The Blog @ Spolitics

WaPo: 500 Equals 0

by Heywood U. Reedmore -- June 29, 2006 at 1:05 am | In No, Seriously |

This is exactly what Senator Santorum was talking about when he said:

“The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction is in fact false. We have found over 500 weapons of mass destruction and in fact have found that there are additional chemical weapons still in the country.”

From today’s WaPo:

Sharpening his rhetoric as the midterm congressional campaign season accelerates, Bush offered a robust defense of his decision to invade Iraq even though, ultimately, no weapons of mass destruction were found, and drew standing ovations for his attacks on those who question his leadership of the war or the fight against terrorists.

But WaPo shouldn’t be accused of inaccurate or biased reporting. Sometimes a lie just flows better.

Now, just for fun, let’s revisit what Colin Powell said in his presentation to the U.N.

Second, as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents.

Yet now we’re told these were not the weapons we were concerned about. We’re also told they’re too old to matter because they pre-date the Gulf War. Powell went on to say:

If we consider just one category of missing weaponry — 6,500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq war — UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be in the order of 1,000 tons. These quantities of chemical weapons are now unaccounted for.

I’m pretty sure the Iran-Iraq war pre-dated the Gulf War so the “old” argument doesn’t seem to hold water. And as Santorum went on to say… there are still chemical weapons that are unaccounted for. Maybe that’s why Bush received the standing ovations.