More WMDs found (eat that, libs)

[Patrick M]

Friday, June 25, 2004 11:36 a.m. EDT

Iraq Survey Chief: More WMD Found

The head of the U.S. team conducting the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq announced on Thursday that his group has uncovered at least ten more artillery shells filled with banned chemical weapons and is finding new WMD evidence "almost every day."

"We've found ten or twelve Sarin and Mustard rounds," said Charles Duelfer, who replaced David Kay as head of the Iraq survey group earlier this year after Kay concluded that WMDs were unlikely to be found.

"We're not sure how many more are out there that we haven't found," Duelfer added, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Channel's Brit Hume. "There are still surprises out there. We're finding things and we're getting reports of hidden caches almost every day which we have to investigate."

Last month, the Pentagon confirmed that the first of the Iraq WMD findings - two shells suspected of containing deadly chemical weapons - were indeed filled with Sarin and Mustard gas.

Still, despite the mounting tally of confirmed WMD findings, administration critics continue to insist that "Bush lied" about the presence of such weapons in Iraq before the war.

Duelfer told Fox that even if the shells had degraded over time, they were still capable of killing "dozens" of people. He warned that both soldiers and civilians in Iraq should carry gas masks and have access to chem-bio suits.

Before joining the U.S. team, Duelfer was a U.N. weapons inspector and was among the few who had investigated Saddam's top secret terrorist training camp Salman Pak.

In 2001 he confirmed that elite Fedayeen troops were conducting airplane hijacking drills aboard a parked Boeing 707, dismissing claims from Iraqi officials that what he saw was "counterterrorism training."

"Of course we automatically took out the word 'counter'," Duelfer told the London Observer. "I'm surprised that people seem to be shocked that there should be terror camps in Iraq."

[Rspaight]

Still, despite the mounting tally of confirmed WMD findings, administration critics continue to insist that "Bush lied" about the presence of such weapons in Iraq before the war.

It's not the *presence,* of course, it's the *size* of the threat. I don't think anyone doubted there were some old shells still rattling around (I'm surprised it's taken this long to even scrounge up a dozen). What we *haven't* seen evidence of is what Powell talked about in the UN presentation: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."

12 down, 15,988 to go.

Duelfer told Fox that even if the shells had degraded over time, they were still capable of killing "dozens" of people. He warned that both soldiers and civilians in Iraq should carry gas masks and have access to chem-bio suits.

So I suppose the US is handing those out? I guess that's another problem we're going to defer to the new "sovereign" government.

Ryan

[Patrick M]

There's just no winning with you libs. You said there were no WMD. Now, when we found them, you say there's not enough.

[Rspaight]

Yes. We know all the good goalpost-moving services.

Ryan

[Bennett Cerf]

There's just no winning with you libs. You said there were no WMD. Now, when we found them, you say there's not enough.

Please. It is beyond disingenuous to claim that a dozen or so artillery shells come close to vindicating the Bush team's claims of thousands of WMDs.