A long article by Peter Baker, Mark Landler, David Sanger, and Anne Barnard today reports that President Obama’s comments on redlines and game-changers were “off the cuff.” The article then goes on to press the idea of chemical weapons use, even though the reporters leave out some important facts.

That article is complemented by Tom Friedman’s attempt at a thoughtful comparison of Iraq with what might be done in Syria. Friedman can’t let go of the analogy to Eastern Europe, although he has learned a fragment of history: the people there had experience with representative government. A little less than that; Friedman sees only “aspirations to democracy.” He argues that we’ve done such a good job in Iraq that it serves as a model for Syria:

He’s leaving out securing the chemical weapons and hasn’t estimated the total numbers of troops or how one forms an international force in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition.

The Baker article is more dangerous, however, because it provides the kind of misinformation that feeds fantasies like Friedman’s.

Chain of custody is important, but the article trashes it.

Chain of custody is a concept used in law enforcement, environmental evaluations, and other areas where it is important to know where a sample to be analyzed has come from and whether it has been tampered with on the way to being analyzed. If you don’t know where it came from, you don’t know anything. Samples may be faked in any number of ways.

Syria is currently so chaotic that a formal chain of custody is probably not possible, but the fact that the White House has called this out as a problem indicates significant uncertainty about the samples’ provenance.

I’m repeating myself here, but it seems important in the light of the persistant lean of mainstream reporters toward advocating that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.

The article doesn’t identify the “chemical weapons” used and doesn’t mention the possibility of crowd control agents.

The article says nothing about the handling issue, which I consider to be one of the most important relative to whether the agent was sarin. People who have been exposed to sarin will have a thin film of it on their skin and clothes, which will be absorbed into the skin of those handling and treating them without full protective clothing. This does not seem to have happened in any of the cases reported.

The symptoms reported are the usual mixed bag – some that may be indicative of nerve agents, some that are more likely from crowd control agents, and some that may result from emotional reactions to an attack.

The biggest imbalance in the symptoms reported, however, is the numbers of dead. An attack with nerve agent will kill most of those exposed. The agent is absorbed through the skin and an amount as small as a pinhead is fatal. In all the attacks, there have been many more injured than killed.

The story reported by Baker, Landler, Sanger, and Barnard makes use of a narrative that seems to be gelling in the MSM: unpleasant symptoms shown on YouTube equal chemical attacks, fear equals chemical attacks, and therefore we know that there were chemical attacks, no matter where the samples came from or what was found in them. And that’s in an article that says

If we are going to learn more about North Korea’s bomb design, we will have to do it another way. Joby Warrick of the Washington Post speculates:

U.S. officials and independent experts say North Korea appears to have taken unusual steps to conceal details about the nuclear weapon it tested in February, fueling suspicions that its scientists shifted to a bomb design that uses highly enriched uranium as the core.

The North Koreans showed Sigfried Hecker their uranium enrichment facility in 2011. Ever since, there has been speculation on whether the North Koreans have manufactured enough highly enriched uranium to build a bomb. It’s easier to build a bomb from uranium than from plutonium. This test was the first since the uranium enrichment facility became public.

But Warrick fails to consider other reasons the North Koreans might have for taking “unusual steps” to keep their testing secret.

• If it was a plutonium device, that could mean that their uranium enrichment wasn’t going well. They have a limited stock of plutonium, and one more test would deplete that stock further. On the other hand, it would give them additional information about their design(s), which didn’t seem to work so well in earlier tests.
• Nations keep their nuclear weapons information secret. Everyone else with nuclear weapons is just as secretive.
• It is to North Korea’s advantage in negotiations to keep this information secret.
• Allowing radioactive isotopes to escape from their test, or testing in the atmosphere, might irritate China and Russia further than current North Korean rhetoric.
• There is a norm for containing nuclear tests that even North Korea follows.

Of course, more than one reason may apply. But Warrick chooses to focus on only one possibility.

Today, North Korea has announced that it will restart the reactor at Yongbyong that furnished its current plutonium stocks. If reporters were so inclined, this could be interpreted to mean that the nuclear test was of a plutonium device and wants to restock, but that possibility hasn’t been mentioned in any of the news stories I’ve seen.

The New York Times:It is unknown whether North Korea’s third nuclear test in February used some of its limited stockpile of plutonium or used fuel from its uranium-enrichment program, whose scale and history remain a mystery.

The Washington Post article is much more balanced than Warrick’s, allowing for the possibility that the test was of a plutonium device.

The Wall Street Journal article mentions the uranium possibility but does not emphasize it.

So Warrick’s emphasis on uranium as the material tested in February may not have legs. But all too often a speculation is what other reporters recall and repeat until it is the common wisdom. The idea that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons has developed in that way, even though US intelligence evaluations say that it is not.

It’s too early to say whether Warrick’s speculation will become the common wisdom. Something to keep an eye on.

Posts in the Nuclear Diner series:

Where Do Nuclear Weapons Go To Die?

Canning Weapons Plutonium

Nuclear Fuel from Nuclear Weapons

The MOX Controversy – Costs

The MOX Controversy – Plutonium and More

How Dangerous Is Plutonium?

The 1991 Iraq war had served up a big surprise for those of us following nuclear issues: Saddam Hussein’s electromagnetic separation project. Who’d have thought that would be the technology in today’s world? Which, of course, was a good reason for the Iraqis to go for it. After all, it helped enrich the uranium for the Little Boy bomb exploded over Hiroshima.

But after that program was dismantled and the equipment destroyed, the sanctions and overflights imposed on Iraq seemed to preclude a restart of any nuclear weapons projects. Biological and chemical agent programs might have continued at a low level, but the country was in dismal straits.

And then came the United Nations inspections. The request for volunteers went out to the national laboratories, and I thought about it for a while, but decided that my life was exciting enough.

A place like the Los Alamos National Laboratory has its own kind of grapevine. Some information filtered into the grapevine from the UN inspectors.The common wisdom, based on that and other information, was that Hussein might have some small and residual bio or chem weapon capability, but nuclear? No way.

So when the war drums began to beat after 9/11, I dismissed them. I looked at the supporting evidence.

The aluminum tubes seemed to me unlikely to be used for centrifuges, but I am not fully informed on centrifuge specs. Reports from sources I considered to be knowledgeable were that they were for rockets, and that sounded about right. I had met people from Oak Ridge who were experts in centrifuge design, and I knew that they contributed to intelligence assessments.

Then came Judy Miller and the New York Times: intelligence assessments say that the aluminum tubes are for centrifuges. I read the articles carefully, looking for mentions of assessments from the Department of Energy. I never saw them. But, I guessed, the multiagency assessments must have included them, and the Oak Ridge guys knew what they were doing. So maybe—???

Even if that maybe came down on the side of centrifuges, I thought, it would be some time before Iraq could have a nuclear weapon, so issuing ultimatums and pulling the inspectors out so that the US could bomb Iraq seemed unwarranted.

I was also dubious about the claim that once Saddam Hussein was gone, the people of Iraq would naturally form a democratic government with no problems. Some of what was said by people by Paul Wolfowitz used the Baltic States after the Soviet Union as an analogy. But I had spent some time learning how Estonia left the Soviet Union. I interviewed people who had participated in the process, including then-President Arnold Rüütel, in the hopes of writing a book.

[I never wrote the book; the story is well told by the film “The Singing Revolution,” and parts of it are treated in several book chapters, but I think a book is still needed.]

The transition depended upon an informed populace who had some experience of democratic rule. It ran over several years, from street protests allowed by perestroika to forming political parties that couldn’t call themselves that, to the Supreme Soviet’s declaring sovereignty (not independence!) and renaming itself the Parliament of Estonia and then to independence quickly declared as the coup unfolded against Gorbachev. As people participated in those actions, they learned more about governing. It wasn’t a matter of waking up one day and finding the government gone, much less was it done during a war.

I cringed every time the comparison was made. How could people so allegedly smart not be able to see the enormous historical differences?

Then there was Colin Powell’s presentation. I had some experience working with aerial photos when I managed environmental restorations. I thought the evidence was thin – closed trucks may be carrying anything – but, again, was not an expert in the area.

Perhaps there was something I was missing – something classified – that made the case more persuasive. So I wasn’t too vocal about my misgivings, although I would offer them up when given a chance. And I didn’t have a blog for a platform.

Some time after the war was started, several years, it became obvious why Miller and the New York Times didn’t mention the Oak Ridge or DOE intelligence assessments. They said that the tubes were unsuitable for centrifuges. In fact, that was in the original National Intelligence Estimate. The public didn’t know that until much later.

And we have seen that democracy is indeed not so easily achieved. There were, of course, no WMDs beyond a few buried chemical shells, rotting in the sand.

So I had been right. I have become more wary of what the government says, particularly in regard to matters that could lead to war. I look for confirmation outside the government.

I couldn’t have stopped the march to war all by myself, but if all those who felt as I did had spoken up, maybe it could have been slowed, might have been stopped. So now I am more vocal, particularly in areas that I know something about and that could lead to war. Or other damage to my country.

Here’s some ten-year commentary from others. The neocons are unrepentant, and I link only one summary of their comments because we’ve heard them before. Whatever went wrong wasn’t their fault.

Others who supported the war have been more forthcoming.

David Ignatius says he owes “readers an apology for being wrong on the overriding question of whether the war made sense” and calls the war “one of the biggest strategic errors in modern American history.”

Ezra Klein:

But at the core of my support for the war was an analytical failure I think about often: Rather than looking at the war that was actually being sold, I’d invented my own Iraq war to support — an Iraq war with different aims, promoted by different people, conceptualized in a different way and bearing little resemblance to the project proposed by the Bush administration.

Relevant documents, including the National Intelligence Estimate, from The National Security Archive.

Others who didn’t believe Iraq had WMDs.

What it was like to oppose the war.

The Lowy Institute Interpreter (I love the header photo!) has a symposium on many aspects of the war.

Numerous articles at Duck of Minerva.

Addendum (3/22/13): Short reactions from several people who were for or against the war. What I find shocking is that three of them refer to the large numbers of people (presumably the people they mostly talked to) who believed that Hussein did indeed have WMD (ill-defined, but apparently sometimes implying nuclear weapons).

Anne-Marie Slaughter: Looking back, it is hard to remember just how convinced many of us were that weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Leon Weiseltier: Those of us who supported the Iraq war ten years ago because we believed that Saddam Hussein—who had already used chemical weapons—possessed weapons of mass destruction must forever ponder the fact that he did not possess them. That we joined, or helped to establish, a near-universal consensus does not exonerate us from the unpleasant truth that President Bush took the United States into a major war on fraudulent grounds.

James P. Rubin: At the time no one really doubted the intelligence reports showing Iraq with substantial stocks of deadly viruses, germs and toxins (By contrast, the nuclear threat, “the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud,” was irresponsible scare-mongering by the Bush team).

Convinced. Consensus. No one really doubted. Wow.

These are policy people, who probably are unashamed of their lack of knowledge of scientific and technical aspects of those claims. But they might be expected to know that the Department of Energy analyzes quite a bit of intelligence from precisely those aspects. They might have wondered, as I did, what the DOE analysis said about the WMD claims.

Cross-posted at Phronesisaical.

Plutonium is indeed nasty stuff. The metal can burn in air, and it can be used to make nuclear weapons. Like other heavy and radioactive metals, it shouldn’t be ingested because it can cause cancer and other problems. It must be isolated from direct human contact and must be secured against theft. Too much plutonium in one place will support a chain reaction that will result in large fluxes of neutrons and gamma rays. So processes have to be engineered so that critical quantities of plutonium don’t accumulate.

But the degree of the danger is often exaggerated. Industry and hospitals handle eequally dangerous materials regularly. Clean rooms prevent dust from being incorporated into precise electronics; similar technology can contain dangerous materials.

Not many people have ingested plutonium. The oxide powder is fairly insoluble in water, so eating it would result mainly in radioactive poop, with not much retained in the body. Inhalation is more dangerous. But, during the Manhattan Project, twenty-six people ingested – swallowed, inhaled, or cut themselves with contaminated equipment – significant amounts of plutonium. Their health was closely followed, and no effects were found that were out of line with what might have been expected if they hadn’t been exposed. Here’s a fact sheet with more detail on health effects.

As a chemist, I sometimes get impatient with the way this is reported. The first thing you learn in chemistry lab is DO NOT EAT IN THE LAB. That means don’t bring your lunch, your giant soda, or your bubblegum into the lab. Especially, do not eat any of the chemicals. Do not sniff at chemicals or bring them close to your face. Keep anything that may produce dangerous gases in the fume hood, where the gases are rapidly removed. This is extended in later chemistry courses to working in fully contained glove boxes with compounds that might catch fire in air or are otherwise particularly dangerous.

Working with plutonium requires glove boxes, and it’s a good idea to automate industrial processes to keep people away from the materials. Plutonium equipment is like equipment in other chemical plants where flammable and toxic materials are handled: plastic and fiber manufacturing plants, oil refineries, and semiconductor fabrication. It doesn’t need the high precision of the last, though.

Back to Fukushima and MOX. Because most of the uranium in a civilian reactor is uranium-238, it absorbs neutrons to form neptunium-239, which then decays to plutonium-239. The plutonium-239 may pick up an additional neutron to form plutonium-240. So every operating reactor contains some plutonium. The plutonium can also fission to produce energy, along with the uranium-235. MOX starts out with some plutonium in it.

And yes, it’s too bad that plutonium seems to be named for the god of the underworld. When the new elements were produced in the Manhattan Project, new names were needed. Uranium, a natural element, was named for the planet Uranus. So the next two were named for the next planets out: Neptune and Pluto. Which, of course, is named for the god of the underworld. One degree of separation.

Plutonium requires greater precautions against theft than other materials, although a significant amount of security is needed for dangerous chemicals, as well. Chemical plants are surrounded by high fences, and expensive or particularly dangerous materials have additional physical security (gold in a safe, for example), required signouts, and armed guards.

The photo is of plutonium metal, from Wikimedia Commons. The metal is cast into a ring to prevent a critical mass from forming. Plutonium metal may also be cast into small flat pucks – anything that isn’t much like a sphere. The entire processing line – all vessels, piping, and product collection – must be evaluated for the possibility of accumulating a critical mass.

The glowing red-hot slugs of plutonium? That’s plutonium-238, produced in totally different ways. It’s not one of the main plutonium isotopes produced in reactors, and it isn’t used at all to produce MOX.

I’m not following that story in detail, but something from Silverstein’s account (which he points out is partially speculative) hit me:

Koustoukis revealed in 2010 that Zygier worked for a mysterious European company that sold computers and other technical equipment. He also reported that Zygier used his passports to travel repeatedly to Iran, presumably to sell such equipment.

Stuxnet spread via thumb drives, not via the internet. Someone had to plug a drive into an Iranian computer. What if it was a salesman offering some helpful virus cleanup software or a new game? Here it is, see what a cool game? Thanks, good stuff.

And the additional Stuxnet package wouldn’t show up until later, in another way.

Robert Kelley has renewed his objection that such a containment tank makes no sense. His latest argument is a bit more nuanced, that such a chamber is not necessary for nuclear weapons development, particularly at an early stage. And

There are a range of experiments involving explosives and uranium that a country presumably would conduct as part of a nuclear weapon development programme. Most of these are better done in the open or in a tunnel. They include basic research on neutron initiators using very small amounts of explosive and grams of uranium and on the very precise timing of a neutron initiator using a full-scale conventional explosion system and many kilograms of uranium. The alleged chamber at Parchin is too large for the initiator tests and too small for a full-scale explosion. If it exists at all, it is a white elephant.

As Kelley mentions, testing neutron initiators and their timing is one way such a container might be used in a nuclear weapons program. It could also be used for hydrodynamic and hydronuclear tests.

Containment tanks called kolbas were used for hydrodynamic or hydronuclear tests at Semipalatinsk. The Soviets even used them inside tunnels, counter to Kelley’s assertion that experiments would be better done without them. Making fissionable material in them unavailable to scavengers was the object of Operation Matchbox, described by Sig Hecker at his talk that I reported. He had photos of kolbas with dimensions in the same range as those alleged for the Parchin vessel. Susan checked out the dimensions more closely back in May.

Kelley also mentions Vyacheslav Danilenko, so I’ll say again that working at a nuclear weapons lab, as Danilenko did, is likely to expose you to weapons information, even if that’s not what you’re working on. This was the case in the 1960s, when Danilenko was at Snezhinsk, much more so than it is now.

It’s possible that Danilenko passed no nuclear weapons information to the Iranians. It’s also possible that the Iranians are not developing nuclear weapons and therefore have no need of a test container, or that they did experiments related to nuclear weapons development without such a container. But the IAEA seems to have some evidence that points toward a container and such experiments, probably more than we have seen publicly.

We don’t know what is the truth. A visit to Parchin and sampling by the IAEA would go a long way toward establishing it.

Seven people have died in Homs after they inhaled a “poisonous gas” used by government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood, activists said.

There are a couple of warnings right up front: It’s on a breaking-news blog, and “activists said.”

Breaking news, especially in conflict zones, is always dicey. Reporters talk to a few people on the ground who have bits and pieces of information and add in their own expectations and experience. What eyewitnesses say may have little to do with what actually happened.

Activists, by definition, have an agenda. Best to consider that when you read or report what they say. The use of chemical warfare agents seems to be a red line for intervention. Activists who want outside intervention have a motive to play up the idea of attack with “poisonous gas.”

The Al Jazeera report included a conclusion by Raji Rahmet Rabbou, an activist in Homs, that the “gas” was probably sarin. He said that they did not have enough facemasks. A couple of videos were included. The symptoms displayed in the videos were mostly breathing difficulties, which are more characteristic of riot control gases than sarin.

Medics and aides treating the victims were protected only by gauze facemasks and gloves. Gauze facemasks do nothing to protect against gases or chemical warfare agents. Gloves are insufficient to protect against sarin.

Sarin is not a gas. Its boiling point is well above water’s, at 158 C. As a weapon, it is dispersed in fine droplets. Think about the greasy mist that settles on your skin and clothes when you fry bacon. The victims would have a greasy mist of sarin on their skin and clothes that would be transferred to the people carrying and treating them. A droplet is enough to kill. Hazmat-type protective moon suits are needed to keep those people from being affected too.

There have been no reports of effects on rescuers and medics. Therefore the agent was not sarin. Therefore the person who concluded that the material was sarin didn’t know what he was talking about, had an agenda, or both.

Backing up a bit, we have to ask whether the incident occurred. An account on Facebook claimed that the whole thing was a hoax. I don’t know the reliability of that report either. It’s also possible that a rebel faction released the agent in an attempt to make it look like government action. That seems less likely, but it’s not impossible.

Let’s say that the Syrian government fired something at the activists and that it did kill and injure some of them. Difficult breathing is a symptom of numerous riot control agents, like teargas. There are many riot control agents – irritants, nauseants, and disorienting agents.  They’re nasty, and breathing too much of them can kill people.

Fast forward to Tuesday night (January 15). Josh Rogin publishes a diplomatic cable from the American consul in Istanbul suggesting that the agent was BZ, or possibly Agent 15, which cause hallucinations and other unpleasant symptoms. BZ is listed as a Schedule 2 chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Why the cable settled on those two was unclear. No chemical diagnostics were cited, and it appeared that the conclusion was based on a report of symptoms, possibly from the same source cited in Al Jazeera. BZ and Agent 15 have not been believed to be part of the Syrian stockpile.  Nonetheless, Rogin and his editor (who presumably wrote the headline) claim that “chemical weapons” were used.

We all, Rogin included, should have learned from Wikileaks that cables of this kind are reports back to Washington of what is going on and what people are saying. They are raw data, not a finished intelligence assessment. They are often wrong. During the Twitter reaction, Andy (@entropy68) did a good job of pointing this out and interpreting the rapid White House response.

A White House statement on Tuesday evening discounted the possibility that poison gas had been used. But White House and State Department officials declined to comment directly on the cable. Nor did they rule out that some form of chemical agent may have been used.

“The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria has not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program,” the White House statement said.

The first paragraph seems to be Michael Gordon’s interpretation of the quote from the White House. It’s consistent with what Andy and I think the quote meant. Also consistent with riot control agent.

On Wednesday, the State Department made a fuller statement, reported by Rogin. The bottom line seems to be what Gordon, Andy and I figured out on Tuesday night: something happened, whatever was used was not sarin, and probably not BZ or Agent 15 either.

CNN has a report that relies on descriptions of symptoms by a single doctor, although they bring in information that conflicts with what he says.

Raffi Khatchadourian wrote a long article and several long blog posts on the testing of chemical weapons during the 1950s and 1960s. So his New Yorker editors assigned him to sort out the Homs incident. Unfortunately, he takes both the Al Jazeera report and the Istanbul cable at face value. They are mutually contradictory, as he eventually figures out, after trying to drag in earlier reports of Syria’s mixing sarin up for use. There’s no point in working out the technical details if the reports aren’t reliable, and there’s no reason to believe Al Jazeera’s activist sources or the conclusions of the Istanbul cable.

My take: The Syrian government fired something at a crowd in Homs, most likely an extra-potent form of teargas. It was not sarin or any other nerve agent.

Additional reading:

All Mixed Up: What Is Assad Doing With His Chemical Weapons?

Syrian Site Security: An Educated Guess (Updated with Additional Information)

First posted at The Agonist.

Commissar Rudolf and his wife are enjoying the holiday in their Moscow apartment. She looks out the window and says, “I think it’s beginning to snow.” He walks over to the window, turns to her, and says, “Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear.”

That’s how I learned the joke back when we were learning to duck and cover from nuclear armageddon rather than a crazed shooter in school. It’s a great extended pun, but when Republicans are the Reds and commissars are a thing of the past, nobody’s going to get it.

So it had to change.

You can explicitly set it back in the Soviet times:

An American and his wife were hosting one of their Russian friends in their hotel room back in the Soviet era. Rudolph, the Russian, looked out the window and announced that it was raining. The wife looked out and said “No, that looks like snow”. At which point the husband said “Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear.”

And add specifics:

Back during the days of the former Soviet Union, a fellow by the name of Gerald Chattington had a friend in the Soviet Embassy by the name of Rudolph Nosov, who would drop by occasionally. One evening, Gerald and his wife, Peg, were sitting in the kitchen chatting when Gerald looked out the window and said, “Look, it’s snowing.” Rudolph looked out and said very quickly, “No, I think it is just rain.” “I’m sure it is snow,” insisted Gerald. “And I am just as sure that it is rain,” said Rudolph. At this point Gerald turned to Peg to settle the argument. Peg looked out the window for a moment, then said, “What can I say? Rudolph, the Red, knows rain, dear.”

This one is still old; it makes use of the Russian = Red idea and vaguely recalls the Intourist minders/guides.

An America couple was being shown around Moscow one day, when the man felt a drop hit his nose.

“I think it’s raining,” he said to his wife.

“No, that felt more like snow to me,” she replied.

“No, I’m sure it was just rain,” he said.

Well, as these things go, they were about to have a major argument about whether it was raining or snowing.

“Let’s not fight about it!” the man said. “Let’s ask our guide, Rudolph, whether it’s officially raining or snowing.”

As their tour guide approached, the man said, “Tell us, Comrade Rudolph, is it officially raining or snowing?”

“It’s raining, of course,” he replied officiously.

But the woman insisted, “I know that it felt like snow!”

The man quietly replied, “Rudolph, the Red, knows rain, dear!”

Still Russian, but reaching back to the Czars.

There was once a great czar in Russia named Rudolph the Red. He stood looking out the windows of is palace one day while his wife, the Czarina Katerina, sat nearby knitting. He turned to her and said, “Look my dear, it has begun to rain!” Without even looking up from her knitting she replied, “It’s too cold to rain. It must be sleeting.” The Czar shook his head and said, “I am the Czar of all the Russias, and Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear!”

And, almost totally removed from Russia, although perhaps evoking Kievan Rus,

A descendant of Eric The Red, named Rudolf the Red, was arguing with his wife about the weather. His wife thought it was going to be a nice day, and he thought it was going to rain. Finally she asked him, how he was so sure. He smiled at her, and calmly said, “Because Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear.”

A good punchline will survive, even when countries don’t.

Cross-posted (more or less) at Phronesisaical.

Here are two of those problems in David Ignatius’s article on Syrian chemical weapons.

Ignatius says “combine and activate the chemicals” at least twice. This is not something that someone who understands much about chemistry is likely to say. It’s a common mistake: not understanding chemical reaction. There is a difference between mixing and reaction. When you spoon sugar into your coffee and then stir, the sugar disappears as a solid, although you can taste it. It is mixed into the coffee, but it doesn’t react, it remains a separate chemical compound. When you are making a cake, you mix the ingredients. Some of the leavening ingredients start reacting right away, making the batter frothy with carbon dioxide, but most of the reactions take place during baking to make the liquidy batter into a solid with lots of porosity.

Some reactions take place quickly. You can mix vinegar and baking soda and watch the carbon dioxide froth out. But sugar in coffee is a mixture without reaction. When substances react, their chemical bonds rearrange to make something new. That’s how you get safe, edible salt (sodium chloride) from a soft, reactive metal (sodium) and a poisonous green gas (chlorine).

For a binary nerve agent, two precursors are manufactured that, when mixed, react to form the agent. Ignatius’s formulation, “combine and activate the chemicals,” doesn’t make sense. Combining the precursors activates them. Or, more accurately, produces the nerve agent. To a chemist, “combine” could mean mixing OR reaction, and, if it’s reaction, it doesn’t describe this kind of reaction. Mixing the precursors activates them. There’s no need to add red mercury or say magic words over them, or whatever “activate” means to Ignatius.

And that’s why nobody who knows chemistry would say it that way.

The more I think about these reports that Syria has binary precursors to chemical agents, the less credible they seem to me. Binary precursors require manufacturing two components, rather than just one. The two components require separate storage. Mixing them to form the agent and loading shells would require about the same equipment that a unitary agent would require. The capital requirements and number of steps are more than for a unitary agent.

Shells that mix binary precursors in flight are difficult to design and manufacture.

It’s difficult to see why a not-so-rich country would go to all this trouble. Not impossible, of course, but Occam’s Razor suggests that the stories of binary precursors being mixed before loading into shells are nonsense.

Cross-posted at The Agonist and Phronesisaical.