TheSequitur.com Editorial Board
July 5, 2006   

The key to going to war in Iraq, finding WMDs, was accomplished, at least according to Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

Santorum, down in the polls nearly 20 percentage points and seeking re-election, made a profound announcement June 22, when he said U.S. had discovered in Iraq in 2003, 500 weapons munitions with mustard gas and sarin nerve agents.

Because many of these materials, if not all of them, came from the pre-1991 Iraq-Iran War era, they have most likely degraded and are no longer useful. The Bush administration’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, said of the WMD, publicly lampooned as ‘weapons of minor discomfort': “It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point.”

In dramatic fashion before the United Nations, on Feb. 5, 2003 then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held up a small vial to illustrate the dangers of even a miniscule amount of dry anthrax in his case for action against Iraq. Several months later, the U.S. would lead an invasion to remove tyrant Saddam Hussein, without the blessings of many our allies.

Powell detailed Iraq’s mobile biological weapons labs, chemical weapons sites and continuing nuclear ambitions, including Hussein’s alleged attempts to enrich uranium. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would say a month later about the Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, “We know where they are.”

One question that must be asked is why this information has been withheld for the last three years, especially in light of the barrage of scrutiny and criticism the current administration has withstood in the absence of a ‘smoking gun’. Why has the senator been keeping this a secret until now?

It turns out the United States had made its second biggest critical intelligence blunder of the new millennium – the first being the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  After the fall of Baghdad, soldiers turned up not a single mobile lab or nuclear site, Kay reported no evidence that Hussein stockpiled WMD, less than a year after Powell’s address to the U.N.

There is also concern about the location of the unfound ‘missing’ weapons. The prospect of other rogue nations or terror organizations, such as North Korea or Hamas, in possession of illicit incendiaries has invoked a great deal of anxiety among prognosticators.

Even if Kay is correct about the status of the weapons now, there is no way to tell if they had been sold while still viable; that money, in turn, would have likely been invested in new military materials. It could just be that the problem has not been cured, but instead, has metastasized.

So what does this all amount to? The recent announcement by Sen. Santorum holds little importance. These ‘weapons of minor discomfort’ are not tantamount to what the Bush administration announced as its pretense for war. Once again, this is just a case of proclamations made with ulterior political motives and very little veritable relevance.

Surprise. Surprise.