{Although it's easy to say so now, more than a year after the war started, I could produce witnesses who could attest to the fact that in early 2003 I believed that no WMD would be found in Iraq (other than some R & D programs). I was in favor of the war, but for reasons that had nothing to do with any WMD.}
This report from Insight (a magazine I've never heard of before) indicates that Saddam's WMD are indeed being found and accounted for.
There are two ways to read this report. One is as a "Well, there they are, then. Why isn't this a bigger deal?" and the other is "Uh-huh. Now it turns out that all those finds that were dismissed back then were actually WMD finds. Hmmmm".
I don't know enough about chemcials or pesticides to know if the assumptions in this article are true or not, but it does seem a little odd that so many ammunition dumps had stockpiles of pesticide. It also seems reasonable that the chemicals that could be used in weapons would not make for very "exciting" pictures. I imagine a few rusty drums are not what any photographer had in mind when he was thinking about pictures of chemical weapons for the front page back home.
Another possibility is that the Administration has its own reasons to play down what it's finding in Iraq. One possibility is that the administration is getting good leads and doesn't want to tip anybody off before the army can secure the sites.
The willingness of the ISG to dispute the findings of American and other troops did cause me to raise my eyebrows when these reports were common last spring and summer. I know a lot of people would just assume that these army guys wouldn't be that skilled or whatever and wouldn't be sure of what they were finding, but some of the reports about blistering, etc. made me think that whatever these guys found it's not healthy. And, if they're finding this stuff in ammunition dumps (or in mortar shells) that's even more curious.
So, even if the army doesn't have the requisite skills to definitively state what they've found at these places, they do know when something is odd, and it's odd when they're finding pesticides among ammunition stores. It at least begs the question, "Why were they there"?
