Guess who won't be getting her invitation anymore to the local high society cocktail parties in Seattle...
But if the discovery rec'd wide coverage, then people like Ketchupman, Clintoonians, Hans Blix would have egg on their faces after denouncing the Bush Administration and spreading the tale far and wide via the media that there were no WMDs. This is after announcing during the late 90s while the Clintoonian Administration held power that there were WMDs to be found. Blixie flip flops as bad as Ketchupman. Clintoons are awarded the cake for the most vile and corrupted Administration in American history.
"The extraordinary part was the tizzy the media and various noteworthies were in to discount it."
What is really extraordinary is the media hinting that there might be bias in the media! D'ya think!!!
It doesn't surprise many people that the reaction has been one of frantic dismissal on the part of those with vested interests in this little bit of agitprop. Were one of these monstrosities to go off in a New York subway we'd have a mass shifting of hyperbole into a grand chorus of "Bush knew, he didn't do enough," which is fine for political posture but mighty poor comfort for the survivors.
But this isn't really ignorable, especially at this point. If your entire Presidential campaign rides on not finding any more Sarin or mustard projectiles in Iraq, you have a real political problem.
A perverse thought, is that as long as there is a chance that GW won't be re-elected, would Al-Nuts use a WMD bomb, anywhere.
"Others briskly offered that the shell was more likely the bounty of a scavenger hunt by yahoos who didn't even know what they had."
Oddly enough, I think this is true. Its truth shows that Saddam had a vast supply of these munitions.
It's likely only a few highly privileged people knew where the WMD munitions were stored. This shell was unmarked, leading inescapably to the conclusion that Saddam had many similar ones made, which were squirreled away in some or many of the vast number of munitions depots he maintained.
The subhuman terrorists go to these various depots to obtain shells which they use ot build roadside bombs and other charming devices. Had they known what this one was, they either wouldn't have used it or would have figured out how to mix and activate the sarin. Thus, the most reasonable conclusion is they found a stack of unmarked binary sarin shells in one of Saddams bunkers, thought they were ordinary shells, and installed this one in an IED.
Therefore, since the only place it logically could have come from is one of Saddam's bunkers, it's clear Saddam maintained a large supply of these things, and Bush was entirely right to use the WMD argument as one of the grounds for going to war.
One 155mm binary GB artillery shell.
One barge in New York Harbor.
Maybe a dozen jihadists, one with a brain.
One homemade tube.