Syria, Iran And A Chemical Weapon Accident?

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Jane's Defence Weekly has stated that there was a chemical weapon explosion in Syria and that dozens of Iranians and Syrians died in the accident.

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Defence Weekly report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria.

According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas.

Reports of the accident were circulated at the time; however, no details were released by the Syrian government, and there were no hints of an Iranian connection.

I don't subscribe to Jane's, so I can't access any of the paid content. But they have been reporting for some time on Syria's capabilities in the NBC area. (I can't find the article the J-Post is talking about, either, but it may not be up yet. If this accident did occur, there may be something else entirely going on in the recent Israeli raid.  

UPDATE: Others: Israel Matzav, Confederate Yankee, Wake up America, Liberty Pundit, Israpundit, Captain's Quarters, QandO, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Power Line, Betsy's Page, Hot Air, Gates of Vienna, TigerHawk, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS,

Fun With Acronyms

Some residents of a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington are having a bit of fun at the expense of a developer. They have rechristened the South Lake Union Streetcar that is being built. And they're selling t-shirts with the new acronym of the "South Lake Union Trolley".

SEATTLE - Officially, it's the South Lake Union Streetcar. But in the neighborhood where the new line runs, it's called the South Lake Union Trolley — or, the SLUT. At Kapow! Coffee, a shop in the old Cascade neighborhood, 100 T-shirts bearing the words "Ride the SLUT" sold out in days, and another 100 are on order.

"We're welcoming the SLUT into the neighborhood," said Jerry Johnson, 29, a part-time barista.

We could mention here that civility is a thing of the past, but we doubt anyone would hear us. Apparently, this is a payback on the developers and the city by the folks in the neighborhood:

"There was a meeting with representatives from the city several years ago," Johnson recalled.

"They asked us, 'What we could do for you?' Most people raised their hands and said, 'Affordable housing,'" he said. "Then the people from the city huddled together — 'whisper, whisper, whisper,' — and they said, 'How about a trolley?'"

Well, it is Seattle. Home of some real class acts.

(Side note - and completely true. One job I had a while back was in a nuclear power plant. The engineering managers got together and changed the organization to provide for better immediate support for plant issues. At the first meeting to explain the new organization they had an overhead slide that outlined the new groups. Including the "Fast Action Response Team". They had a hard time getting anyone's attention for the rest of the presentation. They also changed the name of the group.)

Police Taser Man With A Chicken!

Yeah, yeah. Everybody is talking about the guy in Florida who got tasered at a John Kerry "concert". Big deal. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin they tasered a man with a chicken!

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - A man faces a number of charges, including drug possession, after a traffic stop in which he was stunned several times with a Taser and police found a live chicken.

Is that the most confused sentence the AP has put out in a while or what? Anyway, the arrest itself sounds like an old Mack Sennett movie:

According to Sheboygan police, the incident started about 2 a.m. Friday when an officer spotted Brown involved in a potential drug deal and tried to stop him. The man threw a pack of cigarettes out of his car window and tried to run. The pack was found to have contained more than an ounce of cocaine, authorities said.

An officer pursued Brown, caught him, punched him in the head and knocked him to the ground, authorities said, but he tried to run again. A second officer zapped both men with a stun gun as they were struggling, and Brown again before he was handcuffed.

Just guessing, but I assume there are some hard feelings between the first cop and the second one after that incident. We had no idea chickens developed that high a voltage.

(By the way, for the serious story, Michelle Malkin has a very good roundup.)

Zebras In The Driveway!

An update on the story about the zebra that turned up in a woman's driveway in Muskogee, Oklahoma. It turns out that it was a fugitive named Norman!

Norman the zebra is happy to be home.

He had a few scratches on his legs that required salve, but the curious zebra is none the worse for his adventure.

His “mama” Amy Saxon also raises Arabian horses, but usually takes Norman with her, or he follows her around.

On Sept. 11 he got out of the fence and was photographed that night by a very surprised neighbor, Sharon McConough.

“Friday, he got out again and made it as far as Three Mile Road before we found him,” Cindy Elsey said. “We don’t know how he got out.”

Her husband Steve Elsey takes care of Norman and feeds the Arabians.

Saxon went driving around hollering for him.

“We go whoop, whoop, whoop and he comes,” Cindy Elsey said. “If you’ve seen the movie Stripes, that’s how he sounds.

Federal agents are very interested in talking with Ms. Saxon about her talent for locating Normans - just in case Norman Hsu makes bail again.

Aliens Bombard Peru

Aliens launched a rock at a remote region of Peru. Local residents who visited the 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep crater that the rock left are reporting being nauseous and dizzy.

After hearing a loud noise, people went to see what had happened and found a crater 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep on an uninhabited plateau near Carancas in the Puno region.

Experts from Peru's Geophysical Institute are on their way to the area 800 miles south of Lima to verify whether it was a meteorite.

"We've examined about 100 people who got near to the meteorite crater who have vomiting and headaches because of gasses coming out of there," Jorge Lopez, health director in Puno, told Reuters.

"People are scared," he said.

Lopez said people went to the site after hearing a crash that they thought might be an airplane.

"We ourselves went near the crater and now we've got irritated throats and itching noses," Lopez said.

Hmm. Might want to stay away from craters for a while. (Scientists are saying that a meteorite can cause some gasses to be emitted on impact - which makes sense when you think about it.) Of course it may have nothing to do with the meteorite itself as some of these folks point out. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are sticking with the alien bombardment, though.

UPDATE: AFP reports that the crater is 100 feet wide and 22 feet deep. Nothing from the AP yet, but we're pulling for them to make it even bigger - and add zombies.

UPDATE: We have pictures!

For Sale: One Used Belgium

A Belgian man, Gerrit Six, just tried to sell Belgium on eBay. Unfortunately, they took the listing down after someone bid on the slightly used country.

The odd ad was posted by one disgruntled Belgian in protest at his country's political crisis which reached a 100-day landmark Tuesday with no end in sight to the squabbling between Flemish and Walloon politicians.

"I wanted to attract attention," said Gerrit Six, the teacher and former journalist who posted the ad. "You almost have to throw rock through a window to get attention for Belgium."

Six placed the advertisement on Saturday, offering free delivery, but pointing out that the country was coming secondhand and that potential buyers would have to take on over $300 billion (euro220 billion) in national debt.

Like many of Belgium's 10 million citizens, Six is exasperated that the power struggle between the county's French- or Dutch-speaking political parties has left Belgium in political limbo since June 10 elections.

Demands for more autonomy from the Dutch-speaking Flemish are resisted by the French-speaking Walloons, making it impossible to form a government coalition and triggering concern the kingdom is on the verge of a breakup.

Six decided to vent his frustration through the Internet ad.

"My proposal was to make it clear that Belgium was valuable, it's a masterpiece and we have to keep it," he told Associated Press Television News. "It's my country and I'm taking care of it, and with me are millions of Belgians."

The folks at eBay thought it was rather amusing and let the ad run until someone actually put a €10 million bid on it. Well, it has generated some attention to the problems they have over there right now. Maybe if enough people laugh at the politicians, something will get done to settle the issues.

Empty Hospitals - In Iraq

Alert reader Neo sent this link in comments. Reuters - of all wire services - is reporting that hospital wards in Iraq are empty. There has been an extremely sharp drop in civilian casualties.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A row of beds lies empty in the emergency ward of Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital. The morgue, which once overflowed with corpses, is barely a quarter full.

Doctors at the hospital, a barometer of bloodshed in the Iraqi capital, say there has been a sharp fall in victims of violence admitted during a seven-month security campaign.

Last month the fall was particularly dramatic, with 70 percent fewer bodies and half the number of wounded brought in compared to July, hospital director Haqi Ismail said.

"The major incidents, like explosions and car bombs, sometimes reached six or seven a day. Now it's more like one or two a week," he told Reuters.

The relative calm at the Yarmouk hospital lends weight to U.S. and Iraqi government assertions that a security campaign launched around Baghdad in February has achieved results.

In one emergency ward at the hospital, in a Sunni Muslim district of west Baghdad which has suffered disproportionately from sectarian conflict, just two patients were being treated. Neither showed signs of serious injury.

By all means, please read it all. This is very big news - so big that Reuters could not ignore it. It is not all rosy, of course. But this is a really good indicator that General Petraeus' strategy is working.

In Hiding

A Swedish man who drew a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog is now in hiding, protected by the police following death threats and the offer of a reward for his murder by Iraqi terrorists.

Lars Vilks, who was whisked away by police when he returned to Sweden from Germany on Sunday, said authorities have described the threats against him as "very serious."

"Police guard was nonexistent before this. It's 100 percent now," Vilks said in a telephone interview. "I can't live in my home."

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent umbrella organization believed to have been created by al-Qaeda in Iraq, offered $100,000 over the weekend for Vilks's murder. Al-Baghdadi said the bounty would be upped to $150,000 if Vilks was "slaughtered like a lamb," and he offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of a newspaper that reprinted the cartoon last month after Swedish art galleries refused to exhibit it.

"We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our Prophet," al-Baghdadi said, according to transcripts of Islamic Web sites, "and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan."

They really need to introduce Abu Omar to a JDAM.

What Isn’t Being Said

Bret Stephens points out that what the Israelis are not saying about the raid into Syria says rather a lot about the whole affair:

What's beyond question is that something big went down on Sept. 6. Israeli sources had been telling me for months that their air force was intensively war-gaming attack scenarios against Syria; I assumed this was in anticipation of a second round of fighting with Hezbollah. On the morning of the raid, Israeli combat brigades in the northern Golan Heights went on high alert, reinforced by elite Maglan commando units. Most telling has been Israel's blanket censorship of the story–unprecedented in the experience of even the most veteran Israeli reporters–which has also been extended to its ordinarily hypertalkative politicians. In a country of open secrets, this is, for once, a closed one.

The censorship helps dispose of at least one theory of the case. According to CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Israel's target was a cache of Iranian weapons destined for Hezbollah. But if that were the case, Israel would have every reason to advertise Damascus's ongoing violations of Lebanese sovereignty, particularly on the eve of Lebanon's crucial presidential election. Following the January 2002 Karine-A incident–in which Israeli frogmen intercepted an Iranian weapons shipment bound for Gaza–the government of Ariel Sharon wasted no time inviting reporters to inspect the captured merchandise. Had Orchard had a similar target, with similar results, it's doubtful the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert–which badly needs to erase the blot of last year's failed war–could have resisted turning it into a propaganda coup.

And one by one Stephens explains why a lot of the opinions out there about this operation are probably incorrect. The Israeli and Syrian governments are both being uncharacteristically quiet about the whole thing. Was whatever Israel bombed nuclear in nature? That is still unknown as well. But it certainly would fit into what is known at this point - and what is being left unsaid as well.

Politics Of Personal Destruction

Richard Cohen writes about the missed moment of Hillary! Clinton and her fellow Democratic contenders for the Presidential nomination. Very few Democrats - and none of the candidates other than Joe Biden - denounced the MoveOn ad smearing General David Petraeus. Clinton is singled out here because she is the leader of the pack.

It may seem unfair to single out Clinton in this matter when the bunker in which she took shelter was crowded with her fellow quivering candidates. But Clinton is the front-runner, quite possibly the next president of the United States, and so it is reasonable to focus on her and wonder if, as some allege, she indeed does have a spine. In this instance, it was nowhere to be found.

It is an odd standard Clinton has when it comes to smears. When the entertainment mogul David Geffen, once a Clinton supporter, called both Bill and Hillary liars, Hillary not only decried the remark as a particularly vivid example of the "politics of personal destruction," but she demanded that Barack Obama do the same — and return a $2,300 donation Geffen had given him. Yet when Clinton herself was asked to repudiate the abuse of Petraeus, she either saw no reason to do so or, much more likely, was afraid to alienate an important constituency, the 3.3 million members of MoveOn.org, who stand symbolically at the frontiers of New Hampshire and Iowa. She would, it seems, rather be president than right.

This week Hillary Clinton announced her health care plan. Good for her. But you never had any doubt, did you, that she was going to have one — and a plan for everything else. The issue with Hillary Clinton is not whether she's smart or experienced but whether she has — how do we say this? — the character to be president. Behind her, after all, trails the lingering vapor of all those gates: Travel, File, Whitewater, and other scandals to which she was a part only through marriage. In a hatless society, she is always wearing a question mark.

In missing her moment, she may have avoided a barrage of vitriolic hate from the far left - who are not at all liberal when it comes to dissenting opinions, but she also added to questions the public already has about her. In the end will this be a major factor? No, not by itself. But a lot of small things begin to build into major doubts. Clinton already has high negatives - higher than any other candidate. She can't afford too many more missed moments.