Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Chemical filled munitions found in Iraq

For those of you keeping score at home, file this under "WMD found in Iraq." (warning, pdf)

We found 500 shells filled with degraded sarin or mustard gas. This was just declassified and made public via press conference by Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra. Intelligence estimates that more filled and unfilled chemical munitions still exist in the country. Reaction, however has been varied.

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Santorum, and Hugh expressed the extreme importance of this announcement and wanted to spread the news as wide and far as possible. Ace tries to figure out what exactly about this information really deserved classification in the first place. Is it liberals in the intelligence community trying to hide info beneficial to the president or us trying to hide possible connections between the munitions and their possible ties to our pseudo-allies the Russians. Allah over at Hot Air is a bit underwhelmed with the news what with Iran close to developing nukes and asks the obvious question about the political timing of the release since the Senate was just debating Iraq today and elections are only five months away. Hot Air also has the press conference posted as well. Michelle Malkin also wonders what took so long.

As important as the news is, I also wonder what took so long. This doesn't seem to be the earth-shattering, be all and end all of discoveries.

Still, better that we found them rather than the terrorists...