Dear Alan Colmes: You know squat about mustard gas.

Jim Gerahty Reporting:
06/22 09:14 AM
Alan Colmes, last night:

�Jim Angle, who reported this for FOX News, quotes a defense official who says these were pre-1991 weapons that could not have been fired as designed because they�d already been degraded and the official went on to say these are not the WMD�s this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had and not the WMD�s for which this country went to war.�

Here's what you find when you do some digging on the Internet about mustard gas: a letter from two United Nations weapons inspectors to the President of the Security Council from 1999:

550 Artillery shells filled with Mustard 33. Iraq declared that 550 shells filled with mustard had been "lost" shortly after the Gulf War. To date, no evidence of the missing munitions has been found. Iraq claimed that the chemical warfare agents filled into these weapons would be degraded a long time ago and, therefore, there would be no need for their accounting. However, a dozen mustard-filled shells were recovered at a former CW storage facility in the period 1997-1998. The chemical sampling of these munitions, in April 1998, revealed that the mustard was still of the highest quality. After seven years, the purity of mustard ranged between 94 and 97%. Thus, Iraq has to account for these munitions which would be ready for combat use. The resolution of this specific issue would also increase confidence in accepting Iraq�s other declarations on losses of chemical weapons which it has not been possible to verify.
A 94 to 97 percent purity after seven years strikes me as pretty long lasting. Presuming that the rate of degradation is stable (is there a reason deterioration would accelerate in year eight or later?) the year 2003 would mean that at the time of the invasion, these shells had a purity of 88 to 94 percent. Sounds pretty potent to me.

Try researching, Alan. Mustard gas keeps its toxicity for a long time. Stop telling your viewers and listeners that the weapons were "degraded" � which, without context, sounds like "harmless."

UPDATE: The sarin is another story. This declassified CIA report that appears to be from during or shortly after Operation Desert Storm suggests that the mustard gas should "quite stable for some time"; the sarin may have a shelf life of only "a few weeks" because of impurities.

Also, TKS reader Ed notes that every year, some unlucky French farmers have health complications from run-ins with mustard gas left over from World War One.