Yesterday afternoon John Stephenson reported that Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) had released the details of a recently declassified document:
.... the finding of over 500 munitions or weapons of mass destruction, specifically “sarin- and mustard-filled projectiles,” in Iraq.
Captain's Quarters has an excellent analysis of the story, including this update:
None of the wire services have seen fit to report on this development, but CNS has a report here. One argument that may come up is that these munitions predated the first Gulf War. Well, that's exactly what the sanctions regime, UNSCOM, and the majority of the 16 UN Security Council resolutions addressed -- and what Saddam defied. He was supposed to account for and destroy all of his existing WMD stock. Obviously he did not do that, and in reading the Negroponte letter and the transcript of the Santorum/Hoekstra presser, the Pentagon feels that more of it still exists in Iraq -- perhaps a lot more.
Austin Bay has more and makes the point that this declassified document is the tip of the iceberg:
UPDATE 4: Michael Ledeen takes me to task:
Austin, if you will read the floor statements by Hoekstra and Santorum you will see that they have read a classified file, of which DNI (Negroponte) declassified a few snippets. Both elected officials said several times that they were very unhappy at the miserly declassification, and they will fight for it all. Your legitimate request for “more information” has to be directed at Negroponte, not at Santorum and Hoekstra.
This morning, a search of the New York Times for articles that mention "sarin" returned no hits. At 6 AM this morning, on NPR, the top 5 news stories were, in order:
- President Bush's prospective speech celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet occupation, which was brutally put down; included was an obligatory comment that the Hungarian President asked Bush to close down Guantanamo.
- A report on the 7 Marines and one corpsman held at Camp Pendleton who have charged with the murder of an Iraqi man.
- The raging wildfire in Sedona.
- A brief report on the Asian Stock markets.
- Four American soldiers dead in Afghanistan and one wounded in a clash with the Taliban (with, of course, no mention of how many Taliban were killed, wounded, or captured.)
I am not interested in arguing how much of a danger 500 poison gas shells that were made prior to 1991 represent. I do not know enough about the conditions in which they were found, how quickly sarin or mustard gas deteriorates, or how deadly they still would be. I suspect only a very few people have the technical knowledge to make those determinations. I also suspect that when the shells were found, the investigators wore Chemical Weapon protective gear because the answers would not have been immediately obvious, even to the experts.
I am more interested in whether or not this is an example of unconscious Confirmation Bias or a conscious decision to not report certain news that would inevitably bring into question some of the unquestioned assumptions of the left, recently repeated here, that "Bush lied" about Iraq's WMD.
I would maintain that even if the powers that be in the MSM and at NPR do not see this news as evidence of an active pre-war WMD program or stockpile, a point that no one is suggesting I might add, reporting on 500 poison gas shells would be unequivocal evidence of Saddam's past WMD programs and non-compliance with his agreement to destroy his entire stock of WMD (which was one of the reasons Bush gave for going to war in the first place.) To anticipate the next objection, which I heard on Imus this morning, that the shells were probably old armaments that were misplaced and forgotten, I would suppose this would be even more troubling. After all, how many poison gas shells does a dictator need to have in order to lose 500 of them and not even know it? That is a chilling thought, considering he never saw fit to offer proof that he had destroyed his WMD.
In any case, this is incontrovertibly "news" any way you want to spin it.
I look forward to the attempts by the MSM to continue to ignore news they don't like and to spin the news when unavoidable. These kinds of failures serve primarily to continue the downward course in the credibility of our traditional media outlets.
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