You will be tray shockay to learn that as of 9:30PM Pacific Wednesday neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have deigned to report on the press conference called by Rick Santorum and Pete Hoekstra to discuss the newly-declassified report on chemical weapons in Iraq. It has been all over the blogosphere. [Newsprint shortage?-ed. No, it's those lay-offs. No staff.]
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But Roger, this isn’t news. Those are OLD weapons. Bush clearly said that the only reason we went to war was because Saddam had brand new, shiny WMDs. Just because terrorists could go into Iraq, buy these old things, and use them on, say, the New York subways doesn’t justify a war or mean Iraq was a WMD state.
Seriously… I’m sure they are busy figuring out how to fit this into their Bush Lied, People Died narrative. They won’t have much trouble – these are skilled word twisters.
We will hear that since Saddam had no active WMD program (that we knew of, with our wonderful intelligence and inspection capabilities), that Bush went to war for no reason, and lied, lied lied.
Never fear. Those who have concluded that we went to war on a fraud will never, ever be convinced otherwise – evidence or not – just as they have already thrown out the many reasons other than WMDs and retroactively upped the ante to active WMD programs and, of course, with Uranium from Niger.
-Saddam didn’t know he had them therefore they don’t count.
-They were too old to be dangerous.
-500 hundred isn’t enough to justify the death of 5 zillion Iraqis.
-The U.S. put them there and magically “found” them.
Pick one or all of the above and that will equal the response to these developements.
You forgot to question the timing!
Yeah, maybe the shells are so degraded that they only have 1% of the original amount of Sarin in them. In which case they would contain only several hundred lethal doses of nerve agent, rather than tens of thousands of lethal doses.
I think the point is if these shells were there undiscovered, what else is there?
Besides there was that whole verify and destroy thing that Saddam was supposed to do. But hey, he is Saddam and unlike Bush he is not expected to play by the rules.
Syl made the point on our blog that 15 shells killed 500 Kurds.
Maybe they are still laughing about this lame, after-the-fact attempt to justify this quamire.
Jace, you forgot their most likely response:
“Where’s Osama?”
If that doesn’t work, then they’ll try to use the Jedi Mind Trick:
“These are not the WMDs you were looking for… Saddam can go about his business… Move along…”
Perhaps the shells are degraded now (in June 2006), but it seems to me that in the autumn of 2002, they might have been more lethal? And if they were not declared to the UN inspectorate then their mere existence lends weight to the 17 UN resolutions that Saddam and his Baathist thugs violated.
jace, you also forgot to throw in the word “quagmire” on your list, but I see someone has already gleefully contributed it.
Not to quote Harvey Keitel’s famous line from “Pulp Fiction” on premature celebrations, but I do want to see more information. Of course, I have the feeling we’ll never see until years from now, in something akin to the Verona papers.
There seems to be a lot of high-level skullduggery going on here between the U.S., Russia and China, with France and Syria as stooges, which is to be expected. It would be helpful, however, if we had a somewhat loyal intelligence service on our side, rather than the CIA.
“… neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post have deigned to report on the press conference …”
But then they’d have to eat large portions of crow which is very difficult if your face is all covered with egg. The finding of WMD’s is of course a non-event so that the “No WMD’s” lies of previous years can go unchallenged.
This is why I consume nothing from the TSM (Terrorist Supporting Media – the old MSM), as they are nothing but a left-wing, terrorist propaganda machine, and should really be sacked and burned to the ground.
They are old and probably degraded…hence they are only Weapons of Semi-Mass Destruction.
“There’s a difference! There’s a difference!!!” he shrieked while being fitted for his straightjacket.
Throw in one more: “What about ther $9 billion missing from the CPA.” Already saw that one on Protein Wisdom today.
The lofty and intellectual Seattle Post-Intelligencer has also seen fit to suppress the news from Senator Santorum. Likewise the only slightly less intellectual Seattle Times.
These papers are far better at keeping the faith than they are at reporting the news.
No, that’s not The Rule, at all, at all. The Rule is that it’s not a RealWMD(tm) unless it is a nuclear weapon whose fissionable material is entirely from Niger yellowcake. Mustard gas, sarin, anthrax, smallpox — even nuclear weapons where the yellowcake came from a country other than Niger — all are completely harmless.
cathy
Actually, the New York Times was too busy revealing more classified information in order to help terrorists avoid detection. Bill Keller says this was in the “public interest” – guess the terrorists are the NYT’s “public”. Nothing’s too good for our enemies! Way to go, NYT!