MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Saddam’s Chemical Weapons

• Posted by Beth on June 22nd, 2006 filed in General, Iraq, Journalism, Support the Troops, The War, UN    

Well, yesterday when all the news was breaking, I was out buying new shooooes. :mrgreen:

So NO, I havent’ been blowing off the news of the chemical weapons found in Iraq–I was doing actual “real life” stuff. (Thanks to Larry for posting!)

OK, so here’s a shot of the Negroponte memo with the meat:

Of course, the stupid farking Left, who is constantly harping, “where are the WMDs???” is discounting them now that they’re saying they EXIST–”oh, but they’re old,” “they’re irrelevant,” and other assorted bullshi’ite. Note the line, “While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.” I seriously doubt any of the jackasses discounting this report would feel too comfortable if, say, the “old” chemical weapons were used in their neck of the woods. (Of course, that doesn’t matter to them–nobody would ever do such a thing, would they! Only Boooosh would do that! Just like 9/11!)

Frankly, I don’t even think this report matters much anyway. There were/are plenty of reasons to go into Iraq, and this was just one of them. Besides, these batshi’ite crazy leftards wouldn’t care if we found functioning nuclear weapons with Saddam’s signature engraved in them; they would still dismiss it and would say “well what about (whatever)?!”

I don’t expect anything will EVER convince the “antiwar” (haha) left of the righteousness of this war. Nothing. We went to Iraq while Bush was President, and that is truly all that matters to them, and as much as they wish they could change history, it won’t change (but not for a lack of their trying!).

Captain’s Quarters and Hot Air have the posts/roundups everyone’s reading. Insty’s got a transcript of the press conference with Senators Santorum and Hoekstra, and Hot Air has must-see video with LTG Tom McInerney and links to SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog, who’s got champagne chilling.

Which makes it all the stranger that this information is only now being declassified. There is no sources-and-methods consideration for keeping this secret. These weapons were found over a long period of time, at least in part through the very conventional method of sorting through conventional weapons caches. Maybe they will trace back to UN Security Council members, but I can’t say that that would surprise anybody. France, after all, helped build Saddam’s Osirak reactor. Russia is supposed to have helped Iraq evacuate WMD’s. And after Oil-for-Food, it’s not like anyone expects these countries to be blameless.

Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. In fact, it would shock me if their hands were clean. The way the UN is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kofi Annan himself helped Saddam stockpile chemical weapons. (Yes, I am jaded and cynical about the filthy UN and “certain” other Security Council nations–can you tell?)

Sit tight, y’all…there’s got to be more coming with this story. The question is, how much will we ever hear about it? As I write this, there’s nothing in the New York Times (shocking, I know). The Washington Post has a short bit on page A10. The Washington Times has this–

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings to Agence France-Presse that all the weapons were pre-1991 munitions “in such a degraded state they couldn’t be used for what they are designed for.” The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155mm artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.

But a counterterrorism adviser to the U.S. government told The Washington Times that even imperfect chemical munitions could be rigged for improvised use, as Iraqi insurgents have used artillery shells as roadside bombs. The adviser also said that the unclassified sections of the report do not suggest, and there’s no sure way to tell, whether the gas had been degrading for the three years since the fall of Saddam or the 15 years since he agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

Beyond the Washington Times, Fox News, and the little bit from the WaPo, nothing from the mainstream media (yet?).

Just out in the 7/1 issue of The Weekly Standard, Daniel McKivergan says this–and seeing as how the Negroponte memo isn’t even mentioned, it was written before Wednesday’s news:

…On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq’s “Unresolved Disarmament Issues.” It stated that the “long list” of “unaccounted for” WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998–the month inspections ended in Iraq–and beyond were still “unaccounted for.” The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been “weaponized”); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced “3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent.” Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing “verifiable evidence” that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials.

McKivergan also cites the Duelfer Report–so go read all of it.

One final note–I just now stumbled on this in the comments at CQ. Remember the cache of Iraqi documents that’s sitting out there to be translated? Yeah, I sorta pushed it to the back of my mind, too, since I can’t translate them anyway. Here’s one: Iraqi Document: Highly Radioactive Atomic Neutron Device (Translation). (WTF?!) I haven’t made sense of it at all yet, and I need sleep. Just a quick skim through the comments shows they’re looking at it, at least at FR–and I don’t know squat about the details of that stuff, anyway. Apparently someone does, though…?
Oh…WOW.

Tags: Saddam Hussein, WMD, WMDs, UN, Santorum, Hoekstra, Negroponte, chemical weapons