Weapons of Mass Destruction Found!

August 14, 2005 7:23 AM

They've found those WMDs! Well, not quite. Just chemicals that eventually could be turned into weapons. But what's interesting is that this chem lab dates from AFTER the US invasion.
posted by John of Michigan (37 comments total)

Gotcha. Not Saddam's stuff, just Insurgent stuff.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:49 AM on August 14, 2005

Is this Bush's real master plan? Invade Iraq saying he's sure there are WMD's, wait a year or two and then there will be?

Tarnation, that's a smart feller. I say we just anoint him as God on Earth Forever. Or would he rather be King of Everything?
posted by fenriq at 7:56 AM on August 14, 2005

I don't mean to moderate my own post, but the article states that Saddam had NOTHING to do with these. This chemlab was built by the insurgents.

So, in a nutshell, al-Qaeda is now in Iraq. So are chemical weapons. Just not in the time frame envisioned by Dear Leader.
posted by John of Michigan at 8:05 AM on August 14, 2005

But this IS just another example of the self-fulfilling prophecy that Bush has got in Iraq, and no doubt there will be spinmeisters claiming that this justifies the invasion on the terms that Bush gave at the start.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 8:10 AM on August 14, 2005

That couldn't have been on Bush's mind. He acts entirely on instinct and emotion, rather than logic and reasoning. He "flies by the seat of his pants" and has yet to consider landing. Fact has no bearing in his world, for he doesn't need to know, only to believe. His party leadership and 'war cabinet' are organized to re-inforce this thinking, and will dutifully repeat even the most horrid lies until the public believes them.

/derail
posted by mystyk at 8:12 AM on August 14, 2005

Besides, he's on vacation.
posted by kika at 8:39 AM on August 14, 2005

Dipsomaniac: But this IS just another example of the self-fulfilling prophecy that Bush

So Bush is in the reality based community after all - just that his reality is non-causal.
posted by Chuckles at 8:54 AM on August 14, 2005

Yeah, but c'mon, is this really important? They just hired the first woman as White House executive chef. Let's stay focused on the issues people!
posted by papakwanz at 9:20 AM on August 14, 2005

Sure it is not Iraq's first meth lab?
posted by buzzman at 9:59 AM on August 14, 2005

But what's interesting is that this chem lab dates from AFTER the US invasion.

Holy Smokes! You would almost think the U.S. Invasion has INCREASED Terrorism.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 10:00 AM on August 14, 2005

Wow - with a headline like that I though Judy Miller was out of jail.
posted by holycola at 10:07 AM on August 14, 2005

you have to admit, if what you really wanted was an ever escalating holy war leading to the second comming - we've done a fine job of providing a crib for the foe.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 10:11 AM on August 14, 2005

It looks like we're going to have to invade Iraq.
posted by drezdn at 10:28 AM on August 14, 2005

Y'know, that's exactly how Davros got started...
posted by Smart Dalek at 10:48 AM on August 14, 2005

you have to admit, if what you really wanted was an ever escalating holy war leading to the second comming - we've done a fine job of providing a crib for the foe.

Nothing so psychotically visionary, just ordinary run-of-the-mill cynical sociopathic power-mongery. Perpetual war means perpetual fear, perpetual war powers, perpetual infringement of our civil liberties, and perpetual war contracts for Bush cronies. And it don't exactly hurt to have a lot of our guys with guns guarding one of the last large profitably extractable oil supplies in a Peak-Oil world of ever dwindling profitability.

God knows we sure as shit don't need Russia or China getting their hands in this stuff.

It's interesting. As far as protecting and perpetuating his team's interests goes, Bush could have no greater long term ally than Usama BinLaden.
posted by stenseng at 12:35 PM on August 14, 2005

We can now expect another propaganda blitz from the GOP to spin the negative consequences of their lies and incompetence as vindication for their actions. And who wants to bet that roughly half of the country will continue to believe them?

Remember, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz got into a 'name that tune' bidding war on how FEW troops would be needed to topple Saddam, Wolfowitz arguing that Iraq could be pacified with as little as 40,000 troops, arguing that the fewer troops we used the more impressive it would be.

Golly, in retrospect, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to elect a coke-head in charge of the world!

They're mean, irrational, have trouble planning for the future, don't understand the consequences of their actions, and will mortgage everything they can get their hands on (especially your stuff!) just for a quick fix... oh, and they ruin the neighborhood.
posted by Davenhill at 12:36 PM on August 14, 2005

If it was anything serious, say VX or nerve gas, they'd be chanting it to the high heavens. The "Leave Iraq Now" faction is starting to gain steam, and the administration needs to stoke the flames. All they say there is that it's capable of "lingering hazards" - what, like second hand smoke? Not useful on the battlefield.

I suspect that in a few days, it'll leak that this is where they make cleaning solvents, our guys have known about it for a long time, and just didn't care. Biggest story since the mobile bioweapons labs. We'll never hear about it again after Cindy Sheehan leaves Crawford.

On preview, yes Stenseng, and vice versa. Even if there's a short term win for Halliburton and friends, in the long term, this is good for Osama and the jihadis.
posted by swell at 12:41 PM on August 14, 2005

Take a close look at the republican rhetoric these days. The rhetoric is building towards *leaving* iraq, not staying. WMDs would not be convenient at this point in time. Oh, and according to Duncan Hunter, it was never the goal to bring peace and stability to Iraq. And Biden is saying we need more troops, and to be prepared for a long stay in Iraq. The positions are changing so fast my head is spinning ....
Politicians ... go figure ....
posted by forforf at 1:01 PM on August 14, 2005

Tarnation, that's a smart feller. I say we just anoint him as God on Earth Forever. Or would he rather be King of Everything?

We're working on it, fenriq. Interestingly, four of the five sponsors of that resolution are actually Democrats. Hmm.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:01 PM on August 14, 2005

WMDs? WTF?!!
posted by ijoshua at 1:08 PM on August 14, 2005

yeah, monju, some democrats are interested in repealing the 22nd 'cause they feel that the big dog would crush little w. head to head.
posted by dersins at 1:11 PM on August 14, 2005

At least that would make for an interesting election, dersins.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:33 PM on August 14, 2005

As noted at Daily Kos, the Bush administration is changing its rhetoric and are now forwarding a "shift the blame" strategy.

"Mr. Rumsfeld also called on the Iraqi government to assume greater responsibility over time for the 15,000 detainees now in American custody in Iraq; to allocate enough money in future Iraqi budgets to field security forces that are capable of replacing many of the 22,000 foreign allied forces that plan to leave Iraq by year's end; and to improve cooperation between the Iraqi defense and interior ministries to enhance the combat readiness of Iraq's 170,000 military and paramilitary police forces."

And over at digby:

"In the medium and long term, what happens in Iraq is up to the Iraqis. It is certainly possible that they might forfeit what the Bush administration and America's armed forces have given them: a chance at freedom and the opportunity to live in peace with their neighbors. But if the Iraqis fail, it won't be because liberals stampeded the United States into abandoning them."

posted by ericb at 1:38 PM on August 14, 2005

Problem is, near as I can tell, the "Big Dog" wouldn't pursue a substantively different policy from what we have now.
posted by stenseng at 1:38 PM on August 14, 2005

Sure it is not Iraq's first meth lab?

Even if so, it still wouldn't be considered that important by the White House. Now, a pot-growing farm-- that would be cause for some US military smackdown.
posted by deanc at 4:54 PM on August 14, 2005

So, where do you all think these chemicals came from then? Syria? Iran? Were they 'planted' - or were they there all along?
posted by dash_slot- at 5:00 PM on August 14, 2005

So, where do you all think these chemicals came from then?

Presumably they make them from fairly readily available chemicals. (They mentioned stuff like a distillery). Maybe like following the instructions on cleaning products that helpfully tell you "It is a FEDERAL OFFENSE to use this cleaning product in conjuntion with products containing bleach". :-)

I imagine that while it might be quite a huge challenge to get the chemicals if the task was "I want to you to make this particlar nerve agent", it is presumably not much of a challenge if the task is instead "I want you to find something dangerous you can make from whatever you can find" and the person knows a fair bit o' chemistry. And the person has Men With Guns who can loot stuff from legitimate industrial sites and factories.

It might just be upscaled homebrew, much like meth labs here in the US.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:37 PM on August 14, 2005

It might just be upscaled homebrew

Which is not implying it isn't dangerous and a Damn Good Thing it was found before it bore fruit.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:40 PM on August 14, 2005

-harlequin- writes "'It is a FEDERAL OFFENSE to use this cleaning product in conjuntion with products containing bleach'."

Do you actually have warnings like that in the States?
posted by Mitheral at 5:56 PM on August 14, 2005

Mitheral:
Yup. I and a friend of mine once sat down and played a paper-trail game with the labels on cleaning products from around the house, to see what they would lead us to (much like that suburban guy who learned how to operate the nearby anti-submarine gun installation from all the things the military had told him to NEVER do, in that Spielburg film "1941"). He had done masters chem, which helped a little. It was mostly the well-known dangers like chlorine gas, but still funny - if they had just said "never" instead of "FEDERAL OFFENSE" (and yes, it was capitalised like that), it wouldn't have occurred to us that someone might want to do that stuff by design, instead of by accident :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 6:10 PM on August 14, 2005

Military officials did not immediately identify either the precursors or the agent they could have produced.

Wolf! Wolf!
posted by ook at 6:36 PM on August 14, 2005

Sorry, I misspoke. Yellowcake! Aluminum tubes! Dirty bomber! Balsawood spy planes! Bad apples! Be Afraid!

I used to basically believe the words that came out of my government's mouth. Something about the last four years has made me, well, let's say a bit more skeptical.
posted by ook at 6:47 PM on August 14, 2005

and have they found the perpetrators of the anthrax attacks too? i thought not.
posted by brandz at 8:08 PM on August 14, 2005

stenseng: "As far as protecting and perpetuating his team's interests goes, Bush could have no greater long term ally than Usama BinLaden."
Thank-you for that and the rest of the comment. Somehow I still find it mindblowing that we never see this analysis. Guess I'm just naive, hoping the folks who think about these things will, uh, you know, think about these things.
posted by zoinks at 12:10 AM on August 15, 2005

I just used a can of Raid anti-hornet spray which mentioned that it was a FEDERAL OFFENSE to use it in a manner at odds with the instructions.

Stuff didn't work anyway.
posted by delmoi at 11:57 AM on August 15, 2005

Swell.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:24 PM on August 15, 2005

Followup:

Chemicals commonly used in industry; investigators still checking

We have nothing to indicate there's anything specifically going on here," he said. "We're still just in the process of analyzing things and trying to get intelligence to find out just what was going on."

"My experts are still up there or on the way back," he said. "We haven't received anything conclusive except to say they have found some chemicals." The list of chemicals included glycerin, sodium hydroxide and ethanol sulfate, he said.

(I don't know what ethanol sulfate is, but glycerin and sodium hydroxide -- otherwise known as "lye" -- are used for making soap. Scary stuff.)

McRae said he did not believe that conventional weapons had been found on the site.

The U.S. military has found many suspected chemical sites in the past, none of which contained chemical or biological weapons

In other words, this is yet another in a long, long stream of trumped-up non-threats. What a shocker.
posted by ook at 10:34 AM on August 22, 2005