Much attention in the blogosphere for the announcement that fully 500 chemical weapons have been recovered from Iraq so far.
It is hard for us to care much about this development, given that this has been a recurring theme.
One of the greatest blunders of the Bush Administration - and one that should damn it for posterity - was its refusal to fight the "No WMD" myth from the get-go.
This was never about finding huge stacks of primed weapons ready to launch. It was always about capability.
If George W. Bush had gone before the American people early on and said something to this effect, the meme would have been strangled in its accursed cradle:
It is possible that Saddam Hussein may have destroyed these weapons. After all, chemical weapons have a short shelf life and degrade over time. However, there is no question of him retaining the ability to make more, whenever it suits him.
The real danger of Saddam Hussein isn't in the next 15 minutes or even 15 days, but over the next 15 months and 15 years. Sooner or later, if we leave him alone, he will strike again. And when he does, he will have the most deadly and sinster weapons ever devised.
He doesn't need to stockpile them now for something he will do later. What we know is that he has not disarmed, he will not disarm and, when it suits him, he will strike again.
Something to that effect.
But instead the White House turned turtle, played dead and basically let support for the war erode and trust in the president evaporate.
This latest argument is a needed correction to the public record, but we fear it is too little too late.
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