Yeah, I know, hard to believe if you've invested a lot of effort in using their absence as proof of the essential evil reckless cowboyness of a certain politician, but this is certainly a strange enough story even without all the braying of the lunatics.
The fact is, as best as I can glean, we did find some older chemical weapon artillery shells in Iraq--and I seem to recall reports from the time saying just that--but since that time their existence has been classified, for some reason. As you can read in all of the articles Mr. Goldstein links, there's enough conspiracy theories out there to float an aircraft carrier about exactly why this was the case, but I tend to go with the old bromide about not blaming conspiracy when incompetence offers an equally valid outcome.
I doubt this will get very much play in the old-line press, in that it would tend to invalidate what their party-line has been, just as I doubt any of them would ever assign anyone to track down leads about so much of the manufacturing bits and pieces being spirited off to Syria and Iran.
IN the end, I have the feeling that anything short of Saddam Hussein running naked down the middle of Broadway screaming and throwing flaming wads of anthrax on people would ever be enough to convince some folks that he might have--maybe, theoretically--been dabbling in such things.
There's more to be learned in this, and it will be worth seeing how it is handled.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 22, 2006 10:50 AMOne man's WMD is another man's insecticide. It's all in how you define things. My theory is Mr. Saddam had eveloped an efficient way to kill mosquitos.
Posted by: Larry Anderson at June 22, 2006 11:11 AMHe is such a humanitarian, you know.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 22, 2006 11:31 AMDang, I'm good. I just noticed that even my mistakes make semi-sense such as "enveloped" in my earlier comment where it should have been "developed".
Of course, my non-mistakes also only make semi-sense.
Posted by: Larry Anderson at June 22, 2006 01:03 PMWell, actually, Larry--your word was "eveloped" not "enveloped." I thought it was a combination of the words "evolved" and "eloped," and I was not quite sure what it had to do with mosquitos, but in the greater scheme of things that doesn't matter.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 22, 2006 01:24 PMSo I fit well with the current major media?
Posted by: Larry Anderson at June 22, 2006 01:38 PMHehee--silly, silly Larry. Of COURSE you are nowhere NEAR as capable as the major media, who require an army of writers and editors to make such semi-sensical non-mistakes. Why, you're nothing but one of those pajama-clad teenagers whiling away his afternoon in your parent's basement, eating Cheetos and trying to play like a journalist!
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 22, 2006 01:42 PMYou, sirrah, have clearly never seen the bright lights on Broadway. Hussein running down that particular street naked & flaming is a slow day around here.
Oh, and I believe Anthrax tends to smolder, not flame.
Posted by: Skinnydan at June 22, 2006 02:26 PMAlas, my country bumpkinness is all too apparent. I knew I should have added a further descriptor, such as "throwing smoldering wads of anthrax on people whilst clutching a Boston Red Sox foam finger."
My apologies for my lack of cosmopolitanity.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at June 22, 2006 02:31 PMThat would definitely do it. Mind you, if it was a well known American religious spiritual figure walking down the street asking people politely to stop sinning in various ways, I suspect our media pals would be on that one quick enough.
Posted by: Skinnydan at June 22, 2006 02:52 PM