Conservative bloggers rush to their keyboards to report yet another WMD find

Last week, the die-hard Bush worshipers were claiming that a memo found in Iraq indicated that Iraq was still producing chemical weapons in 2002. That was based on a badly flawed reading of the document. Now they’re at it again, siezing on an announcement by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI):

“This is an incredibly - in my mind - significant finding,” Santorum told a news conference Wednesday. “It is important for the American public to understand that these weapons did in fact exist, were present in the country and were in fact and continue to be a threat to us.”

Santorum’s claims have been dismissed by the Department of Defense:

A new, partially declassified intelligence report provides no new evidence that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, as President Bush alleged in making the case for war, U.S. intelligence officials said Thursday.

The report, made public in the midst of a partisan debate in Congress, says that about 500 munitions containing degraded chemical weapons, including mustard gas and sarin nerve agent, have been found in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

But the intelligence officials said the munitions dated from before the 1991 Persian Gulf War and were for the most part badly deteriorated. “They are not in a condition where they could be used as designed,” one intelligence official said.

“There is not new news from the coalition point of view,” one official said, noting that chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer predicted in a March 2005 report that such vintage weapons would continue to be found.

Even Fox News has published an account that debunks Santorum:

A senior Defense Department official, however, made the following clarifications:

• These findings do not reflect a WMD capacity that was built up after 1991.
• These are not the WMDs this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had.
• These are not the WMDs for which this country went to war.

And Think Progress points out that the DoD report cited by Santorum and Hoekstra contains information that weapons inspectors and the DoD had already analyzed. They concluded that Iraq had not restarted its WMD program, and that the munitions found did not constitute a threat.

But none of that stopped bloggers on the far right from claiming, once again, that a smoking gun had been found. A blogger at RedState jumped on Santorum’s announcement:

This comes as a tremendous breath of fresh air for those of us who’ve been there, have always said the Saddam had WMD, and have been laughed at for the last 3 years. I’m very pleased to be able to say, “I told you so.”

Allahpundit, who writes for Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air site, believes that there’s a media conspiracy afoot:

Was Stephen Colbert Santorum’s source? That’s the only explanation I can think of as to why the right-wing lapdog media we keep hearing so much about would bury a story about chemical shells in Iraq.

Of course, there’s another possible explanation. Maybe the mainstream media was checking the story out before going to print. Taking that crucial step can save you a lot of embarrassment.

Rightwing Nuthouse also sees a media conspiracy, as does Patterico’s Pontifications.

Meanwhile, Baseball Crank, Jim Geraghty, Powerline, and Glenn Reynolds just stick with the idea that Santorum and Hoekstra have exposed a major new find.

Bloggers falling for both the “Hussein had WMD” and “there’s a media conspiracy” theories include Confederate Yankee, Captain Ed, and Michelle Malkin.

And of course, Fox News just couldn’t resist featuring an “expert” who claimed that the story has been covered up by the Department of Defense, in order to protect Russia, China, and France.

To paraphrase Lincoln: you can fool all of the wingnuts some of the time, and you can fool some of the wingnuts all of the time. And you can fool most of the wingnuts most of the time.

When the issue came up last week, I offered this explanation as to why the kool-aid drinkers continue to look for evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, two full years after the Bush Administration gave up. I think it’s worth repeating in the face of this new wave of tinfoil hattery:

Before Bush was elected, this was the same crowd that scoffed at the idea that the United States should make democracy and human rights foreign policy goals. They derided and mocked organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International.

They railed against President Clinton when he confronted Milosevic over the issue of genocide. They were untroubled by President Reagan’s overtures to Saddam Hussein, overtures made while Hussein was actively murdering his people by the thousands. Bush himself scoffed at the idea that the US should engage in “nation building” during a debate with Vice President Gore.

I think they sense their hypocrisy. Deep down, they feel a bit strange when they rise with righteous indignation to decry the right-wing Muslims’ positions on gays and women. They remember, somewhere in the backs of their minds, thinking that liberals were being stupid and naive when they criticized Reagan’s support of the Apartheid government in South Africa, and the murderous regimes of El Salvador and Haiti.

They know that the regimes of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are repressive. In short, the die-hard Bush supporters know that there really is no way for them to be consistent and to support the war in Iraq at the same time.

Unless, of course, Iraq really was a threat the United States. It’s a bit silly to think of Iraq threatening the United States, even if they had weapons of mass destruction. But if Bush’s last loyalists can imagine that there really were WMD in Iraq, they can at least justify the war on their own terms.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger)

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 22nd, 2006 at 3:25 pm and is filed under WMD. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.