tennis courts over the course of three nights.America and Britain justified the war against Saddam Hussein on the basis of disarming Iraq of so-called weapons of mass destruction which Saddam says he does not have.UN weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in November to continue the search for the alleged weapons, but had found no evidence of their production or storage when the war began last month.
 
Reuters
Mon April 7, 2003 10:25 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio reported on Monday.NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were "ready to fire." It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were "not just trace elements." It said the cache was discovered by Marines with the 101st Airborne Division, which was following up behind the Army after it seized Baghdad's international airport.
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The BM21 is a rocket with a range of about 20miles [Edit should be Km not miles], typically mounted on a 4 wheeled truck.
 
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Originally posted by Sleepy
The BM21 is a rocket with a range of about 20miles, typically mounted on a 4 wheeled truck.
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Not exactly a huge threat to London then, unless they fired it from the M25..

Is that the sort of WMD we were at risk from?
 
Originally posted by dirtydog
Is that the sort of WMD we were at risk from?
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You mean as specified by Bush and Blair? I think they said WMD's full stop, wether they were long or short range missiles.
 
Originally posted by dirtydog
Not exactly a huge threat to London then, unless they fired it from the M25..

Is that the sort of WMD we were at risk from?
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Its not the delivery system thats proscribed its the warhead, that if confirmed, the Iraqis claimed they no longer had. You can deliver nerve agents by many many ways. This find sort of implies old soviet doctrine of using CW on rear elements that might not be capable of a proper CW defence. No longer the case.
 
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