It’s a strange and eerily consistent phenomenon. Administration officials will tout some “new” discovery that suggests possible WMD in Iraq. Most claims are immediately debunked. (When asked to explain the errors, the White House accuses questioners of being either “unpatriotic” or “pessimistic”.)
Claims that are not immediately invalidated linger for about a day. Conservative blogs get very excited; liberal blogs remain confident that the debunking is imminent. So far, the left has a 100% track record.
Late last week, for example, Rumsfeld had a new revelation.
Returning to the main justification for the Iraq war, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an interview released by the Pentagon, said forbidden chemical weapons were found in Iraq in recent days. Rumsfeld said the Polish defense minister told him this week “that his troops in Iraq had recently come across — I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 — warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas.”
Rumsfeld added: “I have not seen them and I have not tested them, but they believe that they are correct that these, in fact, were undeclared chemical weapons.”
That’s quite a tidbit of information, isn’t it? After more than a year of fruitless searching, chemical weapons were found in Iraq, right? Wrong.
Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but U.S. and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.
As has been noted before, wanting WMD isn’t quite enough. We had to invade Iraq because of its massive stockpiles of weapons — which, as it turns out, they didn’t actually have.
The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122-milimeter rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, “were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals.”
So far, Rumsfeld hasn’t publicly corrected his remarks from last week. We’re waiting…