I wonder if the Collector's Edition comes with a small sample of mustard gas...

Anyway, enough people have badgered Ian to comment on this, so he did.

Stuffing soldiers into gas chambers to test out the effect of mustard gas... yeah, how about we file that under "who gave that green light?!", mkay.

pepper spray is wonderful when paired with mustard gas

hmm, Stingray may be onto something w/ the Bristol Stool SMELL Scale... how about:

1 • The ninja (no smell at all)
2 • Eau du doo (a faint, heady aroma)
3 • Fried chicken (what's cookin'?)
4 • The rotten egg (somebody light a match)
5 • The drag strip (burnt rubber / asphalt)
6 • Mustard gas (noxious, eye-watering)
7 • Hiroshima (don't even think about lighting a match)

Individual results may vary.

Tear gas isnt so bad. My grandfather still has the mark on his arm from where the marines tested mustard gas on them.

My stepfather was in an 8" howitzer outfit on the Western Front in France in 1918. Before he died in 1985 at the age of 93, he told me a lot about being on the receiving end of a German artillery barrage.

He said that there was no way possible for anyone to understand what it was like unless you had been there yourself. He also stated that he had seen several BRAVE men go insane after having over 1,000 (that's right, one thousand!) rounds come down in just a few short hours.

Unfortunately for this good man, he was gassed with Mustard gas. He suffered from this for the rest of his life, and until about a year before he died, still had nightmares about being shelled.

Thank each and every one of you who have served!

From an ex-Staff Sargent, 379th Bomb Wing (Heavy), Strategic Air Command, USAF 1968-1972

The following is from a Newsweek article read by Sen. Byrd (D, WV) during a congressional hearing on September 20, 2002:

The last time Donald Rumsfeld saw Saddam Hussein, he gave him a cordial handshake. The date was almost 20 years ago, Dec. 20, 1983; an official Iraqi television crew recorded the historic moment.

The once and future Defense secretary, at the time a private citizen, had been sent by President Ronald Reagan to Baghdad as a special envoy. Saddam Hussein, armed with a pistol on his hip, seemed "vigorous and confident," according to a now declassified State Department cable obtained by Newsweek. Rumsfeld "conveyed the President's greetings and expressed his pleasure at being in Baghdad," wrote the notetaker. Then the two men got down to business, talking about the need to improve relations between their two countries.

Like most foreign-policy insiders, Rumsfeld was aware that Saddam was a murderous thug who supported terrorists and was trying to build a nuclear weapon. (The Israelis had already bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.) But at the time, America's big worry was Iran, not Iraq. The Reagan administration feared that the Iranian revolutionaries who had overthrown the shah (and taken hostage American diplomats for 444 days in 1979-81) would overrun the Middle East and its vital oilfields. On the--theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the Reaganites were seeking to support Iraq in a long and bloody war against Iran. The meeting between Rumsfeld and Saddam was consequential: for the next five years, until Iran finally capitulated, the United States backed Saddam's armies with military intelligence, economic aid and covert supplies of munitions...

The history of America's relations with Saddam is one of the sorrier tales in American foreign policy. Time and again, America turned a blind eye to Saddam's predations, saw him as the lesser evil or flinched at the chance to unseat him. No single policymaker or administration deserves blame for creating, or at least tolerating, a monster; many of their decisions seemed reasonable at the time. Even so, there are moments in this clumsy dance with the Devil that make one cringe. It is hard to believe that, during most of the 1980s, America knowingly permitted the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission to import bacterial cultures that might be used to build biological weapons...

The war against Iran was going badly by 1982. Iran's "human wave attacks" threatened to overrun Saddam's armies. Washington decided to give Iraq a helping hand.

After Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal--American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of "dual use" equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam's Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for "video surveillance applications"; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of "bacteria/fungi/protozoa" to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacterial cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam's own forces.

The United States was much more concerned with protecting Iraqi oil from attacks by Iran as it was shipped through the Persian Gulf. In 1987, an Iraqi Exocet missile hit an American destroyer, the USS Stark, in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 crewmen. Incredibly, the United States excused Iraq for making an unintentional mistake and instead used the incident to accuse Iran of escalating the war in the gulf. The American tilt to Iraq became more pronounced. U.S. commandos began blowing up Iranian oil platforms and attacking Iranian patrol boats. In 1988, an American warship in the gulf accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus, killing 290 civilians. Within a few weeks, Iran, exhausted and fearing American intervention, gave up its war with Iraq.

Saddam was feeling cocky. With the support of the West, he had defeated the Islamic revolutionaries in Iran. America favored him as a regional pillar; European and American corporations were vying for contracts with Iraq. He was visited by congressional delegations led by Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who were eager to promote American farm and business interests. But Saddam's megalomania was on the rise, and he overplayed his hand. In 1990, a U.S. Customs sting operation snared several Iraqi agents who were trying to buy electronic equipment used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Not long after, Saddam gained the world's attention by threatening "to burn Israel to the ground." At the Pentagon, analysts began to warn that Saddam was a growing menace, especially after he tried to buy some American-made high-tech furnaces useful for making nuclear-bomb parts. Yet other officials in Congress and in the Bush administration continued to see him as a useful, if distasteful, regional strongman. The State Department was equivocating with Saddam right up to the moment he invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

Mr. President, I referred to this Newsweek article yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, during the hearing, I asked Secretary Rumsfeld:

"Mr. Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq war? Are we in fact now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sewn?"

The Secretary quickly and flatly denied any knowledge but said he would review Pentagon records.

I suggest that the administration speed up that review. My concerns and the concerns of others have grown.

A letter from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which I shall submit for the Record, shows very clearly that the United States is, in fact, preparing to reap what it has sewn. A letter written in 1995 by former CDC Director David Satcher to former Senator Donald W. Riegle, Jr., points out that the U.S. Government provided nearly two dozen viral and bacterial samples to Iraqi scientists in 1985--samples that included the plague, botulism, and anthrax, among other deadly diseases.

According to the letter from Dr. Satcher to former Senator Donald Riegle, many of the materials were hand carried by an Iraqi scientist to Iraq after he had spent 3 months training in the CDC laboratory.

The Armed Services Committee is requesting information from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense on the history of the United States, providing the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. I recommend that the Department of Health and Human Services also be included in that request.

The American people do not need obfuscation and denial. The American people need the truth. The American people need to know whether the United States is in large part responsible for the very Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which the administration now seeks to destroy.

We may very well have created the monster that we seek to eliminate. The Senate deserves to know the whole story. The American people deserve answers to the whole story.

To avoid making this into more of a rant;
1) thanks(?) for calling me a fool. the "mustard gas" example was only for when you are inside your car. i'll change the sentence structure to better reflect that.
2) it's not a fruitless piece of advice to assuage your fears, it is feasible, whereas "duck and cover" isn't (i'm vaguely remembering that this is advice for nuclear attacks?)
3) if a jellyfish stings you, you apply urine to the sting. not ideal, but the alternative is taking the pain. duct tape isn't ideal, but the alternative is dying immediately.

"You could live off that oxygen even if there was mustard gas outside in your garage. Then you could take a deep breath, open the car and exit via the door." - Dannym3141

Wrong Fool!
Mustard gas is a strong vesicant (blister-causing agent). Due to its alkylating properties, it is also strongly mutagenic (causing damage to the DNA of exposed cells) and carcinogenic (cancer causing). Those exposed usually suffer no immediate symptoms. Within 4 to 24 hours the exposure develops into deep, itching or burning blisters wherever the mustard contacted the skin; the eyes (if exposed) become sore and the eyelids swollen, possibly leading to conjunctivitis and blindness. According to the Medical Management of Chemical Casualties handbook, there have been experimental cases in humans where the patient has suffered miosis, or pinpointing of pupils, as a result of the cholinomimetic activity of mustard. At very high concentrations, if inhaled, it causes bleeding and blistering within the respiratory system, damaging the mucous membrane and causing pulmonary edema. Blister agent exposure over more than 50% body surface area is usually fatal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas

Sorry? Would it be all better if the duct tape was renamed "Chemical Anti-Intrusory Sealant"?

As much as i hate to admit it, MarineGunrock is totally right. Think about any situation involving low pressure gas.

Want to commit suicide? Well, sit in your car in the garage, turn the engine on, but first make the car's interior air-tight using duct tape. You'll die because your body will use up all the breathable air, not because of car fumes. There won't be a single car-created toxin inside at all. Then you could take a deep breath, open the car and exit via the door. There's a reason people put a hose-pipe from the exhaust through the window. You could live off the oxygen in a car even if there was mustard gas outside in your garage.

You could climb inside a human balloon like a crazed german fetishist and live quite comfortably for as long as the oxygen in that balloon held out for you in a room full of nerve gas.

Submarines too, in fact. If you had the tape strong enough and sticky enough, you could TAPE two metal skips together and submerge yourself in safety.

What's this guy saying? The only negative thing about duct tape is that you're sealing yourself in an air tight container with a limited supply of air. But then you can conserve the air by doing things such as sleeping, and make the entire air supply in your house last you for a few days, and by that time maybe it'll be safe enough to go out, or you'll be rescued by people with portable air supplies.

Or, you know, don't make your house air tight, and die in a dissolving pool of your own lungs, bowels and feces.

(I don't find him funny anyway, but i hope people aren't upvoting for this (lack of) observation!)

^HOLD IT! why would a conservative group attack Ron Paul :-) lol. sheesh, who won't they attack?

I think you overstate your case. I look into the validity of the claims being leveled before I see who it's coming from. Does who it comes from make a difference? yea, sometimes it does, but the truthfulness and validity of the claims should come first.

With statements like this from Rumsfeld I can see how you would be fooled into believing the WMD lies.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: …We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat....I would also add, we saw from the air that there were dozens of trucks that went into that facility after the existence of it became public in the press and they moved things out. They dispersed them and took them away. So there may be nothing left. I don't know that. But it's way too soon to know. The exploitation is just starting. (why hasn't this been sifted?)

Bush Administration Caught Contradicting Itself on WMD's
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bush-Administration-Caught-Contradicting-Itself-on-WMDs

Closed Room Plans Reveal Attempt to Dupe Public
http://www.videosift.com/video/Olbermann-Closed-Room-Plans-Reveal-Attempt-to-Dupe-Public

Interesting how each of the Intelligence Committee members voted, considering what Sen. Durbin claims they knew:(thanks FLETCH)

http://intelligence.senate.gov/members107thcongress.html
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=00237

I personally could see why you would take Rumsfeld at his word about Iraq's WMD's with this knowledge of history (too bad the wmd ingredients we supplied them had such a short shelf life, or perhaps we would have found them in iraq)

Donald Rumsfeld -Reagan’s Envoy- provided Iraq with chemical & biological weapons December 20, 1983.

July, 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.

January 14, 1984. State Department memo acknowledges United States shipment of “dual-use” export hardware and technology. Dual use items are civilian items such as heavy trucks, armored ambulances and communications gear as well as industrial technology that can have a military application.

March, 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the US becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq’s use of these weapons.

May, 1986. The US Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax.

May, 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq.

March, 1987. President Reagan bows to the findings of the Tower Commission admitting the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. Oliver North uses the profits from the sale to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.

Late 1987. The Iraqi Air Force begins using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq.

February, 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the “Anfal” campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages.

April, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas.

August, 1988. 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas.

September, 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq.

September, 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: “The US-Iraqi relationship is… important to our long-term political and economic objectives.”

December, 1988. Dow chemical sells $1.5 million in pesticides to Iraq despite knowledge that these would be used in chemical weapons.

And if I am not mistaken that will bring these festivities to a close, unless anyone else has something truly biting and horrible to say.

It was a really goot natured roast, and it was a pretty fun read. So let's recap:

Dag is a party pooper with "Raper" wit... I am not sure you should tell anyone about that.

Choggie still has the mutant power to make anyones eyes glaze over like yellow mustard gas with inane rambling about his latest fancy pants topic.

Karaidl... well you're just a big fat butterball.

Dotdude likes being fashionably late... as in 24 hours fashionably late. Must be hard to get re-invited to parties on New Years eh?

and last but not least MycroftHomlz... thanks for being a good sport, and thank you for your litte pathetic attempts at comebacks. It was like watching an 8 year-old with a bb-gun storming Normandy beach.

Now the question on everybody else's mind... is who's next?