Attention, Bush-backers. I have excellent news for you concerning George W’s slippery rationale for his Iraq Attack: at long last, weapons of mass destruction have been found!
Senator Rick Santorum recently released a one-page summary of a military intelligence report declaring that about 500 weapons containing poisonous mustard gas and sarin agents have been unearthed in Iraq. Santorum triumphantly exulted: “We now have found stockpiles.” Donnie Rumsfeld, who once flatly claimed that WMDs would quickly be found, also claimed vindication by the belated discovery: “They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found,” he crowed.
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But wait, Bush-backers – it’s not all good news. Unfortunately for Rick, Donnie, and others who rushed to hold press conferences, the actual intelligence report is a lot less exciting than Santorum’s sanitized summary. It turns out that these weapons are nothing but old duds. Far from being the long-sought arsenal of banned WMDs that Bush had alleged Saddam Hussein was stockpiling, these mustard and sarin agents were left over from Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s – back when the U.S. was backing Saddam and encouraging his use of such weapons.
Also, instead of being found in “stockpiles,” as Santorum falsely asserted, these duds were found in ones and twos scattered around the country. They had been discarded rather than amassed into an arsenal. An intelligence official conceded off the record that the weapons are so old they could no longer be used as designed – and that they had posed no threat at the time of Bush’s 2003 invasion in Iraq. In other words, these are not the WMDs the Bushites claimed were there.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Still, truth won’t prevent Santorum – who’s currently running for re-election – from playing politics. I would not be surprised to hear Rick claim that stockpiles of mustard agents have been found in an Iraqi hot dog stand.
Sources:
“Claims on Iraq weapons criticized,” Austin American-Statesman, June 23, 2006.
“Dayton Daily News,” Austin American-Statesman, June 24, 2006.
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