Why haven’t we found the hidden weapons… in Germany?
It appears that fully-armed Nazi aircraft may lie below a Berlin airport, having been hidden by the Nazis during World War II and largely forgotten. This shocking discovery was made by looking over files from the former East German intelligence service, the Stasi.
Now, if entire airplanes can be hidden below a major world city for 50 years and remain undetected, what are the chances of finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in a matter of months? The search for Saddam’s arsenal could take years, as there’s any number of places that the Hussein regime could have stashed a significant amount of arms. There’s miles of tunnels below Baghdad that have not been explored, plus millions of square miles of desert that could house bunkers filled with weapons.
Just because WMDs have not been found does certainly not mean that they don’t exist, and if the Nazis can hide aircraft under Germany, just imagine what could be hidden beneath Baghdad, Tikrit, or anywhere else in Iraq.
An airplane is a bit (correction, a lot) easier to hide than, oh what was it, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.
Alex, if you read the article it says:
AN AIRPORT used by hundreds of thousands of tourists and business travellers each year could be sitting on top of thousands of live bombs.
Not just 1 airplane.
38,000 liters is roughly equal to 200 50-gallon drums. It’s not terrifically hard to hide something like that in a country the size of California when you’ve had years to prepare. It’s a lot easier to hide some drums than a fully-fueled aircraft, and the Germans didn’t learn about their little hidden stash until 50 years after the fact.
Doh! My bad, monkey. I only read Jay’s description, and apparantly don’t understand basic english. Aircraft >= airplane. Oops. 😛
Anyway,
Thanks for putting that into perspective Jay. 38,000 liters = 200 50 gallon drums. If one were really motivated, you could squeeze that into the basement of my house. That’s jack shit. (Well, with regards to that particular chemical weapon.) Not to mention, although I’m no expert on the subject, I doubt you can just dump these into 50 gallon drums and store them indefinetly.
The planes also had another advantage: no one was looking for them.
There is another pretty obvious answer to the quetstion why you never found that stuff… Schoenefeld airport is located in East Germany. It was the Russians who were in charge there. Neither of the Western alliance armies ever got there (unlike southern East Germany that was liberated by American forces and then handed over to the Russians). So the US armed forces never were there to look for anything.
The original article seems to suggest, also, that those weapons and planes were buried so that they were out of the way for good, not to be used at a later stage.
I happen to live in East Germany. Let me tell you… My hometown is surrounded by four lakes. The locals insist that there is at least one tank in each of those lakes. I am sure such myths exist all over Germany. To my ears, the report sounded a bit like that, too.
Another point that comes to my mind is how much the Stasi files can be trusted. That organization had the reputation of finding information as well as, erm, manufacturing information. Combine that with the aforementioned willingness to believe in sunken tanks and secret Hitler diaries (remember THAT scandal back in the 80’s?), I am not so sure about those planes at Schoenfeld airport.
However, the airport will undergo major reconstructions in the near future to make way to a new, hyper big and super modern international airport. I am sure that anything hiding in the ground there will then be found. So keep your ears and eyes open…
And, Jay, maybe if you want to have a look at it, yourself, come by for a beer or two…
J.
Perhaps some day I’ll take you up on that one. 🙂
Mmmmm… good German beer… 🙂
I like beer, too. Nobody’s inviting me, though. Pfffffff! 😉
Ack. Beer tastes like shit. Never had German beer though…
Alex, most american beer (Bud, Coors, Miller) is crap, unfortunately. Samuel Adams is good, though.
Take my German word for it… the only American beer that has my approval is from the Shell’s brewery in New Ulm, MN. Try their stuff, and you’ll know what I mean.
J.
On the subject of hiding things, compare the notions of:
As re: beer – I hated beer until I went to Germany and the UK. I became a believer. However, Monkey, there are many great beers here – most of them microbrews.
Mmmm. Too bad it’s only 9AM!
200 drums wasn’t the contrived excuse for an invasion, either.
It was part of it, along with Saddam’s arsenal of anthrax, VX, sarin, and other chemical and biological weapons that were never destroyed under the terms of UN resolution 1441 and nearly a dozen other resolutions – along with Saddam’s support for terrorist groups from Hizb’Allah to Ansar-i-Islam and his paying off of Palestinian suicide bombers.
“Saddam’s arsenal” until now is limited to a golden AK-47…the rest of the list is being looked for.
The weapons are either buried a few miles under the desert(which makes it not easy to set up in 45 min=not bright), or just floating in Bush’s friend’s minds.
The figure of 38,000 liters of anthrax and other chemical and biological agents that were unaccounted for doesn’t come from the United States. It comes from the UN, specifically UNSCOM’s report in 1998. Furthermore, this figure has been cited by every Western intelligence agency as being correct, including German’s Federal Intelligence Agency, and yes, even the French.
Somehow I doubt that the UN counts as one of Bush’s friends…
I think you don’t get it:
Baghdad was the center of the world 4000 years ago, but not any more, because things change.
Saddam had 38.000 liters of poison in 1998, and US and UK have been bombing Irak all the time since then…as Clinton said: there may be nothing left.
Don’t you think it is tragic that Bush is no friend of the UN? (or the other way around).