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Unusable - that about says it all. Santorum is an idiot.
Okay, Here you go. I cant wait for the "another election time ploy" group
to post.
Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq
Thursday , June 22, 2006
WASHINGTON — The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.
Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mus or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."
• Click here to read the declassified portion of the NGIC report.
He added that the report warns about the hazards that the chemical weapons could still pose to coalition troops in Iraq.
"The purity of the agents inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal," Santorum read from the do ent.
"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s. But they do show that Saddam Hussein was lying when he said all weapons had been destroyed, and it shows that years of on-again, off-again weapons inspections did not uncover these munitions.
Hoekstra said the report, completed in April but only declassified now, shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don't fully understand."
Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.
Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.
"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMDs for which this country went to war."
The official said the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the fairly sizeable stash of chemical weapons. And he noted that it may say something about Hussein's intent and desire. The report does suggest that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.
He also said that the Defense Department statement shortly after the March 2003 invasion saying that "we had all known weapons facilities secured," has proven itself to be untrue.
"It turned out the whole country was an ammo dump," he said, adding that on more than one occasion, a conventional weapons site has been uncovered and chemical weapons have been discovered mixed within them.
Hoekstra and Santorum lamented that Americans were given the impression after a 16-month search conducted by the Iraq Survey Group that the evidence of continuing research and development of weapons of mass destruction was insignificant. But the National Ground Intelligence Center took up where the ISG left off when it completed its report in November 2004, and in the process of collecting intelligence for the purpose of force protection for soldiers and sailors still on the ground in Iraq, has shown that the weapons inspections were incomplete, they and others have said.
"We know it was there, in place, it just wasn't operative when inspectors got there after the war, but we know what the inspectors found from talking with the scientists in Iraq that it could have been cranked up immediately, and that's what Saddam had planned to do if the sanctions against Iraq had halted and they were certainly headed in that direction," said Fred Barnes, editor of The Weekly Standard and a FOX News contributor.
"It is significant. Perhaps, the administration just, they think they weathered the debate over WMD being found there immediately and don't want to return to it again because things are otherwise going better for them, and then, I think, there's mindless resistance to releasing any classified do ents from Iraq," Barnes said.
The release of the declassified materials comes as the Senate debates Democratic proposals to create a timetable for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq. The debate has had the effect of creating disunity among Democrats, a majority of whom shrunk Wednesday from an amendment proposed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to have troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraq by the middle of next year.
At the same time, congressional Republicans have stayed highly united, rallying around a White House that has seen successes in the last couple weeks, first with the death of terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, then the completion of the formation of Iraq's Cabinet and then the announcement Tuesday that another key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader, "religious emir" Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, was also killed in a U.S. airstrike.
Santorum pointed out that during Wednesday's debate, several Senate Democrats said that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, a claim, he said, that the declassified do ent proves is untrue.
"This is an incredibly — in my mind — significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," he said.
As a result of this new information, under the aegis of his chairmanship, Hoekstra said he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.
"We are working on the declassification of the report. We are going to do a thorough search of what additional reports exist in the intelligence community. And we are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war," Hoekstra said.
FOX News' Jim Angle and Sharon Kehnemui Liss contributed to this report.
Copyright 2006 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Unusable - that about says it all. Santorum is an idiot.
Right, just because a s can't disperse chemical weapons like it is intended doesn't mean they can't take the sarin out of it and use it somewhere else. Good call Dan.
To quote Professor Bainbridge:
500 WMD S s: Big DealEverybody knows Saddam used chemical weapons on the Kurds and in his war with Iran. It would be astonishing if we hadn't found some munitions. But there's nothing new here to suggest that Iraq had a WMD program sufficiently threatening to justify the war.
One wonders about the reading ability of some posters here.
the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.
"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991," the official said
at this thread
Santorum is in deep trouble electorally, with his approval ratings among his voters right down there with dubya's.
Asked why the Bush administration, if it had known about the information since April or earlier, didn't advertise it, Hoekstra conjectured that the president has been forward-looking and concentrating on the development of a secure government in Iraq.
The administration knew they couldn't sell this stuff as the imminent threat we were supposed to be ting our pants about.
The lies and insanity continue, the sheeple play right along.
Had nothing to do with an inability to disperse. The chemicals themselves have degraded to an unusable level.
This isn't exactly news. A year or two ago an IED went off exposing soldiers to cyclosarin. It was discovered that is was pre-Gulf War and no longer toxic.
Another report before the invasion listed 15 chemical weapons capable artillery s s (a prohibited item) found during a UN inspection.
Finding 500 old units with decayed and impotent chemical weapons is not exactly important news.
Oh boy, about what I expected. 500 is no number. Lies and insanity continue,
Laughing boy. Who's lies are beginning to crumble once again. The liberal,
regressive, dimm-o-craps. Once more their little world comes tumbling down.
What a sorry bunch of liberals we have on this forum. Never admitting what
they are. Just we support the troops. We love our government. Remember
humanity. Yeah.....okay.....go tell that to someone who believes you. Talk
amongst yourselves. Smoke if you gottem!
Oh pray tell, why were the lefties so upset when we wanted to destroy
all our "degraded" chemical weapons? Hmmmmmmm!
....bump........
Still waiting for all the other great rebuttals.......
You rang?
Yeah, and you have no answer, like the rest of dimm-o-craps.
Well, ahh, eraaah, welllllll, we almost got the big lie to stick, didn't we......hey,
NYT and CBS and NBC and BBC and the rest of you. Come on come to my
rescue.......you know.....Where is Dan Rather when we need him.........
Just admit it. The whole repug administration are a bunch of lying, stealing, murdering pieces of low-life trash wanna be's who lie and pretend as if they are Christians.
They are nothing like a christian.
They will do anything and say anything to win and steal any election or story and spin anything and lie and cheat their way to .
Just because you won't admit this doesn't mean it's not true.
We will Impeach Bush!
Oh my. I think I have angered dimm-o-crap and dimm-o-craps in general. Did you
take your prozac today.
Why do you want to impeach Bush. Then you will have Chenney to contend with.
But you got Murtha, Reid, and Pelosi. The three muskateers. Oh, I forgot
Kennedy. The swimmer. And his son, who is now on his way to the House to vote.
Oh, yes, don't want to forget Kerry, the wounded Viet Nam veteran. Who lobbied
for North Viet Nam and is now working for Al Qaeda. Has he registered as a
representative for a foreign power?
You are such a grand bunch. I would call you a gay bunch, but then Barney would
get upset. Cause the s have reserved that name for them. Of course they
aren't gay. They are miserable because they want to marry each other and the
normal people want let them. I know, I know that is not nice to say. I am
phobic, it's a disease you know. So you must respect it and not make
fun. You dimm-o-craps taught me that.
America needs a change, maybe a President with some actual combat experience.
Yeah, like Kerry, the Wounded Viet Nam Veteran. Or Hillary, fighting the wars of
the WH bedroom with Barbara Streisand and Lewinsky.
I'm sorry but Dubya's fight with a pretzel doesn't qualify as "combat".
He fought a pretzel? I didn't know that. Is that like Kennedy and his buddies
and the waitress sandwich?
What exactly is your point with this statement?
Not sure how the heck it applies to what I stated.
Oh, I like this person dimm-o-crap. He understand the needs of the people. And has the pluse of the nation.
June 22nd, 2006 3:14 pm
Poll: Santorum approval rating declines
By Peter Jackson / Associated Press
Article
Sen. Rick Santorum's approval rating has skidded to a four-year low, the latest sign of distress for the outspoken conservative and ally of President Bush, according to a poll released Wednesday.
The lead for Santorum's Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Bob Casey, has stretched to 18 percentage points since early May.
Casey leads Santorum by 52 percent to 34 percent — the biggest margin since October, when the numbers were the same, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.
Only 38 percent of respondents said they approved of the way Santorum, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, is handling his job. Forty-five percent said they disapproved and 16 percent did not express an opinion.
It was the first time Santorum's approval rating dropped below 40 percent since Quinnipiac began measuring it in June 2002.
Bush's approval rating in the state rebounded somewhat in the latest poll, to 34 percent from 30 percent in May. The proportion of Pennsylvania voters who approved of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq increased to 35 percent from 29 percent.
"Senator Santorum appears to be his own worst enemy in his battle for re-election," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Connecticut-based university's polling ins ute.
In the May survey, Casey, the son of late Democratic Gov. Robert P. Casey, led Santorum by 49 percent to 36 percent.
More than 40 percent of Casey's supporters said they are more against electing Santorum to a third term than for Casey, the poll showed.
Virginia Davis, a Santorum campaign spokesman, said polls are unreliable at this stage in the campaign.
Larry Smar, a spokesman for the Casey campaign, agreed that it is too early to read too much into the polls but that Casey's continuing strength in polling bodes well for the November election.
Quinnipiac conducted telephone interviews with 1,076 Pennsylvania voters between June 13 and Monday. The results carry a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
What are the chances Santorum admits he's wrong?
Fox’s Alan Colmes broke the news to Santorum. Watch it:Think ProgreeToday, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) held a press conference and announced “we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Santorum and Hoekstra are hyping a do ent that describes degraded, pre-1991 munitions that were already acknowledged by the White House’s Iraq Survey Group and dismissed.
Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are “not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.”
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