The Redhunter

Further, it does not necessarily prove that Saddam hid WMD. I saw a story yesterday whereby some US chemical weapons were found in a depot in Maryland that the US Army had forgotten about or lost track of. I don't have details handy, and later today or this weekend will try and find the link. The Iraqis produced so much of this stuff that they could have lost track of some of it.

But it also doesn't mean that the 500 shells is all we'll find. If nothing else has become clear about Saddam's Iraq, it is that he armed that country to the teeth. We have found warehouse upon warehouse with small arms, ammunition, mortars and mortar shells, RPGs, and raw explosives piled to the ceiling. They also hid a lot of it underground, even going so far as to bury fighter jets themselves.

Further, I recall reading (can't find the link) that the Iraqis were not good about putting special marks on their WMD shells, so that when mixed in with high-explosive types they were indistinguishable. The point is that the 500 shells may just be the tip of the iceberg.

It is also possible that Saddam did keep some WMD "just in case." To this day we don't know what happened to much of it. Tim Robbins, writing on NRO's The Corner Blog, noted that the Blix report stated that

"The [Iraqi weapons report] document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1998, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tons. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for."

Under the terms of the 1991 cease-fire, and subsequent Security Council resolutions, Saddam was required to provide proof that he destroyed all of his WMD. He never did so. What happened to the 6,500 weapons cited above is a mystery to this day. Therefore, while it is possible that the Iraqis simply misplaced some weapons, the legal onus was on them to account for it.

The entire story also illustrates the Bush Administation's failure to make it's case about Iraq. Why it took Senator Santorum and Represenative Hoekstra to make this public is frustrating to those of us who support OIF. No these weapons are not all of what we expected to find. But neither are they insignificant. Between this and the Administration's failure to tell the story of Saddam's links to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda, they have done a terrible job at justifying the invasion.

It isn't clear whether the insurgent terrorists know about or have found any of Saddam's WMD too, but of course they could sell it on the black market, or secret it into a Western country. It doesnt matter if the stuff is so degraded that if used it doesn't have much or any effect, because the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. And no doubt if there are any incidents in which these weapons make it to a Western nation nad are used, we will all freak out for a long period of time.

More later, but for now see Richard Fernandez' post at The Belmont Club. Glenn Reynolds also has a good round-up at Instupundit.