IN SUCH AN HOUR AS THIS
"TERRORISM"
Terrorists ~ Lawlessness ~ Corruption
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Today´s World
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Terrors shall make him afraid on every side and shall chase him at his heels. The strength of the wicked shall be hunger-bitten, and calamity is ready at his side if he halts. (Job 18: 11-12)
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TERRORISTS
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Judge: U.S. to Get U.K. Terror Suspect
LONDON
A British judge ruled that a Briton can be extradited to the United States to face charges of soliciting support for terrorism and trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Arizona. The United States has promised not to seek the death penalty for the Briton, who is also accused of conspiring to kill Americans and laundering money. He was indicted in Connecticut in October, is accused of running several Web sites, which investigators say was used to recruit Al Qaeda, Taliban and Chechen rebel fighters and to outfit them with gas masks, night-vision goggles and camouflage gear.
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NEW YORK
Two 16-year-old girls from New York City have been arrested on immigration charges after federal authorities said they planned to become suicide bombers, according to a published report. The teenagers were arrested in March and were being held in a detention center in Leesport, Pa. (2005)
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BANGKOK, Thailand
Bombs exploded Sunday at an airport, department store and hotel in a region of southern Thailand gripped by an Islamic insurgency, killing at least five people and injuring 20, officials and media reports said. (2005)
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NEW YORK
U.S. authorities charged as many as 18 people with weapons trafficking, including for an alleged scheme to smuggle grenade launchers, shoulder-fired missiles and other Russian military weapons into the country. (2005)
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Terrors overtake him like a suddenly loosened flood; a windstorm steals him away in the night. The east wind lifts him up, and he is gone; it sweeps him out of his place. For God and the storm hurl at him without pity and unsparingly their thunderbolts of wrath; he flees in haste before His power.
Job 27:20-22
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MANILA, Philippines
Police launched a major assault Tuesday on a maximum-security jail taken over by Al Qaeda linked suspects, killing at least 22 inmates in a raid that began with a barrage of tear-gas canisters and bullets, officials said. (2005)
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PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro
A small blast, possibly from a hand grenade, occurred close to the United Nations' headquarters in Kosovo , U.N. police said. (2005)
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JERUSALEM
Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli military post near a shrine in the West Bank city of Hebron, wounding two border policemen, the army said. The troops were guarding the Tomb of the Patriarchs a shrine revered by Muslims and Jews. (2005)
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LONDON
The recently retired head of London's police force said in a newspaper article published Sunday that at least 100 terrorists trained by Usama bin Laden are at large in Britain. (2005)
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My heart is grievously pained within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling have come upon me; horror and fright have overwhelmed me. Violence and ruin are within it; fraud and guile do not depart from its streets and the marketplaces.
(Psalm 55:4-5; 11)
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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Pakistan successfully test-fired its longest-range missile, a military spokesman said, capable of carrying nuclear warheads and hitting many targets deep inside neighboring India. (2005)
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QUETTA, Pakistan
A bomb exploded Saturday as minority Shiite Muslims congregated at a shrine in a remote town in southwestern Pakistan killing at least 27 people and wounding 18. (2005)
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DALLAS, Texas
Three Dallas-area brothers were found guilty of supporting terrorism by funneling money to a high-ranking official in the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The case was one of the government's highest-profile terrorism prosecutions.
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MANILA, Philippines
Security experts see growing signs of a link between Al Qaeda and home-grown terrorists in the Philippines, raising fears that attacks against the United States could be launched from a country that used to be a U.S. colony. (2005)
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MADRID, Spain
Twenty-four Muslim men went on trial Friday, as suspected members of an Al Qaeda cell accused of using Spain as a staging ground to plot the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Spain is only the second foreign country after Germany to try suspects in the suicide airliner attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (2005)
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After all, You do set the wicked in slippery places; You cast them down to ruin and destruction. How they become a desolation in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors!
(Psalm 73: 18-19)
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LONDON
A British judge imposed a 13-year prison sentence on a man who admitted conspiring with a shoe-bomber to blow up a U.S.-bound trans-Atlantic jet. The guilty plea in February was the first major conviction for a terrorist plot in Britain, since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The judge said the man had been part of a plot to commit a "wicked and inhuman crime" that would have killed hundreds of people. (2005)
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YANGON, Myanmar
Explosions blamed on ethnic rebels tore through two crowded supermarkets and a convention center in quick succession in Myanmar's capital, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 160, state television reported. The blasts occurred over a 10-minute period starting in the afternoon at the convention center in western Yangon, where a Thai trade fair was being held, then at two City Mart supermarkets in northern sections of the city. State television blamed several ethnic rebel groups, including the Karen National Union and the Shan State Army, for the attacks, calling the perpetrators "terrorists" who were acting "with the objective of disrupting stability and tranquility." (2005)
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BAGHDAD, Iraq
Two homicide car bombs exploded in a central Baghdad square, killing 22 people, including two American contract workers, as Iraqi political leaders agreed on candidates for the remaining five Cabinet vacancies. The attacks were part of a surge in violence that has killed nearly 290 people - many of them Iraqi soldiers and police since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's new government was sworn in April 28, 2005.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip
An Israeli aircraft fired at a group of Hamas militants who were about to shoot mortar shells at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, the army and witnesses said. The new violence threatened a fragile cease-fire declared in February. The air strike came minutes after militants fired four mortar shells at the Gush Katif settlement bloc. The army said it spotted two Palestinians preparing to fire more mortars when it attacked.
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And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but rather be afraid of Him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
(Matt: 10:28)
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PARIS, France
A French court handed down a maximum 10-year sentence, on the man accused of organizing a bomb plot against the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
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MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich.
A teen accused of plotting a massacre at his suburban Detroit high school pleaded guilty to several firearms charges - a day before his Internet terror trial was set to begin. A 17-year-old teen faces charges of making a threat of terrorism, using a computer to make threats of terrorism and possession of a firearm in a felony. The case appears to be among the first in the nation in which anti-terrorism laws are being applied to school violence. Police arrested the teen in September, after discovering Internet chat room messages in which the teen allegedly threatened to kill students at his High School. The messages were sent to an Idaho girl who alerted her father, a university police officer. He contacted Michigan authorities. During a search of teen's home, authorities found weapons, ammunition, bomb-making paraphernalia, Nazi flags and books about white supremacy and Adolf Hitler. The teenager's father and a man accused of giving the boy bomb-making instructions were also arrested.
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TEL AVIV, Israel
A Palestinian homicide bomber carrying 20 pounds of explosives blew himself up in a crowd of young Israelis waiting outside a nightclub near Tel Aviv's beachfront promenade just before midnight Friday, killing at least four other people, wounding dozens and shattering an informal Mideast truce.
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HILLAH, Iraq
A car bomber blasted a crowd of police and National Guard recruits Monday as they gathered for physicals outside a medical clinic south of Baghdad, killing at least 115 people and wounding 132 - the single deadliest attack in the two-year insurgency.
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NEW HAVEN, Conn.
A British computer specialist tried to set up a terrorist training camp in Arizona in 1998 and met with Islamic radicals there who claimed ties to Usama bin Laden a government attorney said.
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One only is the Lawgiver and Judge Who is able to save and to destroy; the One Who has the absolute power of life and death. But you, who are you that you presume to pass judgment on your neighbor?
(James 4:12)
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Lawlessness
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Jury Convicts Islamic Scholar of Exhortation
ALEXANDRIA, Va.
An Islamic scholar who prosecutors said enjoyed "rock star" status among a group of young Muslim men in Virginia was convicted of exhorting his followers in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, to join the Taliban and fight U.S. troops. The convictions against Ali, 41, carry a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole. The jury reached its verdict after seven days of deliberations and convicted Ali of all 10 counts.
Prosecutors said the defendant - a native U.S. citizen who has an international following in some Muslim circles - wielded enormous influence among a group of young Muslim men in northern Virginia who played paintball games in 2000 and 2001 as a means of training for holy war around the globe. Five days after Sept. 11, Ali addressed a small group of his followers in a secret meeting and warned that the attacks were a harbinger of a final apocalyptic battle between Muslims and non-believers. He said they were required as Muslims to defend the Taliban from a looming U.S. invasion, according to the government.
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GEORGETOWN, Texas
A woman spent weeks surfing the Internet, gathering information for a bizarre and grisly plot of deception. She learned how to burn a human body beyond recognition. She sought clues on ways to deceive arson investigators, and took meticulous steps to create a new identity for her husband. She then dug up a woman's corpse, staged a fiery car accident to fake her husband's death, and had him re-emerge as her new boyfriend. Authorities say it was all to collect a $110,000 life insurance policy while hiding her husband from the cops. This was a ghoulish, horrific crime," The woman, 22, insisted the plan wasn't motivated by greed, but rather was a desperate attempt to keep her husband out of prison stemming from a sexual assault charge.
She told friends and relatives her husband had died. Her co-workers raised $1,000 for her and attended a memorial service. Investigators she said, told them the body was taken from a cemetery a few miles away. The body was an 81-year-old woman who had died in 2003 and was buried in an area used for people who can't afford a burial plot or have little or no family. A few weeks later, she introduced "Jake Gregg," her new boyfriend, who was really her husband, to their children, ages 4 and 1. The woman also had forged documents to create a new identity for him, including a fake birth certificate and a Texas drivers' license. The woman pleaded guilty to felony charges of insurance fraud and hindering apprehension, and was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. Her husband is in custody awaiting trial on arson charges. He could face up to 20 years.
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LOS ANGELES
A Caltech graduate student convicted of helping to fire-bomb scores of sport utility vehicles was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution. U.S. District Judge said he had engaged in domestic terrorism and "we're very, very lucky" that no one was killed in the arson attacks. The 24 year-old was convicted of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson for a vandalism spree that damaged and destroyed about 125 SUVs at dealerships and homes east of Los Angeles.
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FORT BRAGG, N.C.
An Army sergeant was convicted by a military jury of premeditated murder and attempted murder in a grenade and rifle attack that killed two of his comrades and wounded 14 others in Kuwait during the opening days of the Iraq war. Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve "maximum carnage" on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.
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But he who commits sin, who practices evildoing is of the devil and takes his character from the evil one. For the devil has sinned ~ violated the divine law from the beginning. The reason the Son of God was made manifest (visible) was to undo, destroy, loosen, and dissolve the works of the devil has done.
(1John 3:8)
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Man Pleads Guilty to Ricin Possession
OCALA, Fla.
A man arrested in January after police found the lethal toxin 'ricin' at his home pleaded guilty in federal court. The man, 22, faces up to 10 years in prison for unlawful possession of the substance. He was arrested after someone phoned in a tip to police. Agents who searched his home found a cardboard box of chemicals, including three vials that tested positive for ricin. They also found a submachine gun and two semiautomatic rifles.
Ricin, is a toxin derived from castor beans. And as little as 500 micrograms of ricin, about the size of the head of a pin, can be fatal, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also found a submachine gun and two semiautomatic rifles.
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WASHINGTON, DC
Tests have confirmed that the white powder found Monday in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was indeed the deadly toxin ricin, Frist announced. (2004)
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GOLDEN, Colo.
A woman who told police she wanted to be a "cool mom" pleaded guilty to sexual assault charges for having sex with high school boys at parties where authorities said she supplied drugs and alcohol. The woman, 40, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of sexual assault and nine felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Each sexual assault count carries up to four years in prison, and each count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor carries up to nine years. She is free on bail, and she admitted that she held parties for the boys almost weekly between October 2003 and October 2004. She was accused of providing drugs and alcohol to eight boys and having sex with five of them.
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Sheol, the place of the dead and Abaddon the place of destruction are never satisfied; so the lust of the eyes of man is never satisfied.
(Prov. 27:20)
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ALISO VIEJO, Calif.
A 19-year-old in a black cape and a paintball mask went on a shooting rampage Saturday in his upscale Southern California neighborhood, killing a man and his daughter before committing suicide, authorities said. The teen also fired shots into another house and confronted a neighbor outside. The teen left his home about 9 a.m. and drove less than 100 yards to a house where he killed a man, 45, and his daughter 22, with a shotgun. A 20-year-old son escaped after hearing shots. The teen then walked across the street and fired into another house. A person inside suffered cuts from broken glass. Another neighbor heard the commotion, came outside and was confronted by the teen, who tried to fire his weapon. When it misfired the teen went back to his own house and committed suicide.
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Corruption
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NEW YORK
Two retired police detectives living in Las Vegas led double lives as Mafia hitmen while on the force and gave confidential information to the mob for more than a decade, federal prosecutors charged. Each is charged with eight murders, two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, drug distribution and money laundering. "These corrupt former detectives betrayed their shields, their colleagues, and the citizens they were sworn to protect."
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil
Police incensed by investigations of brutality and corruption by "bad" cops may have carried out a massacre in two impoverished suburbs of Rio de Jan Nero, killing 30 people, state officials said.
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NEWARK, N.J.
A federal jury on convicted a former British clothing merchant of attempting to sell shoulder-launched missiles, to what he believed was a terrorist group planning to shoot down airliners. The sting operation involving undercover agents from several nations became the first terrorism prosecution in New Jersey after the 2001 attacks. The British man was found guilty on all five counts he faced. The verdict came just hours after the jury began its second day of deliberations. He faces up to 67 years in prison and $2.5 million in fines. (2003)
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NEW YORK
A trucker was charged with stealing a $1.5 million painting from a warehouse at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The trucker, 35, surrendered to authorities at the airport and was charged with grand larceny and possession of stolen property in the May 4 theft of the painting by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The man was accused of removing a wooden crate containing the painting from a warehouse and driving away with it. He could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
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Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction as it dashes them to pieces and misery mark their ways. And they have no experience of the say of peace, they know nothing about peace, for a peaceful way they do not even recognize. There is no reverential fear of God before their eyes.
(Romans 3:16-18)
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Tenn. State Senator Resigns
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
State Sen. J. F., a member of one of Tennessee's most powerful political families, has resigned after being placed under house arrest facing charges from a two-year FBI sting, the lieutenant governor said Saturday. A member of the Senate for more than 30 years, J.F. was arrested following the sting operation nicknamed "Tennessee Waltz." He is charged along with four other current and former state lawmakers with taking payoffs, and he is also accused of threatening to kill a witness.
During his tenure in the state Senate, J. F. has lost paternity lawsuits, given a political job to a girlfriend, used campaign money for his daughter's wedding and been successfully sued for sexual harassment. Republican Senate leader said the Ethics Committee he chairs was getting ready to file a six-count charge against J.F. for violating Senate rules stemming from a separate investigation into allegations he was paid by a consulting company with financial ties to the state's Medicaid program.
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BROWNSVILLE, Texas
A scandal-plagued former sheriff has been charged with leading a criminal enterprise while in office that included extortion, drug trafficking and witness tampering. The indictment accuses former County Sheriff of receiving payments from drug traffickers in exchange for releasing sensitive law enforcement during his four years in office. He also is accused of using his official powers to protect and assist the drug traffickers.
"It is a blow to honest law enforcement when one of its own is accused of corrupting his office and abusing the public's trust. With his eight counts, including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana, extortion, money laundering, obstruction and being a member of a criminal enterprise engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity.
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To deal out retribution, chastisement and vengeance upon those who do not know or perceive, or become acquainted with God, and upon those who ignore and refuse to obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Such people will pay the penalty and suffer the punishment of everlasting ruin, destruction and perdition, and eternal exclusion and banishment from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
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SOME INTERESTING FACTS
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LYON, France
Interpol sounded an "urgent" warning that bioterrorism is the world's greatest security threat and police across the globe are ill-equipped to handle an attack. There is no criminal threat with greater potential danger to all countries, regions and people in the world than the threat of bioterrorism," Interpol Secretary-General said.
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What Is It?
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Sarin is a colorless and odorless gas and is lethal in does as small as 5 milligrams. Experts have said that sarin is more than 500 times as toxic as cyanide.
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Sarin emits very toxic fumes of fluoride and phosphorus oxides when heated to decomposition or reacted with steam.
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At room temperature, sarin takes a liquid form, but it evaporates quickly into gas. It acts and dissipates more quickly than other nerve agents.
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The chemical weapon is most known for the March 1995, terrorist attack by the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult. Members released the gas at several points in the Tokyo subway system killing 11 and injuring 5,500.
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The Symptoms of Exposure of Sarin
Death may occur within 10 minutes of inhalation exposure to even a small amount of sarin. The first indication of exposure to sarin may be at the point of contact and can include sweating, muscular twitching and mitosis; runny nose, tightness of chest, shortness of breath and dimness of vision may also be experienced. In more severe cases a victim may experience headache, cramps, nausea, vomiting, involuntary defecation and urination, jerking, staggering, convulsions, drowsiness, coma and respiratory arrest.
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Who has it?
Only Russia and the United States have officially declared that they have stockpiles of sarin. In the 1950's the U.S. began developing sarin as a part of its chemical weapons program . It now has more then 5,000 tons of the substance. Russia had about 11,700 tons. In all likelihood, many other nations know have this substance in quantity. Iraq began producing sarin in 1984 and admitted to possessing 790 tons of it in 1995. Experts also suspect Egypt, Iran, Libya, and North Korea of having sarin.
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MUSTARD GAS?
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Mustard gas is categorized as a blister agent, and refers to several manufactured chemicals ~ many used in household products; that do not occur naturally in the environment, Sulfur mustard is among them.
Mustard gas is really a liquid and is not likely to change into a gas immediately if it is released at ordinary temperatures. As a pure liquid it is colorless and odorless, but when mixed with other chemicals, it looks brown and has a garlic-like smell.
Mustard gas was used in chemical warfare and was made in large amounts during World War l and ll.
It was reported that it was used in the Iran ~ Iraq war in 1984 - 1988. It is presently used in the United States for research purposes. The U.S. Secretary of Defense was instructed to destroy all remaining stocks of lethal military chemical agents, including mustard gas in 1997.
Mustard gas has been a favorite chemical weapon in wars because it can be fairly easily delivered via conventional bombs, rockets and artillery shells and because mustard gas contamination can render an area unusable by enemy forces.
Experts say making mustard gas is easier then making nerve gases but harder then weaponizing industrial chemicals such as chlorine. It would take vastly more mustard gas then nerve gas to kill the same amount of people, limiting mustard gas appeal to terrorists.
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What are the Symptoms of Exposure
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Mustard gas can burn skin, cause blisters and cause respiratory effects, such as coughing and bronchitis. Higher levels may cause death. It also makes eyes burn, eyelids swell and cause a person to blink a lot. Skin exposure can cause second-third-degree burns. It one breathes mustard gas, it causes long term respiratory disease. Mustard gas also attacks a cell's DNA and causes cancer and birth defects.
Iraq has maintained it has large stockpiles of mustard gas, sarin and tabun.
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A Fallen Angel ~ A Fallen Hero (Marla Ruzicka)
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Marla Ruzicka dedicated her life to helping others. At 28, she had traveled to Africa to work on AIDS issues, to Cuba to protest the U.S. embargo and to Afghanistan after the U.S.-led war there. The blond-haired activist with a cherubic face and infectious smile, was a one-woman campaign against human suffering, who was instrumental in securing millions of dollars in aid for distribution in Iraq.
Everyone who met Marla was struck by her incredible effervescence and commitment. "She was courageous and relentless in pursuit of accurate information about civilians caught up in war." In an essay Ruzicka sent to Human Rights Watch a few days before her death, she explained the significance of her work assessing casualties.
"A number is important not only to quantify the cost of the war, but to me each number is also a story of someone whose hopes, dreams and potential will never be realized, and who left behind a family," Ruzicka wrote. Marla Ruzicka died in a car bombing in Iraq. A fallen hero who will be remembered down through the years.
Marla lived in San Francisco, California when she wasn't in other country helping others. She was survived by her Father and Mother. - 2005
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