NO! Chemical weapons in Iraq???

[scaeagles]

Hundreds of chemical weapons found in Iraq

From an intelligence report with portions of it just declassified today:

Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent," said an overview of the report unveiled by Senator Rick Santorum and Peter Hoekstra, head of the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives.

Now I'm going to point out first of all that this article clearly states that the weapons were quite degraded to varying degrees. However, something tells me I still don't want to be around degraded mustard or sarin gas.

I, for one, have always believed they were there. As the link says, they are expecting to find more because they find them all the time. While this may not prove Saddam was trying to make more, I think it is clear that there was no mistaking that he had not destroyed his WMD chem weapons. 500 or so is a lot, regardless of condition. You don't just casually mix WMD with other munitions. Maybe one or two by mistake, but not 500.

One other thing I found to be very interesting -

Last year the head of Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, said that insurgents in Iraq had already used old chemical weapons in their attacks.

Nevertheless, "the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn't find anything," Hoekstra said.