From the Cybercast News Service, because nobody else has the balls to put it up on the Web, though Fox News Channel did carry this –
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) announced Wednesday the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically “sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles,” in Iraq.
Reading from unclassified portions of a document developed by the U.S. intelligence community, Santorum said, “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.”
According to Santorum, “That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country.”
As I type, I just finished hearing Santorum state this on the Senate floor. Where’s my apology, Russ el-Slimeroad? Where is it, Howie Deanie? How about it, Ketchup Boy? You asshats still want to bleat, “Bush lied!”?
Revisions/extensions (6:22 pm 6/21) – Here is Rick Santorum’s press release, something else you won’t see from the presstitutes:
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public.
"The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq," said Senator Santorum. "It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq."
The following are the six key points contained in the unclassified overview:
"¢ Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
"¢ Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
"¢ Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.
"¢ The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
"¢ The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
"¢ It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
Unfortunately, this does not prove anything. Bush himself has acknowledged that “Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.”
Your precious FOXNews did cover the story:
Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.
“This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991,” the official said, adding the munitions “are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war.”
In short, there is nothing Rick (I’m down 20 points in the polls!) Santorum knows that disputes what the Iraq Survey Group–handpicked by Bush–reported:
While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible Indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter.
I see you got the talking-points fax. Are you going to deny that Iraq was to have destroyed those 500 munitions under the terms of the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War? I seem to recall that their continued possession of those munitions was one of the justifications for the Iraq War.
As for the “old” argument, I seem to recall “age” not being an issue when various enviro-whacko groups opposed the plan to burn the remains of the aged US chemical arsenal back in the 1980s.
From the Washington Post:
The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.
The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
So Santorum trots out old news about weapons that were no longer capable of “mass destruction” that the Iraqis didn’t even know they had, and you want us to, what? say we were wrong? Intellegence, officials, DoD officials, and the White House all said that the WMDs Santorum talked about were not the ones hyped as justification for the war. Those WMDs do not–and did not–exists. Period.
This is Santorum’s desperate attempt to seem relevant to voters in a state where he doesn’t even live anymore who are about to make him unemployed.
I trust named sources over unnamed ones. From yesterday’s DoD news briefing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General George Casey, Commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq –
Of course, you won’t see that reported in WaPo, on CNN, or anywhere else in the Left Stream Media.
Your witness.