HUNDREDS OF WMD FOUND IN IRAQ SINCE 2004

Republicans Senator Rick Santorum and Congressman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee held a news conference today reporting that about 500 weapons munitions have been found in Iraq since May 2004.

A declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit reports:

Subject: Iraqi Chemical Munitions

Purpose: This summary provides an unclassified overview of chemical munitions recovered in Iraq since May 2004.

Key Points:

–Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agents.

–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. **(in addition to the 500 already found)

– Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market . Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.

–The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.

–The purity of the agent 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.

–It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

As of right now, many major networks are not covering the story. Check out CNN.com. Liberal guests on Fox News fully discounted the news as meaningless.

“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.

Rick Santorum said: “Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard 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.”

Remember what the Dems said about WMD and Saddam as late recently as 2003.

When my husband was in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003, soldiers found munitions buried in the backyards of a couple high ranking Baathist officials. I recall seeing the reports on CNN and other places, but not much came of the reports. Back in June 2005 I wrote that the United Nations reported 109 sites in Iraq had missing WMD:

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday.

U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.

Liberals will argue that these are pre-Gulf War WMD, but are they not the very ones Saddam told the U.N. he destroyed yet we all knew he had, based on various intelligence? Liberals will also say they WMD are useless and ineffectual, but how then does the classified report say that they could be sold on the black market or that they could be “used” outside of Iraq? And why would Iraqi groups and insurgents try to obtain the WMD that were unusable?

Could it be that Pres. George W. Bush is owed a huge apology? Al Sharpton said on Fox’s Bill O’Reilly tonight that if WMD were ever found in Iraq that he would apologize to the President on the O’Reilly Factor. I’ve got the DVD-R on record…