It's been half a century, and many good people died or were imprisoned in the attempt to liberate themselves from one of the great totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. But they won, eventually, no thanks to the US State Department. Or perhaps even the CIA, which seems in many ways to be our greatest enemy these days.

I don't get the furor over Santorum's announcement. As I understand it, not only have they found old chemical weapons, but as I recall a few were at one time used ineffectively against US troops in a roadside IED (apparently by accident since they supposedly appeared much like regular artillery shells which are routinely used).

It's a small reminder of the hubris of the "Saddam was no threat" argument. After all, what benign world leaders use lethal chemical weapons on their own civilians or start two major wars?

But it doesn't provide a serious counterargument to the generic claim that there's "no WMD in Iraq". These were no longer reliable military weapons due to their age. Nor does this argument address the wild pre-war claims made about Saddam Hussein's WMD program.

My take is that if the presence of these chemical weapons could be spun in a way that benefited the Bush administration, they would have been.

The discovery indicates that Saddam was in fact hiding WMD, whatever their vintage, and that the weapons "inspectors" wouldn't have found any if new ones did exist. It does in fact validate one of the reasons to remove him.

In other words, Bush didn't lie, the Anonymous cowards lied.......

The discovery indicates that Saddam was in fact hiding WMD, whatever their vintage, and that the weapons "inspectors" wouldn't have found any if new ones did exist. It does in fact validate one of the reasons to remove him.

"Bob" mentioned in the other story, the theory that these WMD didn't really support the "WMD in Iraq" story that came out before the war. Rather than face further embarrassment, they surpressed this information. So even if Saddam Hussein had deliberately hidden these weapons (which he probably did), it doesn't back most of the Administration's claims (like the existence of RC drones capable of deploying chemical or biological weapons within a short period of time or having tons of anthrax).