Oops! Looks like we may have found some more of those WMDs that never existed…
In related news, Al Qaeda continues to have no connection to Iraq.
update: Nevermind. The kids at DU remind us that the Sarin gas is quite obviously a US military plant. And here I was thinking our enemies were evil. (h/t Michele)
More.
update 2: QandO, and Captain’s Quarters. And Citizen Smash has a more complete round-up here. My post is not included in that “more complete” round-up, but then I have imaginary driveway conversations with my imaginary neighbor, and so really should be ignored far more frequently than I am at present.
re: your update re: DU… It’s eye-opening when people make the transition from stupid to evil so transparently.
So, let me see if I got this straight.
Any WMD’s that show up in Iraq now were clearly brought into Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed from power, but it is inconceiveable that any such weapons could have been taken out of Iraq prior to the fall of Saddam.
Gotta love the consistency of leftist logic.
The issue of banned weapons in Iraq is difficult to discuss with supporters of the invasion, because—in my experience, at least—supporters of the invasion know so little about it.
So, let me advise you not to whip yourself into a frenzy of excitment about this. The only surprise about this shell (assuming that news reports are accurate) is that more like it haven’t been found previously. Let me explain why it certainly does not mean what you want it to mean.
Iraq produced huge quantities of chemical weapons during its war with Iran. They made (among other agents) sarin, tabun, mustard and VX. After the war they admitted to producing some of these agents, while denying they’d produced others, notably VX. The agents they admitted to producing were handed over to the UN for destruction.
After 91, under the pressure of inspections, they admitted to more and more. However, they always claimed that the agents that weren’t declared immediately had been secretly destroyed in 91.
When Hussein Kamel, Saddam’s son-in-law, defected in 1995, he revealed that Iraq still, at that point, was not being truthful about Iraq’s pre-91 WMD programs. However, he also said Iraq had nothing left from those programs—no chemical or biological weapons, no nuclear program—except documentation. Indeed, he explained that the weapons produced pre-91, and not declared to the UN, had been secretly destroyed. Iraq, he said, was not trying to conceal any banned arms.
We now know, via internal Iraqi documents reported on by the Washington Post, that Kamel was telling the truth. Indeed, Iraq was not intentionally concealing any banned weapons after 91.
HOWEVER—militaries lose things. The Pentagon is estimated to lose a billion dollars worth of equipment every year. Just within the last decade, US chemical munitions from World War I were unearthed in a housing development in Washington, DC.
So there are almost certainly a few scattered shells with chemical weapons left in Iraq. The important question is not whether there are small amounts of such weapons still extant. It’s whether Iraq was intentionally concealing them.
The answer to this question is almost certainly no. And indeed, that’s been clear since long before the war. That’s why I bet $1000 that no more than very small quantities of banned weapons would be found in Iraq within a year of the invasion.
So again, if you’re a serious person and a supporter of the invasion, don’t proclaim this is vindication. Doing so just indicates you don’t know anything about this and makes you look foolish.
I’m an unserious person, Jon. But thanks for the concern.
Darn. And I had the cat-o’-nine-tails, the jello, the bubble wrap, the Donna Summers Greatest Hits—everything ready for the big Frenzy I was going to whip myself into. But Jon just sucked the air out of my balloon; now I’m just going to sit morosely on the couch in my leatherwear, eat peanut butter out of the jar with my fingers, and watch Cartoon Network. Mmm. Honey-roasted.
Andrea, you are wonderfully twisted.
Those conversations with your neighbor are imaginary?! Jeff LIED!! Neighbors DIED!!!
Define Irony:
From the DU message board: “I don’t know how you can stomach the crap they write at freepcity. Those people are so delusional that they don’t know their head from their ass. What a bunch of freaking morons.”