The British Invaded Iraq Based On A Source Who Quoted ‘The Rock’ To Explain Saddam Hussein’s VX Gas Program

In Michael Bay’s magnum opus, he introduced us to a terrifying new chemical the United States allegedly had in its arsenal: V.X. nerve gas.

Here’s Stanley Goodspeed’s description of what the stuff does.

It’s a cholinesterase inhibitor. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within thirty seconds. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation and you’ll know. A twinge at the small of your back as the poison seizes your nervous system… Your muscles freeze, you can’t breathe, you spasm so hard you break your own back and spit your guts out. But that’s after your skin melts off.

Yea fuck that noise. If any country was amassing an arsenal of that, I would want them taken out.

But what if one country wasn’t amassing an arsenal of that? What if just one citizen in the country had seen The Rock, which is fictional, and then told the intelligence services of another country about all the things he had seen in The Rock?

Would that be reason enough to invade that country? Probably not. Unless you are Great Britain.

We covered how Tony Blair was George Bush’s ride or die on the war regardless of accurate intelligence, and as more details of the Chilcot report come out, it’s proving just how bad the intelligence was.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

In an MI6 report from September 2002, a “new source” with “phenomenal access” to Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons capabilities claimed that nerve agents VX, sarin and soman had been produced at a facility in Al-Yarmuk, and stored in containers including “linked hollow glass spheres.”

Eyebrows were soon raised inside MI6 after the report was circulated, with “one recipient” pointing out the similarities to the film.

According to the [Chilcot report], it was suggested that “glass containers were not typically used in chemical munitions; and that a popular move (The Rock) had inaccurately depicted nerve agents being carried in glass beads or spheres.”

But despite these doubts, the same source was again cited in a report claiming that Iraq was accelerating its chemical and biological weapons programs and had built more facilities.

Six months into the war, MI6 determined their source was lying.

Man, I joked yesterday that it sounded like this whole thing was scripted by Bay. I had no idea how right I was.

[Via Vulture]