I sure hope <i>someone</i> is looking for those WMD in Iraq

I noticed that blogger Daily Kos has alerted his readers to this gem from the current issue of Time:

“Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past the niceties and went straight to his chief political obsession: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, ‘Are you in charge of finding WMD?’ Bremer said no, he was not. Bush then put the same question to his military commander, General Tommy Franks. But Franks said it wasn’t his job either. A little exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment, someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone, a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back in Washington. Pause. ‘Who?’ Bush asked.”

Two points in reaction. First, the White House would have us believe that the search for WMD is now a secondary point. They’re around somewhere and we’ll find them eventually, administration officials say, but it’s more important to focus on how we’ve liberated Iraq and made the world safer. This is their public argument, but as Bush’s direct concern with the search for WMD highlights, the White House is clearly worried about not being able to locate the alleged stockpiles that were a causus belli just a few months ago.

Secondly, and far more importantly, the administration is obviously pretty clueless. The “most lethal weapons ever devised,” as Bush once put, are supposed to be all over this country, yet the president doesn’t even know who’s looking for them? How very sad.

As Kos put it, “The rank incompetence within this administration’s Iraq team is breathless. And Bush’s ignorance as to the most important issue facing him — the finding of WMDs — is startling.”