Posted on 05/18/2004 8:55:45 AM PDT by areafiftyone
Far from being an isolated incident, yesterday's discovery in Iraq of an artillery shell filled with Sarin gas is just the tip of the iceberg of recently uncovered evidence that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program that was fully operational until the U.S. invaded in March 2003.
Tuesday's Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. inspectors have found within the last few months "warehouses full of commercial and agricultural chemicals," which, if mixed and packaged properly, "could quickly become chemical weapons."
U.S. forces in Karabala have also recently uncovered 55-gallon drums loaded with chemicals that were said to be "pesticide," some of which were stored in what military sources described as a "camouflaged bunker complex."
Why camouflage insect spray?
The alleged agricultural site just happened to be located alongside a military ammunition dump, reports Insight Magazine.
According to the Journal, Iraq Survey Group head Charles Duelfer recently told Congress that some of Saddam's WMD facilities were newly built and contained "stockpiled" raw materials that would have allowed him to "produce such weapons on a moment's notice."
There's more.
In early April, Jordanian authorities foiled an al Qaida plot to kill 80,000 people in chemical weapons attack in Amman.
According to one of the conspirators whose confession was broadcast on Jordanian TV, al Qaida WMD specialist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was last seen in a chilling video beheading Nick Berg, trained and outfitted the WMD attackers
in pre-war Iraq.
Like notorious terrorists Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas, Zarqawi enjoyed sanctuary in Baghdad, courtesy of Saddam.
Jordanian TV coverage of the Zarqawi plot included video footage of hundreds of gallon jugs containing chemical weapons that had been intercepted 75 miles from the border with Syria, where much of Saddam's pre-war WMD stockpile is believes to have been hidden.
The Zarqawi revelation comes on the heels of the April 26 explosion at a suspected chemical weapons factory in Baghdad, just as a U.S. weapons inspection team arrived to inspect its contents.
Disguised as a "perfume factory," investigators believe the facility was booby-trapped to destroy evidence of whatever was inside.
We won't be surprised if, in the coming weeks, more Sarin-laden shells are uncovered in Iraq. But in the meantime, the media focus on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal has obscured that fact that the WMD case against Saddam is already compelling and continues to grow.
That's the threshold for the media admitting Saddam had WMD. Finding anything short of that will be rationalized away as an attempt by the President at political damage control.
now the White House has to find a way to FORCE the media to pay attention to this story.
WMD news not important to WaPo which put it on page A13.
Nope. You are wrong. They would have to be launched and in route. Even then I would bet there would be denial. After impact, they still would be looking for a Rumsfield/Bush/Cheney causality.
The total politicization of the media is complete. It is pathetic.
BTTT
The same can be said for ammonia and chlorine bleach. By themselves they are not dangerous but if you mix them together they can be deadly poisonous and explosive.
1. i've never understood why dubya doesn't present these things to the american people directly. if you leave it to tv and most american newspapers the republican message is not going to get out.
there are more voters in the u.s. than we devotees of talk radio and the internet.
abu graib could cost dubya the election.
2. i'd put thousands of troops on the ground to dig this stuff up. and to interview iraqis who have information.
Like notorious terrorists Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas,...
OK, so does "Abu" mean psychotic, fanatical, murderous, or all of the above?
BTT
Dubya's PR team sucks. Plain sucks. Granted, he's in a no-win with the lefty media, but still, he could be using the bully pulpit and his surrogates far better than he has. Give that scum Clinton his due, he knew how to get his team on the same page.
the white house could send Bush to a microphone any time they wanted, they don't do it. they could have done it yesterday - not to claim some massive WMD find, but just to note that this had occurred and was being investigated. The political team is media tone deaf.
Rove has no political war room in place - they don't move proactively on stories, don't know how to play the news cycles, nothing.
As I mentioned on another sarin-related thread this morning, WOR radio had Brian Ross of ABC News on this morning with a "breaking" story that a plot to use chemical weapons against our troops has been uncovered and somehow tied in with the chemical story out of Jordan. He said that more would be coming out soon. Nothing on ABC's nwes site yet.
Nothing to see here, let's move along.
It's just camoflaged insect spray and an exploding perfume factory.
Move along...
I'm sure that's goint to be the MSM's response.
Here's a link to the original Insight Magazine article the WSJ is referring to.
WMDs have been FOUND and the media silence is deafening. Insight published this story 4/28. It took 3 weeks for the WSJ to notice. Rush needs to see this.
ABC reporting it?
Ah, the dual use argument.
So, show me the fields of crops, then. Show me the industrial base that uses the commercial chemicals.
If there are none, then the "other" use is suspected, instead.
-PJ
I wouldn't say that just yet. Maybe they're waiting for Kerry to stick his foot in his mouth about this. The White House isn't stupid. Everything I've seen indicates that they have a strategic plan. Maybe they know that there's more evidence to collect to insure a slam dunk. Bush knows that his numbers are slipping. When he does address the people, he has to make sure the news is overwhelmingly good. It seems like they've just found a small portion of a much larger stockpile. More time means more evidence.
That's the problem, there's no story on ABC's web page. I know Brian Ross is their investigative reporter. He was a guest on WOR, a local radio station in the tri-state area. He may still be working on the story. I've been checking for it all morning.
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