Infinite MonkeysRonald Brownstein was a call-in guest during the first hour on Hugh Hewitt's show. In poo-pooing the discovery/deployment of a sarin-containing artillery shell in Iraq (in addition to last week's mustard gas shell), Brownstein was asked if they had any bearing on the notion that "WMD's haven't been found." He said that they didn't, and pondered, "We don't even know where that shell came from." Brownstein was obviously suggesting that the artillery round could have been brought in from somewhere outside Iraq by someone other than Iraqis, but not in so many words.
Taking Brownstein's implication to its logical conclusion, I have to ask: if it's possible that chemical-weapon artillery shells were brought into Iraq in the time since its occupation, isn't it possible that chemical-weapon artillery shells were taken out of Iraq (say... into Syria?) during the many months between the obvious hardening of U.S. resolve for invasion and the point at which all of the hoops had been jumped through to make it happen? I'm bothered by Brownstein's implication that since we have not already uncovered an IKEA or Costco of chemical, biological, and radiological nasties, there simply could not have been any.
While reading Joe Carter's piece at Evangelical Outpost, I was struck by how many callers on talk radio and some commenters on the blogs are saying, "They're just artillery shells. What kind of a threat are two cannonballs to the U.S.?" I don't think I need to go into any explanation of how the concern was more about terrorists in the market for sarin, and Hussein having been known by everyone to have had it. But folks are now downplaying the legitimacy of these WMD finds because they're just artillery shells.
A few weeks ago, John Kerry was on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Way back then the party line seemed to be that artillery shells would have been the most incriminating type of WMD to discover.
Matthews: If there was an exaggeration of WMD, exaggeration of the danger, exaggeration implicitly of the connection to al Qaeda and 9/11, what's the motive for this, what's the "why?" Why did Bush and Cheney and the ideologues around take us to war? Why do you think they did it?Oh, great. Hewitt is playing the audio of this very quote on the air as I'm formatting this post. --sigh-- Oh well... I'll still post it. Posted by Brad at May 17, 2004 05:14 PM | TrackBackKerry: It appears, as they peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and--we may yet find them, Chris. Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, you find some weapons. You may. But you certainly didn't find them where they said they were, and you certainly didn't find them in the quantities that they said they were. And they weren't found, and I have talked to some soldiers who have come back who trained against the potential of artillery delivery, because artillery was the way they had previously delivered and it was the only way they knew they could deliver. Now we found nothing that is evidence of that kind of delivery...