One day the story of WMD in Iraq will be known, at least partially. For now, the information is coming out in bits and pieces. Bottom line — those who said there was no WMD in Iraq were wrong. (Using the definition and standard they set for President Bush, I guess that means they were lying, right?)
Jay at Stop the ACLU has a great roundup of blogosphere reaction to the latest from Pete Hoekstra and Rick Santorum:
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public.
“The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq,” said Senator Santorum. “It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.”
The following are the six key points contained in the unclassified overview:
• Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
• Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
• Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.
• The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
• The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
• It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons. I have not checked in at the major liberal blogs to get reaction. My guess is that the conventional wisdom is still that Bush lied about WMD and that there was none in Iraq. (I will update later if I find this not to be the case.) What I find absolutely amazing is that many of those who believe Bush had something to do with the Twin Towers collapsing and who believe that John Kerry really won in Ohio find it impossible to believe that Saddam had WMD — even though Bill Clinton, the UN, France and dozens of Democrat politicians said he did over and over again.
Over two years ago, I found Ken Timmerman’s report of WMD found in Iraq quite compelling, but no one ever seemed to pay much attention to it. (Be sure to read it if you aren’t already familiar with it .) Maybe eventually all the information found will be compiled and we will have a comprehensive picture of everything that has been found. Maybe the media will even decide to report it.
UPDATE: From A Real Ugly American (via Flopping Aces’ excellent, must read post):
General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war.
I have on several occasions speculated about why the President would not be touting the information we have about WMD found in Iraq and had come to a similar conclusion. My theory was that if the public knew that certain other countries had been involved with moving WMD, they would demand action that we did not want to, or were not able to, take.
Check out Pajamas Media’s WMD Files for previous blogging on the subject. Just for the record, I never doubted.
The question is whether or not these weapons verify any part of the public case that the WH made about WMDS. Lets compare wthe evidence vs. the claims made by the administration and in Powell’s speech before the UN:
What was found: 500 shells “None in operating condition” scattered about Iraq.
Administrations claims:
Iraq had truck and train Mobile Biological labs: Still False
Iraq tried to acquire Uranium from Niger: Still false
Iraq bought Aluminum tubes for Centrifuges: Still False
Those tubes could be adapted for centrifuges: Still false
Rocket launchers and warheads with BioWeapons were distributed in Western Iraq: Still False
Iraq had 25000 liters of anthrax: Still false
Iraq had UAV capable of distributing BioWeapons: Still false.
Iraq had VX: Still false
Iraq had 100-500 tons (16,000 warheads) of Chem Weapons produced after 91: Sill false
As you can see these 500 unusable weapons do not do anything to validate the administration claims .
Hmmmm.
You know this particular angle is so vastly amusing to me that I think I’m going to use it from now on as a response to the whole liberal “chickenhawk” nonsense.
Re: Mustard Gas
Mustard gas stored in a weapon turns to a thick goo over time as it polymerizes. Mustard gas in shells from before 91 would almost certainly be unusable.
jp hit the nail exactly on the head. thinking back over the years,I remember the same arguments were made over the butchery going on in Stalinist Russia.Pulling out of Viet Nam was supposed to make peace,how many died after this solution.If the Devil sent his emmisaries into this world,He sent them disguised as DemoRats.
I seem to remember that the insurgents did try to use one of these shells as an IED thinking it was a normal artillery round. Nothing happened meaning this so called WMD is even less of a hazard then a conventional weapon. Shells filled with chemicals that haven’t been active for over ten years are not WMDs. Sen. Man-on-Dog is just trying to inflate his pathetic poll numbers. What is more pathetic is that some of ya’ll swallow every morsel of misinformation fed to you and ask for more.
Hmmmm.
I often wonder if the continuous revisionism that goes on with Democrats is an accident or intentional. Like that whole “plastic turkey” nonsense that simply gets regurgitated every couple weeks. And of course the whole “imminent” issue that never was.
A little bit interesting, but not overwhelmingly so.
They won’t be WMD until they can be scanned at the local Walmart producing a recipt that says: “WMD.”
Big MO,
No “lefty” ever had to say why Bush used WMD as the main focus, Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out for everyone.
Long story short, neither the UK nor Australia would sign onto a war for “regime change,” but they would join the Coalition of the focus was disarming Saddam.
What Wolfowitz said, in this context, was “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” (Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003)
The Bush administration wanted “regime change.” Colin Powell wanted to punish Saddam for his invasion of Kuwait (the same logic that pushes Powell to want to punish North Korea). I imagine that, in the grand scheme of things, some people did think about oil, and some about defense contracts, and some about Israel, and some about terrorism. Maybe some in the media wanted ratings, and some of the troops wanted medals and promotions. There were lots of reasons to do it. That didn’t make it a good idea.
Now, at that point, it became vital to prove the story about WMD, to hold the coalition together. Zealous people, like Feith and Luti [who I’d argue are just like the supposed lefties you hate, since they will believe anything bad about Saddam, even from a drunk psychotic named “Curveball” in a German jail, and never believe anything contradictory] made the case as strongly as they could. They cut corners. They cherry-picked. They left out key, key, key parts of the story (for example, American’s top nuclear scientists at Oak Ridge Nat’l Labs knew the aluminum tubes could not be used for enrichment).
Which wars we fight as a nation is far more important than who pays taxes, or whether gays can get married.
By the way, as far as I can tell, “regime change” is another word for killing anyone you don’t like because you can.
No lefty needed to lie. Paul Wolfowitz flat out said why we focussed on WMD.
This collection of leaked documents from the UK fills in the story more fully (6 zipped PDFs).
read the rest of the article.
these weapons were pre-1991. in other words, the agents have degraded to the point that, if deployed, would cause minimal damage.
so these weapons are pre-1991; that would mean thet were acquired during… let’s see… oh yeah, the Reagan administration when Hussein was supposedly a friend and ally. be sure to mention that, willya?
failureman
“as You can see 500 unusable weapons do nothing to validate the administations claims”
Great, then You can sign up for the ” Rotunda experiment ” and show us all what You already know?
I’ll tell you how the liberals reacted: we read the rest of the freakin’ report, the parts which invalidated all your claims. See today’s Daou Report; have a nice day.
Hmmmm.
Actually they’re not that completely useless are they? After all the delivery mechanism is still intact even if the active agents have degraded. And sarin isn’t impossible for groups with access to graduate chemical engineers, money and facilities. Look at Aum Shinrikyo’s attack on the Japanese subway system.
In such an attack isn’t the biggest problem the delivery of the chemical agents and not the manufacture of those agents? Wouldn’t a stash of 155mm chemical artillery shells reloaded with active sarin agent be pretty damn useful?
I know that, were I planning a chemical weapon attack on say NYC I’d like to be far away when these things go off. A few stolen Iraqi 155mm howitzers secured to the deck of a freighter would be a pretty efficient way to deliver a saturation bombardment on lower Manhattan.
*shrug* but that’s me.
So they found 500 leftover forgotten chemical munitions from the iraq/iran war over a three year timespan.
That means they just need to find “over 25,000 liters of anthrax, more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard gas, and VX nerve agents, about [29,500 more] munitions capable of delivering chemical weapons and several mobile biological weapons laboratories designed to produce germ warfare agents” and they will have found THE WMD as described by the White House, rather than just SOME UNUSABLE SHELLS long forgotten.
So far, nobody has accepted my challenge. One gold star goes unclaimed.
To repeat, here’s the challenge: In 2003, just after the occupation and reconstruction began, the DoD issued a statement that they had secured all known legacy WMD storage sites.
The challenge is for you nutters to offer an explanation for why the DoD would say this THREE YEARS AGO if Santorum were really announcing a new “discovery.”
I’m still waiting for a response.
PS:
“This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991,” the official said, adding the munitions “are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.”
The game is over on this, folks. Why are you defending the administration on a point the administration itself has completely given up on? This is what’s called blind, stupid loyalty.
Josh – we focused on WMD because Powell convinced Bush to go the route of the United Nations. We –and the UN — were in a suspended state of war with Iraq since 1991. The war didn’t end then, it only halted, pending Saddam’s compliance with UN demands. Saddam and his goods failed to comply with those demands. Bush and Powell thought–incorrectly, it turns out–that they could gte the UN to follow through on its own words.
But sorry, “regime change” does not mean “killing anyone you don’t like because you can.” That’s just plain stupid and shame on you for saying it. Saddam Hussein was an avowed enemy of this nation, and was a primary cause for instability in the Middle East. Before 9/11, before Bush, President Clinton — remember him? — rightly and justly made “regime change” in Iraq official U.S. policy.
When Bush came to office, he took that policyy at face value, and probably sought ways to carry it out. After 9/11, however, Iraq moved from being a problem to being a serious threat, based on its history and the fact that Saddam had dicked around for 10 years in failing to comply with UN demands.
The thought of a terrorist-supporting state giving WMD to terrorists to use was unthinkable and unacceptible to Bush. Libs accuse him of failing to connect the dots on 9/11. Well, he connected the dots on Iraq based on all of the available intelligence and it scared the hell out of him.
THAT’S why WMD became a big issue, and why Bush and Powell went to the UN, and why Wolfowitz said WMD was the issue everyone could agree on.
So I don’t beleive he lied, I don’t believe there was a con job, I don’t think there was any foul.
Just really bad intel.
Pete – don’t I get the gold star? I’m not defending the WMD claim 🙂
Gabriel Chapman, Lee, mantis, AJR, mantis, Shadowhawk, grh, Davebo, Pete Fosse, Josh “Maury” Narins, trrll, madmatt, ProudLefty, Fred, failureman, Great Caesars Ghost, Paul Linebarger, thinkingman, & John Gillnitz:
If they weren’t so evil, your attempts to spin, downplay, and minimize these facts would almost be laugh-out-loud hilarious.
I’m sure al Qaeda, Kim Jung Il, & Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appreciate your efforts.
Hillary Clinton: “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic.”
It is one thing to debate and disagree. It is quite another to lie, spin, and propagandize for the enemy. That is un-patriotic. Maybe those named above see it differently. It really just depends on who you hope wins this war.
Interesting, no WMDs has now morphed into old and useless WMDs..
Perhaps Saddam in His glowering wisdom simply shipped out the freshest most useful WMDs to Syria via plane,convoy before the invasion. some went to Khadafi some Iran, what a stretch to think a country hellbent against the civilized world to produce nuclear weapons (Iran) would ever consider Saddams free gifts off limits and report it to the security council.
Bottom line is WMDs were there! and are spread out all across the mideast. Quit trying to rewrite reality to fit Your agendas leftists.
I wonder what we would have uncovered had we just went in and said the hell with the UN, e.g., 14 months earlier than we did. You know, that whole “rush to war” period.
Bunyan:
I work for the United States Air Force, you coward.
Talking about grasping at straws. Even the Defense Department disavowed Santorum’s claim. And seriously, if the Bush Administration had any evidence of WMD discoveries, do you really believe they would be silent about it?
Hey Heralder, freddy doesn’t need to leave the comfort of his double-wide to kill American soldiers. Every traitorous anti-American word out of his and the rest of these liberal scumbags (murtha, clinton, fag-kerry, kennedy, biden, etc) mouths emboldens the insurgents to kill our troops. Hey freddy, how do you look at yourself in the morning?
A) The munitions (weapons) that were found could be used to kill thousands, if not millions of people. That many people would be considered a “mass” of people.
B) They were found in Iraq.
c) The comment by the DOD was that “these weren’t the WMD we were looking for.” (Shades of Obiwan Kenobi.) This is called “downplaying” the discovery. In other words, “we found some WMD, but not the right ones.”
D) Doing it the way the Liberals want us to can get us killed. I’m against that.
Regardless of the Administration’s position on these discoveries, they are still weapons that could have caused consternation to Americans if they hadd wound up in the wrong hands.
I have to disagree with my fellow conservatives here. This is old news. The DoD says so, and the Administration isn’t crowing about this.
Yes, these shells fit the definition of WMD. Some may still work. But so what? We secured them some time ago. What does it really matter now?
I’m serious. I’m not siding with the regular Bush-haters who infest this board, I just hestitate to put too much stock in this.
Big Mo
Exactly! thats always gnawed at Me, that We did not go in immediately and catch Him redhanded..perhaps the military was worried about the use of these being unleashed on our troops in large quantities? I dont know the reasons but it sure would have uncovered a lot more of what was really going on in there. Maybe Bush was giving cover to the U.N. to mitigate their ties to Saddam via Oil for food scandal? seems plausible to Me..or maybe there is a big surprise yet to be released.
I’m with Mo here. I’m a conservative, but it doesn’t mean I can’t read. As of yet this is a non-issue.
914:
With all due respect, alot of what you’re saying is plausible, but still falls under the lable of conjecture. Let’s not fall into the same trap of rewriting history. Things will come clear in time, and people will either feel validated in the postitions they held, or embarassed.
Bunyan, if your goal was to get under my skin, it worked. Against my better judgement, I let that happen.
Now you listen here, tough man. My obligation is to defend and protect the security interests of the United States, and I take that job VERY seriously.
My point here was to educate you on a very elementary fact that the case for war was based on the idea that Saddam had RECONSTITUTED his WMD program, NOT that there were some leftover shells filled with mustard gas and the like. This is incontrovertible. There is NO debate about that. On this point you are simply wrong, as the administration willingly, freely, publicly states. Concede.
It does the United States armed forces NO good at all to be ordered into combat based on a case for war that FALLS APART halfway through the mission. Men and women are serving and dying over there for a war most people now oppose, and that’s a tragedy. It breaks my heart, and it makes me very angry, as well. Those warriors deserve the support of all Americans, and they deserve a mission that stands up over time. No matter how you reconstruct this problem, and how you shift the blame, and the end of the day we are in a war most Americans do not support, and that’s a BIG problem that lies at the feet of the Administration. They are responsible for maintaining support, one way or the other, and that’s not happening.
I speak only for myself, personally, not for the Air Force or any other organization. But you need to know that the person you are calling a traitor almost certainly has more experience working with the US military than you ever did or will. And I am telling you, man to sniveling coward, that you’re a fool if you don’t know the difference between known, legacy shells and a reconstituted program. You’re a fool for thinking that the FACTS that I marshall as I patiently explain this to you, AGAIN, means I don’t support this country. Facts are facts. They exist. They are not yours to change or ignore. The case for war was built around a reconstituted WMD program that has ALWAYS been differentiated from legacy weapons decaying in storage. Period. Deal with it.
We are fortunate that popular opposition to the war, so far, has not translated into lack of support for the military. Most Americans are capable of making this critically important distinction, even if you’re too stupid to do so yourself. To its immense and everlasting credit, the US military adheres with total dedication to the idea of civilian control, and it does what it’s told to do the best it possibly can. The best we can hope for is civilian leadership that’s worthy of that dedication and obedience. Enough said, I think, on THAT point.
My personal email address is above. You email me if you wish to discuss my commitment to my country face to face, because I WILL take you up on that offer, son.
Why would Bush lie to get us into Iraq?
Well, possibly because if sanctions were ever lifted on him, Saddam could have flooded the oil market and driven the price of a barrel of oil through the floor. If that had happened Cheney’s buddies in the oil business could have never have been able to claim that shortages caused the steep increase in raise prices. Record profits show that the oil companies were lying.
Saddam was planning to use the euro to trade oil.
The neo-cons saw Iraq as a potentially large unregulated market where everything could be bought by up by US corporations and everything could be privatized.
Yeah, I know it’s kind of banal, but the real reason we went to war is for money.
Rick Santorum’s association with this bogus and discredited story is proof positive the frothy Senator from Pennsylvania is getting desperate about trailing Casey in the polls 55%-35%. He may have to go to work for a living.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon responds with a senior Defense Department official pointing out that the chemical weapons were not in useable condition:
“This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991,” the official said, adding the munitions “are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.”
Give it up, nancy-boys.
Big Mo and Herlader are catching on… for the rest of yammering parrots:
…the munitions “are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.”
Pete – relax. Trust me. These idiots aren’t worth the perspiration….
Pete Fosse,
My comment wasn’t directed specifically at you, but at everyone on the left who have been trying so hard to destroy the credability of the United States and to delegitimize this war.
As you say facts are fact. It is a fact much of what the left/MSM has said since the beginning of this war help the terrorists, Iran, and North Korea, and the rest of America’s enemies.
Spin away, propagandize all you want. Just be aware of which side you’re fighting for.
Where I referred to this as new information (if I did, I didn’t go back to check) I should have said newly released. I am not arguing that any of this info is new, just that it is not being brought to the public in an prominent way. The piece I referenced and linked from Timmerman was enough for me, but there have been many other discoveries documented, plus the WMD found on its way to Jordan from Syria, plus the documented links between Saddam and terrorists…
If all the information that has been documented was found all at once and presented as one big package it would have been a bombshell (pardon the pun). Instead, as often is the case in reality, things have come out in dribs and drabs, rather than with a dramatic bang.
Heralder
You are of course right, it was conjecture. This waiting for the truth to come out is a slow painful process that is tearing our country apart and it is very hard to watch it happen.
Robby Lewis
The story itself is bogus? they did not find 500 shells? please.
OK, so WMD were found, never mind they haven’t been useable for at least a decade and half, and that the reason the wingers were so sure they were there was because GHWB’s administration gave them to Saddam. It’s an election year, what matters is we’re (GOP?) right you’re(Dems) wrong. See the war was/is worth it. Add to that the mutilated bodies of two American Soldiers (gosh one was Hispanic) that can now be cannonized in the press and used to justify anything other American Soldiers might do( it is that which cheapens the horror that these young men went though)and it is a sure win. That is if the rest of America buys it.
Jay,
1) Yes, the weapons appear to predate the first Gulf War. That puts them in the category of ones Saddam was supposed to have reported and destroyed under international supervision, by the terms of his surrender. He did not do so, therefore the agreement that ended that war is null and void. Renewal of hositilities may commence.
Granted, he did not abide by the agreement ending the Gulf War, in this and other ways. I’ve never argued that he did, but no matter. Let me ask you a question, though. If, before the war, we did know about these chemical weapons left over from the Iran-Iraq War and not destroyed, and we also positively knew that he had not reconstituted any weapons programs, would the war have been worth it, from a WMD standpoint?
2) The most likely explanation for why the terrorists haven’t used these weapons is that they didn’t know where they were. Saddam hid them quite well.
So you’re saying that if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, Saddam would have given these presumably useless weapons to the terrorists that weren’t there so they could use them against us even though we weren’t there either?
3) This single announced discovery amounts to over a ton and a half of poison gas. That’s the weight of a small-to-medium car, in gas form. And 500 shells — imagine 500 bullets. Now blow those bullets up until they’re 6″ in diameter — that’s a 155mm artillery shell, roughly.
4) WMDs are clearly defined as NBCs: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical. Poison gas is defined as a chemical weapon, and therefore a WMD. 500 artillery shells containing 1.6 TONS of poison gas is a lot of WMD.
I don’t know about your math, but assuming it’s right, so what? 1.6 tons of useless sludge is a lot of sludge.
Anyway, if I can figure this correctly, the main reason we went to war has now become so we could secure any remnants of Saddam’s weapons from the 1980s so the terrorists attracted to Iraq by that same war couldn’t get them and use them against us, even though they are useless. Is that about right or am I missing something?
Bunyan,
Funny, like Pete, I also served, at least a little. I went back to a recruiter last week to ask about getting in again.
Pete Fosse,
I thought the way you put things at post 11:13AM was perfect, thank you.
Big Mo,
First you said you had no explanation, then when I give the explanation (to get the UK and Australia to sign onto the war, because they would not go to war for “regime change”) you say the reason was really Colin Powell?
Read the Leaks Brief, Mo.
Please don’t bring the UN into this. The Bush administration planned to bring up a resolution to go into Iraq and they realized they didn’t have the votes so they withdrew the motion and then claimed the first motion (1441, was it?) was all they needed. If that was all they needed, why did they try the second motion?
No offense meant, Mo, but you seem to be shifting the lines of debate.
And it is certainly a fact that some people tried to con us. Whether or not the President knew about the con is not even that important, he is accountable, he is responsible.
Pete Fosse said:
To repeat, here’s the challenge: In 2003, just after the occupation and reconstruction began, the DoD issued a statement that they had secured all known legacy WMD storage sites.
The challenge is for you nutters to offer an explanation for why the DoD would say this THREE YEARS AGO if Santorum were really announcing a new “discovery.”
Well to answer that, let’s look at the actual report from John Negroponte which says:
“Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent”
So the answer is, no this is not a new discovery. It’s new news in that the CIA has finally admitted to the fact that they did find some WMDs since 2003.
“The story itself is bogus? they did not find 500 shells? please.”
The story that they found 500 shells isn’t bogus – idiot – but the claim that they represent “weapons of mass destruction” IS – according to the DoD.
For all of the people who claim this is not big deal and that these were old, degraded and useless chemicals please explain how the following quotes from the CIA report don’t apply.
“The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.”
John Negroponte
Director of National Intelligence
Eric –
So what you’re saying is, in 2003 the DoD publicly secured known legacy WMD sites and issues a press release saying so. Today, Santorum announces that WMD were found at the known WMD sites secured in 2003. And this, you call news. Your definition of “news” differs from mine.
Pete, I agree I remember them claiming in 2003 that they secured sites. But I don’t remember them announcing that they found 500 munitions filled with mustard and sarin. Do you remember them including that little detail?
If not, then this fact is indeed NEW!
Some on the left are anti-American, as are many on the far right. That’s old news. The MSM most certainly is not anti-American, and the fact that you feel they are is testament to your delusions and victimization fantasies. Let me tell you, those of us with actual responsibilities in this field cannot afford such flights of fancy.
A free press was recognized by our founders as essential to the operation of a democracy. Too bad you feel otherwise.
Your definition of “news” differs from mine.
———————————————
Peter,
I wonder why the left and the Dems who have known these intelligence data since 2003 willingly trot out the myth of “no WMD”.
It ‘s good that we can agree that the left ‘s definition of news differed from objective reporting.
Ok, well I don’t know what else I would have expected at known legacy WMD sites, other than legacy WMD. What were you expecting – crates full of kittens? Boxes of Jolly Ranchers?
The whole regime was a weapon of mass destruction (2,000,000 dead) including what we know about the 5,000 kurds being “peacefully euthanized” draws the conclusion..
The regime was a WMD.
Hmmmm.
Maybe nobody wants your “gold star”?
Maybe because these weapons were not found *in* “all known legacy WMD storage sites.”?
That’s ok. I forgive you.
Sorry guys – I’ve read the release. All the weapons we’ve found so far are PRE-GULF WAR, and nobody ever doubted we’d find a bunch of defunct weapons.
If the CCM (corrupt corporate media) won’t report on this, then too bad.
Big Mo et al
BigMo, you posted: “Well, he (Bush)connected the dots on Iraq based on all of the available intelligence and it scared the hell out of him.”
Not quite. An inexperienced & unqualified president was victim of Cheney’s manipulation of intelligence about Iraq. Or Bush knew what he was doing, notwithstanding Cheney’s crafting of intelligence & policy and deliberately participated in false claims to manipulate public opinion. The record is clear.
Did you see Frontline, The Dark Side, Tuesday night? It makes it quite clear that the inexperienced Bush was the captive of Cheney & his cabal who were determined from Day One of the Bush Administration to invade Iraq. It shows clearly how the arguments for invasion were crafted from less than certain intelligence & how Administration claims about Iraq were developed thru pressure on intelligence analysts & with deceitful manipulation.
Lest you resort to an ad hominem about PBS or Frontline, this report was replete w/ comments & interviews from a panoply of former CIA analysts & government officials, not to mention innumerable public statements made by most of the participants in the build-up to the Iraqi War.
For like the 12th time, the case for war was built around whether Saddam had a reconstituted WMD program, NOT whether he had had one in the past that was dismantled or destroyed. Everybody – and here I mean every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth – knew he had had them in the past, and used them on Kurds and Iranians.
So for you nutters to suddenly act shocked that the legacy WMD everybody on the planet knew about have been found here and there. Well, it’s almost poignant. Your naivity and ignorance is so total, my anger at being called a traitor is morphing into kind of a mild pity. This war you all support, you really don’t know anything about it. You don’t even know that the two top objectives after the fall of Saddam’s forces were securing the oil infrastructure and securing known legacy WMD sites. You don’t know this. Amazing.