WMD In Iraq

I havn’t read it fully, but from the 2/3+ I have read, this looks to be one of the best essays on WMD in Iraq and why they have not been “found”. By “found” I mean “reported in the media as found”.

Until now, however, journalists have devoted scant attention to this evidence, in part because it contradicts the story line they have been putting forward since the U.S.-led inspections began after the war.

But another reason for the media silence may stem from the seemingly undramatic nature of the “finds” Hanson and others have described. The materials that constitute Saddam’s chemical-weapons “stockpiles” look an awful lot like pesticides, which they indeed resemble.

“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.”

The United Nations was fully aware that Saddam had established his chemical-weapons plants under the guise of a permitted civilian chemical-industry infrastructure. Plants inspected in the early 1990s as CW production facilities had been set up to appear as if they were producing pesticides, or in the case of a giant plant near Fallujah, chlorine, which is used to produce mustard gas.

When coalition forces entered Iraq, “huge warehouses and caches of ‘commercial and agricultural’ chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists,” Hanson writes. “What was surprising was how silent the ISG have been on the significance of these caches.”

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.

Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment’s notice. At Karbala, U.S. troops stumbled upon 55-gallon drums of pesticides at what appeared to be a very large “agricultural supply” area, Hanson says. Some of the drums were stored in a “camouflaged bunker complex” that was shown to reporters — with unpleasant results.

I also liked the start.

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It’s just after 9/11. The hole in the ground still smoldering.

The world receives intelligence that Saddam has WMD. Not hard to fathom, just ask any Kurd.

The UN issues resolution after resolution, just asking for permission to take a look around. All for not, Saddam stands fast in his denial, and rejects UN inspectors.

Finally the world (UN) lays down the line in the sand, and Saddam crosses it.

In light of all this the the Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate, by wide margins, approved a resolution that Bush reinforce his demand that the U.N. Security Council use force to enforce its requirements that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein verifiably abandon programs for biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.

Let’s just see here, what do we got so far…The House, The Senate, The UN [that's pushing things a little-S1], and the President of the US all on the same page.

Hardly a conspiracy carried out by GW to vindicate his Dad, or rush in for oil, or…whatever the dark wizards of the MSM conspiracy theorists invention might have planned.