L.A. Times Prints Not One Word of Yesterday’s Reports That Chemical Weapons Were Found in Iraq
Do you know there’s not one word in today’s Los Angeles Times about the 500 shells with degraded sarin and mustard gas found in Iraq?
Not one word.
Just to confirm what I learned by leafing through the actual paper, I ran a search on the word “sarin.” As of the time of this post, the last mention of that word in the paper was on May 22, 2006, in a story about master’s degrees in homeland security.
As I said yesterday, I am still dubious about the significance of this story. The more I learn, the more it sounds like these are forgotten weapons from before the first war, that were unusable and didn’t pose a significant danger.
But I don’t think any of this has been conclusively established. Last I heard, we were still relying on portions of a declassified report and statements from anonymous Pentagon officials. And, as I observed yesterday, this certainly provides another nail in the coffin to the statements of those morons who maintained that Saddam never had WMD.
Let’s put it this way: isn’t this at least as important as, say, whether Mitt Romney will get “veto power over a proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm”? That story made it into Section A today.
I’m not saying the chemical weapons story is necessarily a blockbuster story; indeed, I suspect it’s not. But maybe the editors could at least tell us about it, and let us make up our own minds?
UPDATE: Apparently nothing in the New York Times either, though I don’t subscribe to the dead trees edition and can’t confirm it that way. The Washington Post, which is a much better paper than either of the coast Timeses, has an AP article that largely downplays it, which appears appropriate based on what we know.
The one part of this rhetoric really annoying is how we are reminded how chemical weapons are WMD, then the Bushheads go on and talk about finding WMD as if we found a bunch of nuclear weapons. So now we get these hopelessly unusable chemical weapons promoted to “WMD”, using contemporary rhetoric.
Everyone knows it is unlikely we will find Hiroshima style nukes in Iraq. End of WMD issue. Deal with it.
[Now that’s just absurd. If you think the WMD debate was about finding Hiroshima-style nukes, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. I know that’s gotta sound harsh, but I can’t think of a nicer way to say it. Nobody expected that going in. — Patterico]
Wesson (c20d28) — 6/22/2006 @ 11:17 amA cannister filled with sarin gas IS a WMD, period. All the wishful thinking in the world cannot change that…..it is a weapon that can kill hundreds of people within seconds and they were found IN IRAQ.
Now before you go jam your head back into the sand again, let’s wait and see what other information is released. Save the “they weren’t nukes!” misdirection for impressing your lefty friends at work.
Bill Schumm (33ab73) — 6/22/2006 @ 11:34 amWow. That’s the most egregious bar-shifting I’ve seen yet.
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 12:05 pm[…] Patterico reports that the blackout stretches from coast to coast. Quite a power outage. […]
Hot Air » Blog Archive » Media blackout on WMD story? (d4224a) — 6/22/2006 @ 12:23 pmThem WMDs Must Be Here Somewheres ……
By now, you all know that Little Ricky said last night on Fox News that they’d finally found those elusive WMDs, the existence of which was put forward by the administration as the first of many reasons we invaded Iraq….
AGITPROP: Version 3.0, Featuring Blogenfreude (72c8fd) — 6/22/2006 @ 12:29 pmAs for WaPo, at 4:30 AM Central this morning, they had a link on the front page of their online edition to this story by their national security correspondent Dafna Linzer on Page A10:
By 7:00 AM the link had completely disappeared from the online edition – not on the front page nor on the politics or national news pages. I had to go back into my history to find it.
It was evidently replaced by the AP story you link to that combines the Senate debate on Iraq with Santorum’s speech.
When was the last time Linzer had his byline buried on Page 10?
Rick Moran (71415b) — 6/22/2006 @ 12:57 pmHere is a more specific article in today’s Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101837.html
According to the article, these are chemical munition shells that were buried near the Iranian border during the Iraq/Iran war and the shells contained a blister agent that was no longer active.
“Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.”
unceph (035ee3) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:02 pmIt is certainly bizarre that this story is all over the blogosphere and talk radio, but nary a word of it made it to print. We’ve come a long way from the days when newspapers actually thought that what people were interested in was what they should write about.
sharon (03e82c) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:11 pm“Well, ok maybe there are WMD but they’re not the right kind. Bush Lied;People Died…”
Tom (c8a1dc) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:18 pmAnd if the MSM ought ot be doing anything, is printing dubious WMD claims made by senators.
actus (6234ee) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:21 pmHey. President Bush didn’t mention one word about it either!
Neither did Cheney! or Rice! or Hadley!
Maybe there’s no there there.
creepy dude (57f623) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:24 pmActus, I hope you can at least admit that even if we’re having an honest debate about the significance of the findings, Santorum’s factual claim itself–that we’ve found 500 chemical weapons–is pretty ironclad.
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:26 pmNo-we found 500 shells.
creepy dude (da46a2) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:31 pmWhich reminds me, Patterico–what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You’ll agree that no one serious was expecting to find assembled nuclear weapons. But you don’t think 500 chemical shells is significant.
What do you think would constitute a significant WMD find? Where do you set the bar on this issue?
I know there are several different overlapping and complementary reasons for the invasion, and that WMD was just one of them. Netiher of us will look at this as a referendum on the entire war. Bu–at what point will you start saying, “Hey, we found WMD”?
[When we find *usable* chemical weapons. — P]
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:31 pmThe chemicals, i.e. the actual WMD goes inside the shells. The actual chemicals were all “degraded” and I’ve read nothing to indicate they hadn’t “degraded” to nothingness.
creepy dude (da46a2) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:34 pm“at what point will you start saying, “Hey, we found WMD”?”
I don’t know about Patterico, but I’ll be happy to say it whenever we, let’s see … how about: find WMD.
creepy dude (da46a2) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:35 pmThe one that went off as an IED in April 2004 had enough juice to injure two servicemen–through Sarin exposure, outdoors. That one was incorrectly deployed, probably by moron terrorists who didn’t realize what they had found. Some of them are still dangerous.
I’d like to check with those soldiers and see whether they think these are WMD’s or not.
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 1:41 pmThe primary pretext for the war with Iraq was that Iraq posed a possible danger to the United States because A) Iraq had an active WMD program and possessed weapons of mass destruction, and B) those weapons might possibly make their way into the hands of terrorist agents interested in detonating them in the United States.
The 500 shells, as they have been described in news reports, are not evidence of an active WMD program in Iraq at the time of invasion, nor do they constitute weapons that might have served as a viable threat to the United States (the shells are described as “no longer active”). Therefore, whether or not the shells *prove* that there were WMDs in Iraq strikes me as splitting hairs.
IMO, the more interesting question is: Why did Hoekstra and Santorum make such a big deal over this, when “neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons”?
unceph (b4ffa3) — 6/22/2006 @ 2:20 pmThe list of these chemical weapons have been on record since the early 90s after the first gulf war. We knew Saddam had nerve & mustard gas because he used it on the Kurds. We knew he had it back during the first gulf war because General Norman Schwarzkopf threatened to nuke Saddam if any chemicals were used on our troops. As much as they are chemical weapons & technically speaking were WMD, these were no reason for concern to our national security. It’s not like Saddam & Al Qaeda were gong to send drones or canisters over here into ports or water supplies. Santorum is looking for a way to bolster himself in the polls after the state of PA is clearly not happy with him and he is up for election in November.
Kirk (ff51b4) — 6/22/2006 @ 2:37 pmcreepy dude-
“Degraded” /= Harmless
You say “I’ve read nothing to indicate they hadn’t “degraded” to nothingness”, but you don’t have any evidence they _HAVE_ degraded to nothingness, either. Just your assumption that “degraded” means that the weapons are nothing important.
Mustard Gas, one of the main elements of Iraq’s pre-Desert Storm chemical weapons arsenal, does not lose much effectiveness over time. It can be stored for decades while remaining viable.
Sarin, on the other hand, degrades far more quickly. But Iraq had a real problem with degrading Sarin during Iran/Iraq, and invested heavily in fixing the problem. They did this both by improving quality, and by developing Binary weapons (you will recall, please, that the Sarin shell that was used as an IED was a binary design). Sarin stored in Binary form can remain battlefield ready for years, possibly longer. And even after degrading, it can still be deadly, you just have a better chance of surviving (50% survival rather than 1%, say).
The fact that the Binary Sarin IED (degraded, improperly mixed, improperly detonated) was still registering as Nerve Agent is a sign that it’s not “degraded into nothingness”.
Dave (6001a6) — 6/22/2006 @ 2:38 pmDave-I agree with with you on the details. Although, my point in “degraded” was more an emphasis on age, not toxicity. My larger point is that aging chemical weapons are not the WMDs that justify this entire geopolitical blunder. I supported it btw; I just think I was lied into that support, and I don’t want to be lied to again.
Saddam’s most famous use of sarin was in 1988, before Gulf War I. We left him in power anyway-wisely I believe. See Cheney’s famous quote from that time.
In aby event, these aging chemicals are hardly the WMDs President Bush was talking up pre-invasion, a point the administration concedes by its silence.
creepy dude (da46a2) — 6/22/2006 @ 2:59 pmSorry creepy, the adminsitration just broke silence.
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 3:07 pmInteresting analysis from “fomerspook” –
The story begins in April of this year, when a team of intelligence analysts, assigned to the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) published an exhaustive report on the continued recovery of chemical weapons in Iraq. Their report clearly noted that the weapons were clearly manufactured before the first Gulf War. However, the NGIC analysts also observed that some of the weapons remained in good condition (suggesting an Iraqi effort to preserve them), and posed a potential threat to coalition forces, if they fell into the hands of insurgents. From what I’m told, the report contained a full listing of all chemical weapons discovered in Iraq since the fall of Saddam, cut-away diagrams of the weapons, locations where they were found, and their potential lethality if employed by terrorists.
Obviously, the NGIC report ran against the conventional wisdom that “Iraq had no WMD” after the U.S.-led invasion, and (to its credit), the organization published the report, which was posted on INTELINK (the intelligence community’s classified intranet) in April of this year. In that forum, the report could be easily accessed by anyone with access to the system, the proper security clearance, and a valid need-to-know. From an analytical standpoint, the team at NGIC did their job, and they deserve tremendous credit for publishing their report. That’s what analysts are supposed to do–tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may, even if their findings run contrary to popular assumptions and political agendas.
Shortly after the NGIC item was posted on INTELINK, Senator Santorum learned of its existence, and began pressing the Army for more information, and declassification of the report’s key findings. At this juncture, however, political agendas and bureaucratic tail-covering became a factor. A GOP source sent me a copy of Senator Santorum’s letter, requesting information on chemical weapons in Iraq, back in April. Amazing (or, perhaps not-so-amazingly), both NGIC and the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) ignored Santorum’s request. Normally, DOD agencies are supposed to respond to a request from a member of Congress within 48 hours; the Army ignored Santorum’s request for more than a month. In fact, Santorum and Hoekstra didn’t get their information until the Intelligence Committee chairman obtained a copy of the NGIC report and reportedly “hit the ceiling.” After that, the Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador John Negroponte, agreed to declassify portions of the report, which were released yesterday.
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/
william (b8a0e0) — 6/22/2006 @ 3:10 pmSee-Dubya, if you choose to still believe Rumsfeld at this point, good luck to you.
creepy dude (da46a2) — 6/22/2006 @ 3:17 pmMan, those goalposts just keep on moving, Creepy.
See-Dubya (f2a87c) — 6/22/2006 @ 3:19 pmFrom the Joint Resolution To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. Oct. 16, 2002
Whereas Iraq, in direct and flagrant violation of the cease-fire, attempted to thwart the efforts of weapons inspectors to identify and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and
development capabilities, which finally resulted in the withdrawal of inspectors from Iraq on October 31, 1998;
UN security council resolution 687, the enforcement of which was one of the reasons for the war, stated that Iraq must “unconditionally accept” the destruction, removal or rendering harmless “under international supervision” of all “chemical and biological weapons and all stocks of agents and all related subsystems and components and all research, development, support and manufacturing facilities.”
Bill (5f58c6) — 6/22/2006 @ 3:23 pm[…] Rightwing Nuthouse also sees a media conspiracy, as does Patterico’s Pontifications. […]
The Liberal Avenger » Blog Archive » Wingnuts Claim WMD Found in Iraq, Media Conspiracy to Cover the Truth. Again. (80c71a) — 6/22/2006 @ 4:32 pmPatterico writes: “The more I learn, the more it sounds like these are forgotten weapons from before the first war, that were unusable and didn’t pose a significant danger.”
The current propaganda is that the chem agent (Sarin and Mustard) was “degraded.” That’s true, but it’s misleading, in that this degradation is negligible and the chem agent is operationally no less deadly than the day it was made. So it takes a drop and a half, rather than a drop, big deal, it still kills and storing it for 100 years won’t make it appreciably less deadly.
Here’s an excerpt from an August 2004 post on my blog:
I don’t think I still have a copy of that report and the accompanying photos. I remember them though, the photos seemed like color renditions of WWI chem agent photos. They were horrific and disturbing. This single munition had been dumped into the ocean, probably in the mid-70’s. Seawater is known to neutralize most chem agent. So this stuff was still so potent after half a century that it worked as intended when this young airman was exposed to the outgassing as he boxed the munition parts up (almost certainly with gloves on since those appeared less affected than his arms). It is a myth that chem agent could possibly be degraded to a safe or less than IDLH level after a decade and a half. The stuff the US stores in bunkers in the desert of Utah and Oregon is still incredibly potent.
Kalroy
Kalroy (160cbd) — 6/22/2006 @ 5:08 pm” cannister filled with sarin gas IS a WMD, period. All the wishful thinking in the world cannot change that…..it is a weapon that can kill hundreds of people within seconds”
Except of course when it does not actually work!
Wingnut logic, a contradiction in terms
sonic (216a72) — 6/22/2006 @ 5:27 pmIf this stuff is degraded to the point of insignificance, how many moonbats out there are willing to store one in the hall closet? Maybe all 500 shells could be stored in the basement of the WaPo? Binary chemical munitions were developed just for the purpose of minimum care, long term storage, while maintaining effective use in the field. A lot of people need to get a life.
Another Drew (8018ee) — 6/22/2006 @ 5:28 pmcreepy – Not the WMDs Bush was “talking up pre-invasion”? Perhaps I was listening to a different President than you. The one I heard kept making a point that Saddam wasn’t destroying his existing stockpiles AND was seeking to make new ones.
These are the existing stockpiles that he wasn’t destroying.
Pres. Bush, 2003 State of the Union:
“Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement.”
These are Weapons of Mass Destruction that he didn’t disarm himself of.
“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them — despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He’s given no evidence that he has destroyed them.”
These are the prohibited munitions he didn’t destroy.
Dave (6001a6) — 6/22/2006 @ 6:54 pm“Except of course when it does not actually work!”
The U.S. is currently in the process of destroying all it’s chemical weapons, many of which date to the 50s and 60s. Is it your contention, then, that all the many, many, many safeguards we take around these very old weapons are not needed, since they won’t “actually work”?
Dave (6001a6) — 6/22/2006 @ 6:57 pmTo build on what Dave said about the US destroying its old stockpile…
Try to work in seven pairs of gloves, while in a positive pressure 30mil thick vinyl bubble suit with several bootie layers over thick butyl boots (over booties and socks). They are deadly serious about the stuff because the stuff is still very very deadly. Multiple redundant systems, lots of training, and very very strict rules on their handling. Yeah, I’m with Dave on this.
Kalroy
Kalroy (160cbd) — 6/22/2006 @ 7:22 pm[…] The L.A. Times finally gets around to mentioning the story today (it didn’t make today’s dead trees edition), by reprinting an AP story on its web site, which you can read here. I call this story the “battle of the hundred-percenters.” First, David Kay: [Kay] said experts on Iraq’s chemical weapons are in “almost 100 percent agreement” that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s would no longer be dangerous. […]
Patterico’s Pontifications » Battle of the Hundred-Percenters (421107) — 6/22/2006 @ 7:27 pmUpdate:
I managed to find my old copy of the Dover incident press release and the unclassified report, dated 23 Jul 04 and 28 Jul 04 respectively. Turns out I misremembered the hands, and they are indeed blistered badly. There is a contradiction in that the press release says WWI round and the report says WWII. I’m going with the report in this since it also contains a picture of the projo (11 inches long) and more physical info on the projo.
I’d also like to point out that every single chem agent projo in the American inventory won’t “actually work” because they don’t include the primer (nose cone), even though they do contain the burster charge. Mind you, both the Iraqi projos and the US projos could be successfully fired since the charge isn’t part of the projectile, though they won’t blow up properly without the primer.
Kalroy
Kalroy (160cbd) — 6/22/2006 @ 8:39 pmThe LAT and NYT aren’t the only ones who thing that 500 sarin/mustard gas shells aren’t newsworthy.
As of this writing, the only mentions in CNN are buried and pooh-poohed a la the AP article, in articles that are in Politics, not World, and seem to be put there to tout Kerry’s election bid.
The first, “Debate over Iraq heats up in Senate” is sub-titled Most Democrats disagree with Kerry’s call for withdrawal timetable. Featuring a pic of Kerry, the article doesn’t bother to mention the 500 shells until about a dozen paragraphs in, and then only to deemphasize it as an off-hand, political gambit by Santorum and (Rep) Hoekstra.
The second, datelined a day later, “GOP, Democrats seek upper hand in Iraq debate” has the same subtitle, and the same pic of Kerry — and now Santorum’s move “to counter criticism that no weapons of mass destruction turned up in Iraq” (CNN) is seven paras in.
Are we seeing something being buried?
D'n (2f96f1) — 6/22/2006 @ 11:11 pm…lets say the cops have had numerous reports by neighbors, my family, even my children that I have a shotgun in my house. Seeing as how I have acted up in the past and am currently on probation, the chief of police decides to demand a let the police search my house.
I respond to repeated attempts to the search by deflecting the police, and bribe my neighbors to tell the cops to lay off my case, among other things. The cops decide they have had enough and call in the S.W.A.T. team and forcibly enter my house.
Now, keep in mind that I was able to hold the police off for many days from looking for the shotgun, which I know they are specifically looking for.
Anyway, after enetering my house, the police do not find the shotgun that they claimed was one of the main reasons they wanted to search my house in the first place. However, they find various forms of ammunition, knives, and brass knuckles.
Does this mean that:
A. the very fact that the police didn’t find the specific weapon they were looking for totally negate the fact that other weapons of similar destruciveness were found,
or
B.although the specific weapon was not found, the other weapons, plus my action before the search, give credence to the possibility that I at one time did possess the shotgun?
you be the judge.
Veritas (15f590) — 6/23/2006 @ 3:19 am