Well, what do you know? There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I guess it’s a good thing we went to war for oil because we might not have gotten these. And they were used by terrorists against our troops? Do you think they’ve been hiding them all this time?
Seriously, this tells us several things. For one thing, as every serious person knew, Saddam indeed had WMD. It also tells us that much of it must be hidden around the country (and maybe outside it) and the terrorists operating in Iraq are led by people at a high enough level to know where it is. And they must be getting desparate to start using it in this way, as roadside bombs.
Of course, as has been said many times before, these weapons were not the only reason to get rid of Saddam. He was himself the big “weapon of mass destruction.” Still, finding this stuff might make some annoying naysayers pipe down for a while. Not for too long though; they’ll soon find something else to latch onto.
There’s a big difference between it being a stray shell and being one taken from a stockpile. Also, this was exploded by idiots apparently. If a terrorist with real expertise makes the connection with this group that has access to shells—properly deployed one shell can kill thousands.
A stray shell implies it was part of a stockpile somewhere. And it wasn’t only one. They’ve found at least two of them used this way in recent weeks.
From FoxNews.com this afternoon (apparently, the Clinton News Network – CNN – didn’t see fit to cover the story when I checked this afternoon):
“An official at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) headquarters in New York said the commission is surprised to hear news of the mustard gas.
“‘If that’s the case, why didn’t they announce it earlier?’ the official asked.”
“The UNMOVIC official said the group needs to know more from the Bush administration before it’s possible to determine if this is ‘old or new stuff. It is known that Iraq used sarin during the Iraq-Iran war, however.”
First: Why the hell does UNMOVIC care whether news of the finds were announced sooner or later? Anything to deflect attention from their rank incompetence, and the idiocy of their erstwhile Inspector Clousseau equivalent, Hans Blix.
Second: In the same story, Brig. Gen. Kimmitt said that the ordinance pre-dates the 1991 Gulf War. Why was UNMOVIC so quick to question the weapons’ provenance when all they had to do was listen to Kimmitt’s press briefing? Again, a clear effort to deflect attention from UNMOVIC’s failures.
Third: Is someone in the Bush Administration calling Damascus to remind them of the convenient beachhead we now have for launching strikes against Syria? You know…as a reminder that we’d like to know more about where Saddam’s WMD’s may have gone.
These incompetent UN clowns have now formally shed any vestige of credibility that may have been left. Any statements from UNMOVIC, its mouthpieces or its sycophants, should be treated with the same care and regard as one would treat sarin and mustard gas themselves.
Last month, I covered a talk by David Kay, the former weapons inspector and assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. Iraq had WMD in the early 1990’s and had development programs throughout the decade. Saddam destroyed his WMD in the mid-90’s but continued his deception program, fooling the US and intimidating his enemies. Kay provides a credible explanation of why. See my website <www.marieely.com/herbely/>for details.
Sadly, many Americans do not yet understand that we will be attacked ruthlessly and mercilessly with WMDs unless we rout our opponents. Their whimpering about not finding WMDs in Iraq is only leading up to the day when LA or Disneyworld or Washington DC is vaporized or poisoned…
I heard from a Vietnam veteran yesterday who served as an artillaryman. His job involved launching 155 mm shells at enemy targets. The shells he used in 1970 were constructed during the KOREAN WAR. Artillary shells can last for a very long time.
Those who claim this is a “stray shell” (actually I think there were 3 rigged to explode & only 1 did)- a couple of questions: Do you really think someone was making artillary shells one at a time? Where are all the other shells that these came from?
Oh, by the way, all those poo-pooing the WMD issue – please explain to me why tons of pesticides have been found stored at Iraqi ammo dumps.
Sinner, lets keep the questions separate. (I spent 32 years analyzing Soviet weapons programs.) 1) The intelligence community erred in its assessment that Iraq held large stockpilse of WMD. See my website for some reasons why. 2) there is still a WMD threat. It could come from a small scale undetected group such as the Aum Shirenko cults nerve agent attack in a subway in Tokiyo in 1993(?). Attempting to prove that 1) is false may cause us to miss the real dangers presented in 2).
Herb,
Since you spent 32 years analyzing Soviet weapons programs, perhaps you can explain to me why the Saddam was storying huge stockpiles of “pesticides” at several of his weapons depots. Do weapons depots generally have a larger than normal problem with bugs?
Sure, Herb, I’m with you. The intelligence community erred, but I certainly draw the conclusion that Bush believed WMDs were there. He is right to go after those he believes produce and stockpile and would like to use them (and who don’t come clean about them). If we don’t, and aggressively so, they will be inevitably used on us.
Daniel, Don’t know about the pesticides, but here is a guess: Pesticides don’t work well as a miitary weapon – they are too slow and not lethal enough. They would work well for, say, terrorizing a defenseless population – maybe the Kurds. Second, we repeated an error we made in analyzing the Soviet Army. We always assumbed that they were competant and dangerous. This is understandable. We were preparing for combat and it is very difficult prove a negative.
Sinner, I think Bush was acting in good faith. The administration was fooled on WMD stockpiles. It didn’t lie. Even if it was fooled, small scale use of WMD in, say, thw Washington Metro, would have been a grave threat after 9/11.
Well, then, Herb, perhaps you might want to contact Kenneth Timmerman and tell him that Douglas Hanson has it all wrong. Hanson, according to Timmerman was “… a U.S. Army cavalry reconnaissance officer for 20 years, and a veteran of Gulf War I … an atomic demolitions munitions security officer and a nuclear, biological and chemical defense officer. As a civilian analyst in Iraq last summer, he worked for an operations intelligence unit of the CPA in Iraq, and later, with the newly formed Ministry of Science and Technology, which was responsible for finding new, nonlethal employment for Iraqi WMD scientists.”
Hanson profoundly disagrees with your dismissal of my question. “Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical-agent arena,” Hanson says. “In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the ‘grandfather’ of modern-day nerve agents.”
Timmerman reports that “Caches of “commercial and agricultural” chemicals don’t match the expectation of “stockpiles” of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. “At a very minimum,” Hanson tells Insight, “they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly.”
Read Timmermans’s entire article here: http://www.wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38213
But, of course, none of this really matters to everyone who has bought the propoganda that we’ve all been, well, pick your term, fooled, misled, lied to, whatever, when it comes to WMDs.