I wouldn't be surprised if they found it months ago... We are just closer to the election, so we find out about it now...

Thanks for sharing.

BAM!!!

Even the Fox News article you link to it says:
"If confirmed, it would be the first finding of a banned weapon upon which the United States based its case for war."

We are just closer to the election, so we find out about it now...

Muggaz - Thats beneath you. Leave that sort of tripe to WA and that ilk. You are capable of a much better retort.

Frankly I don't think the conservative branches of media who have been touting this all day (Hannity you oughta know better) are not doing anyone on that sid of he fence a favor. 2 shells is significant from an intel standpoint but it will take a bi more to sway the electorate. Don't bother beating the drum too loudly until you really have something. Crying wolf and all that.

heres a thought, if these two shells are considered by the left circumstantial, how much more must be found or exploded on our troops before its considered evidence? frankly using hyper-left calculations, 20 tons would be enough before they say...gee maybe the coalition was right....> what happens god forbid if a dirty bomb is exploded near our troops, will that be considered circumstantial as well?

Couch - while I agree with your assessment, at this point the people who are vaguely dissatisfied about the lack of WMD's need to be shown the actual stockpile and not the calculations that show that they must exist. Proof is in the pudding, not the pudding recipe and not in the residue of pudding in the pot (to stretch the analogy beyond the breaking point)

Yeah - Sorry Greywar... Brad just brings out the worst in me...

It's probably nothing anyway, the last time the boys cried wolf, it was proven to be nothing as well... another one of those time will tell pieces.

BAM!!!

It's funny, I see lots of voices from the right spinning this story as justification for the war, but nothing from the good president Bush, and no signs from God, as of yet. This just demonstrates that the right has some freudian sexual fantasy about submitting itself before the large human phallus that is Bush. They don't want to be convinced of the failures of Bush's intelligence, because they already know that Bush is their tough daddy who will protect them from the liberals.

But back to the subject at hand:

From what I've heard, it was possible that this weapon was an unmarked prototype that did not emerge from a large stockpile. The specific device involved is not one that Saddam Hussein is believed to have produced in massive numbers. I want to find out exactly where this weapon originated, and what else was with it. As an isolated occurence, it is largely meaningless.

Saint Ying, I think Bush et al are a bit more cautious these days. The administration got badly burned by the two 'mobile WMD factories' which turned out to just produce hydrogen for weather balloons. I think they are a bit more wary these days. One shell, as you say, is meaningless particularly after 13 months of searching. We shall see what else turns up.

Draginol, remember how you jumped on the Drudge Report on Kerry's intern? It remained on the "featured article" list quite awhile. I do hope you will remove this one more quickly.

Was Hussein allowed to produce prototypes of banned weapons? If not, then I must say that it doesn't sound that meaningless.

As for the validity of the claim, is it just me, or is assuming the whole thing's fake as bad as assuming the whole thing's real?

One shell is not meaningless.

Lets be honest, Saddam was suppossed to have destroyed all such warheads in 1991 as part of UN sanctions. Furthermore it was a binary agent shell and not just mustard gas. This is a far more dangerous type, though only effective when fired from artillery when the components will mix.

How many more shells are there? Is this part of a stockpile? Is this just some shell that an individual kept from the destruction process? The fact taht it was left as a roadside bomb where the chemicals would never combine and so of no value as a chemicla warhead is interesting. It suggests that either the people planting the bomb had no idea what it was, or they knew it was a chemical warhead but had no idea how to use it. Either case suggests that this was an isolated shell and not part of some stockpile. If isolated then it is almost meaningless as it shows no stockpile and no indication that Saddam knew of it's existance..

Time will tell though.

Paul.

I have found the double standard imposed on Bush throughout his Presidency humorous. On the one hand he is a bumbling idiot that can't get anything right, and on the other he is some insidious monster with the ability to make immense conspiracies happen with a mere thought.

If Bush were the sort of person who would hold a single shell until closer to election time, he would have had Halliburton ship in a few hundred tons of the stuff and then conveinently "find" them. Please. The Bush administration has caught hell when it would be insanely easy to manipulate data or outright fake something.

The UN weapons inspectors have said time and again that tons of this stuff was unaccounted for, and the nation is comepletely full of armament that we can't seem to track down. Is the idea we missed a few hundred, or even a few thousand, shells so implausible?

I have just heard that the shell in question was left over from the Iran/Iraq war i.e. back from the 1980's so it still is no evidence of a WMD program as claimed before the war.

BakerStreet,
ignoring the extreme hyperbole of your reply....I do not think George Bush is very bright but I there are people behind him (Cheney et al) who are bright and I believe they are the ones making the decisions....No doubt this will be put down to conspiracy theory but what else can I think of a man who, by his own admission, only reads the sports section of the newspaper.

Much as I do not like this administration, I do not believe that they would fabricate evidence. They have had plenty of opportunity before now to do this. As I said above I believe that, after the mobile chemical labs which were found to be nothing but hydrogen generators for weather balloons. I also do not believe that they would hold serious evidence back until just before the election....lets face it they need the help now.

Not manufacturing evidence is different from covering up evidence as appears to have happened in the case of Abu Ghraib. Though this administration is not in isolation there.

That should read....
"As I said above I believe that, after the mobile chemical labs which were found to be nothing but hydrogen generators for weather balloons that they are now wary about rushing out new finds until they have been further investigated."

what else can I think of a man who, by his own admission, only reads the sports section of the newspaper.

I'm from the UK, and after the whole shocking realisation that the Daily Mirror here printed a completely false claim about abuse of prisoners in Iraq and put thousands of lives at risk to sell newspapers, I'm hapy to admit that I too only read certain parts of my own newspaper. Do you really think someone like the President of the USA would need to read a newspaper to know what was going on? Would you rather believe a tabloid newspaper, or your own Government reports?

Newspapers are sensationalist garbage most of the time, and the best part about mine is the Dilbert strip