Saturday, January 10, 2004

Iraq War: Have the Danes Found WMDs?

Well, according to Reuters, Danish troops in Iraq have found some artillery shells that seem to have been buried for 10 years in a war zone from the Iran-Iraq war that might contain traces of blister gas (aka, mustard gas). Possible Iraqi Chemical Weapons Found - Denmark Reuters 01/10/04.

Yes, those WMD revelations just keep coming. There were the mobile weapons labs that Bush himself said were WMD, that might have been used to make biological weapons, that turned out to be used to make hydrogen gas for observation balloons. There was the teensy bottle of botulin that had been setting in some scientist's refrigerator for years, that turned out not to the common strain that most people have in their back yards, not the kind that can be weaponized. There were some parts that might have one time been used in machinery to make nuclear weapons material buried under another scientist's lawn for years.

Now the Danish army has found some old artillery shells that might have traces of mustard gas, weapons which almost certainly were completely useless as battlefied weapons or for terrorists, unless maybe a terrorist group could assemble enough so that they could persuade someone to snort it directly up his nose. We'll see how this one pans out.

I wonder if that will be any comfort to Melinda, Jennifer and Chris Hicks. Melinda is the widow and Jennifer and Chris the teenage children of Sgt. Gregory Hicks, a Tennessee native killed in the Blackhawk helicopter shot down in Iraq during this past week. He had been wounded, and the chopper was taking him to be treated, after which he was to return to the United States.

Did they lose him to a war waged because of the threat to the United States presented by long-buried and useless mustard gas shells?

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