Rick Santorum helped bring out the report that around 500 chemical munitions were found between 2003 and 2006. At the time, the "no WMDs" leftist mantra was changed to "no stockpiles" instead.
I always like to remind the doubters of "stockpiles" that a drop of Sarin is enough to kill you. Many drops are contained within a chemical shell. It was also dismissed, since many of these weapons were "degraded" from being stored for so long. Leftists who make this argument also whined when our significantly older chemical stockpiles were reportedly leaking in a much ballyhooed 60 Minutes story (before 9/11 or Iraq). I'd challenge these "degraded weapons" skeptics: Travel to my state of Maryland and stroll around the chemical weapons storage bunkers in Edgewood Arsenal without protective gear.
If any of Saddam's chemical shells were of the binary type, the components would not mix until the shell spun after being fired. Those contents would be quite stable, even now. The homemade nerve agent made by the Aum Cult in Japan in 1995 killed about a dozen and injured/hospitalized hundreds of others. Imagine the contents of one 155mm shell released in...oh, let's say Grand Central Station. A sophisticated, professionally manufactured chemical weapon would wreak havoc in a confined place like that.
And the general public bought that line
Good post about your argument with liberals
You remember how the NYT's and the left raged re: the Al Qaqaa robbery? They wanted to know how stuff was stolen from there when the first troops (enroute to someone else, stopped and saw it sealed), left and the space of time for the next troops to come and guard it.
Reason: There was press with them and the video came out. Oh, and El Baradei leaked the story as well, changing amounts and lying as usual.
It was listed previously as haz suits, antidotes, RDX, HMX, huge amounts of explosives and some other stuff... suddenly it was only explosives, then the story disappeared.
Meanwhile, some here had actual photos of the 3ID destroying 250 pounds of explosives at the complex there and photos of the barrels of goodies as well. That was in April 2003 after the fall of Baghdad... El Baradei leaked the story October 31, 2004, right before the election.
There's a lot more to Iraqi WMD than has been discussed by the dinosaur media. The Libyan nuclear program was staffed almost exclusively by Iraqi scientists. Was it really Saddam's program being run outside of the view of any inspectors? There were a half dozen dual use chemical factories discovered in the opening thrust of our forces into Iraq in the run to Baghdad (reported by the NY Times Judity Miller) that could produce in one day of production enough chemical weapons to wipe out the planet several times over. And contrary to the terms of the truce following the first Gulf War they weren't declared and weren't being inspected by the UN. And they were camoflagued and guarded by the Iraqi military. That right there is enough to have legally attacked Iraq, whether they ever produced anything in them or not.
And the chief of the Iraqi air force wrote a book detailing how he arranged to move WMD from Iraq through Syria to the Bekaa valley as "humanitarian assistance" after a big earthquake.
If the full story of all of this comes out the old media and their Stalinist Allies in the Dhimmicrat party and old Europe will be forever branded as the traitors they are. That's part of why they are so desperate to sieze control of all of the forms of communication with their ever increasing draconian laws regarding political speech. The "fairness doctrine" is their next attempt to muzzle any voice of opposition. CFR was their most successful foray in this regard. I can never forgive John McLame for pushing that through and I fault Bush for signing it in the belief that the Supreme Court would strike it down. To me that is Bush's biggest mistake, not anything he has done in Iraq.