Santorum Claims WMD Found in Iraq

The right-wing blogosphere is all abuzz with a chorus of 'I told you so' since they heard Rick Santorum and Pete Hoekstra announce on Wednesday that WMD had been found in Iraq.

But wait a minute...

Here's what WaPo reported - on page A10:

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered.

The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.

The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

And to add insult to injury, Santorum was called out on FOX News, of all places.

Ouch.

Now there's infighting in the right-wing ranks. Oh well. Let them sort it out. They seem to have a lot of 'weapons experts' over there suddenly. But, just as some of them still believe Osama and Saddam were buddies and were both involved in 9/11 (despite their dear leader telling them otherwise - just like in this case) I suspect we'll be hearing these WMD claims for years to come.

It must suck to be that desperate.