I await the innevitable, "THAT Sarin doesn't count!" Really, it is amusing (or would be if it weren't our asses on the line) to observe the Dance of the Ever Shifting Goalposts. I have said all along; the WMDs will surface, the lefts obsession with WMDs will submerge. And in six months, no one will remember that "No WMDs" was the knock on George Bush. As this plank falls from the Evil Boosh platform they will adhere yet more passionately to the Halliburton/Carlyle style paranoid fantasies that at least have the advantage that they can never be disproven. In twenty years we will need a new Great Society to house, feed and clothe these shambling, neurotic mumblers who dwell in the shadows of GWB statuary. I may give one or two a dollar.

Speaking of moving goalposts:

The original goalposts were massive weaponized stockpiles of chemical weapons, biological weapons, anthrax, sarin, nuclear weapon programs ('reconstituted nuclear weapons'). There were biological mobile weapons labs transporing biological weapons around like FedEx and cooking up botulism like burgers. There were as many centrifuges in Iraq as there are prayer wheels in Tibet. There were automated planes capable of spraying chemical weapons. You could hardly turn around in the country without finding sarin and more anthrax than in a post-office.

Then the goalposts became -- stockpiles of weapons.

Then they became active weapons programs. Then potential weapons programs.

Now, what do we have ? At best a few leftover shells from the Iran/Iraq war, which even the Baaathist thugs who attacked our soldiers did not seem to realize were chemical weapons. Thats assuming this isn't another false alarm. [ In fact, if the shell hadn't detonated, we would probably have taken it to be another such false alarms]

So we spen $150 billion, 800 american lives, thousands of casualties for that ?

Here's something to consider -- we have all the top Iraqi regine memebrs except Al Douri. None of thee guys have been able to produce any of these WMDs yet.

Jane,

Good point.

Yours,
Wince

Dean - c'mon, you know us military thugs. We all stick together, when we aren't raping, pillaging and burning small countrys, and doing nothing of worth or note.

Jane,

It was never about quantity. Our number one biggest concern was always that whatever amount of WMDs Saddam had, it would wind up in the hands of terrorists. Detonated in downtown New York or Los Angeles, you don't need a whole lot to kill thousands.

Now it's happened. I wish I could understand why no one except me seems alarmed by this.

-Donald

I'm with you Donald...Jane thinks that we who support this effort think finding this 155mm shell is GOOD NEWS...as if its all a game of Gotcha...I don't think this is good news at all, this is what I was afraid of from the beginning...this stuff is there, there's lots of it, and it's going to be uncovered NOT by the UN or the Iraqi Survey Team...it's going to be uncovered by Zarquawi or al Sadr or some bunch of thugs wanting to re-create the Taliban in Iraq...this is trouble, folks...this is no game.

Funny how I don't remember being told what quantities were required in order for Saddam to be in violation.

Oh yeah, now I do: any quantity at all. Or any failure to cooperate with inspections.

Talk about moving goalposts? This from the folks who fail to acknowledge the dozen-plus other arguments besides WMDs that the administration brought up, and that all made their way into the war declaration by the Congress?

Pot-kettle-black indeed.

Donald and Chris,

And I'm with both of you...I'm hoping that the excellent men and women over at CentCom are dropping everything else like a bad habit and concentrating on where the damned shell came from...

Donald,

That was always my biggest fear, but I assigned it a relatively low (but still unacceptable) probability. My second biggest fear (with a much higher, still unacceptable probability) was that Saddam would skate by, develop nukes and then provide shelter, training and support for non-WMD using terrorists. And there would be nothing we could do about it.

I remember Stalin's successors. I remember Mao and his successors. The USSR sheltered, trained and supported terror world-wide. (I suspect the PRC did the same, but I've read no details.) Saddam with a nuclear umbrella is a nightmare.

Yours,
Wince

I want to know where "155mm" came from. As far as I know, the Sovs never had a 155 artillery piece. I believe they had copious amounts of 150mm guns from prior to WW II to today. If it isn't Soviet, it almost (almost) surely isn't Iraqi.
Perhaps somebody who's grown up around and in the US Army simply said what he's said before ten thousand times when the syllables One five..."
Most US soldiers say, "one five five" rather than "one fifty five" or "one hundred and fifty-five".
Still, it would be nice to clear it up. I know SH had some South African artillery, in minor quantities, which might have had the 155mm caliber in their inventory.
came from his lips.

Richard,

"I want to know where "155mm" came from."

NATO-standard artillery. France, and some others, sold them to Iraq in the past.