The Gas Shells
June 21, 2006 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public.
“The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq,” said Senator Santorum. “It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.”
The following are the six key points contained in the unclassified overview:
- Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
- Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
- Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.
- The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
- The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
- It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
Technically, this means that the long-lost WMDs have been found. But these may not exactly be the WMDs the public had in mind. The public image associated with WMD stockpiles is probably a hill of diabolical looking devices in a gleaming underground facility like the doomsday machines in a James Bond movie. Five hundred old gas shells may technically be chemical weapons, but it wouldn't be what Hollywood would use for a prop. That doesn't mean the weapons couldn't have killed people. But the calculus on both sides of partisan aisle will not care so much about explosive or chemical payload so much as political impact. Even in their degraded state the shells probably could have killed a lot of people. Captain Ed says:
An artillery company could have laid down a very effective attack on an enemy position, quickly killing or disabling them in a manner outlawed for decades. Of course, that had been the entire point of the UN Security Council resolutions -- to strip Saddam of that capability -- and he obviously retained it, and lied about it.
But. In politics there's always a but.
The next question will be why the White House did not release this information at the time of their discovery. Santorum's statement says, “The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq[.] It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.” That implies that a broader analysis of WMD in Iraq exists -- and that it differs significantly from the common understanding shown thus far.
Some will claim that the release is strictly for political purposes. They may have a point, but I doubt it will have anything to do with domestic politics. If Bush wanted to use it for that, he would have done so in October 2004 and not in June 2006. This information changes the picture about our pre-war intelligence in time for the Iranian confrontation -- and I suspect that the White House wants to declassify it in order to convince European leaders that our intel actually paid off.
And then there's this from the Real Ugly American reporting on a news interview on TV.
General Tom Mcinerney is reporting on Fox Hannity and Colmes right now that that the administration has been keeping this low profile to avoid exposing 3 of the 5 members of the UN Security council; Russia, China, and France. McInerney says these weapons will be traced to these countries, and asserts it is well known that Russia helped Saddam move most of his WMD stockpiles out of Iraq before the war.
Well, who knows? But questions in Iraq have long moved past the stated casus belli of 2003. Saddam's a prisoner. His state is dismantled. The Sunnis, if not overthrown, are at least no longer in control. There is Shi'ite versus Shi'ite conflict in southern Iraq. Iran is not going to walk in and take over the whole place. The issues are different. The development of a missile weapons delivery system by North Korea now adds a dimension to Iranian efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons capability that wasn't there in 2003. In this context, a pile of 500 gas artillery shells though it is everything that 500 gas artillery shells ought to be, may not seem like a hill of beans in this crazy world. Count on the New York Times to realize that -- now.