Still More Details on Santorum's WMD Revelations

"We have recovered enough chemical weapons munitions to make us sensitive to the possible force protection implications these dangerous items present to our forces in Iraq," a Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, said yesterday in response to a query regarding the recent declassification of an Army National Ground Intelligence Center report that found a large cache of shells from the Iran-Iraq war containing toxic mustard and sarin gas.

Colonel Vician's statement was a departure from the Defense Department's initial response. Officials told reporters on Wednesday that the chemical weapons found in Iraq since the conclusion of the official search for weapons of mass destruction were different from what the military went into Iraq to find.

The National Directorate of Intelligence declassified parts of the report after Senator Santorum, a Republican of Pennsylvania, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made formal requests this spring. Mr. Santorum said the report "proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq."

The details of where and when the loose ordnance was found have yet to be declassified. But two former intelligence community officials said the Iraqi military left numerous chemical weapons shells in the field of battle at the close of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.

Even before the American-led invasion of Iraq, the U.N. weapons inspection team led by Hans Blix raised concerns about the whereabouts of the chemical weapons that Iraq used against Iran. "A residue of uncertainty also remains with respect to chemical munitions that were lost, according to Iraq, after the 1991 Gulf war," a U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission report from May 30 says. "The Iraq Survey Group quoted conflicting statements of former Iraqi officials, one individual suggesting that some 500 155-mm munitions were retained by Iraq and other officials, insisting that they were actually destroyed."

That report, to be included in a forthcoming survey of Iraq's unconventional weapons program, also says some of the chemical shells were likely mixed in with conventional weapons: "Moreover, some chemical munitions filled with chemical warfare agents were marked as standard conventional weapons, which made their identification as chemical munitions problematic, not only for United Nations inspectors and later personnel of the Iraq Survey Group, but also for Iraq."

The potency of the shells varies, but according to the U.N. report, some of the 1980s-era chemical weapons would be lethal even after nearly 20 years.

So, US forces in Iraq continue to need to be aware that WMD may be deployed against them if terrorists have managed to come across chemical weapons shells that are unmarked as such. It makes ordnance disposal far more difficult as a detonation of such shells could cause exposure to chemical or nerve agents. It's a real and continuing threat, even [five] all these years later.

Now it is possible that all the unaccounted-for shells have been recovered and disposed of by coalition forces, but the possibility remains that some shells may continue to be out there.

UPDATE:
Fixed misstatement above.

The New York Times has a piece focusing on the ongoing search for WMD in Iraq by what it considers die hards. The AP notes that the Santorum and Hoekstra presser has reignited the WMD question and what we've found over the past four years.

Big Lizards sums things up thusly:

We should never have stopped purposefully looking; look how much we've found completely by accident. It's my understanding that the National Ground Intelligence Center is primarily tasked with investigating possible hazards to our troops; when soldiers or Marines stumble across a find that they think might be dangerous -- chemical, radiological, or biological -- they call the NGIC to come out, investigate, and dispose of the dangerous materials.

The NGIC is not out combing the hills and sand dunes, looking for WMD. That was the job of the ISG, which quickly disbanded itself after just a few months in the field.

What if they had they been sent out with a mandate to stay so long as our troops were in Iraq, searching continuously; would they have found these shells? Would they have found the other stuff that Iraq claims but cannot prove to have destroyed? Could they have investigated new claims of Syrian or Sudanese complicity in moving WMD out of Iraq?

Would the CIA have been so quick to dismiss all the WMD we found as "the wrong kind," as Mark Steyn put it, if that attitude were not a ticket to get them back home almost as fast as John Kerry's bogus Purple Hearts?

We'll never know... unless we bite the chemical shell and restart the search. But this time, leave the pathetically political CIA out of the loop. This search is a military matter, and it should be conducted by the Pentagon, using whatever military intelligence or force assets they need.

The editorial pages are having a tough time trying to deal with the fact that we've got conclusive proof of 500 artillery shells containing sarin and mustard agents - which, for those that haven't quite kept up, are WMD in violation of UN SCR 687 and its predecessor resolutions as well as the 1991 cease fire agreement.

What we do know is that significant parts of Iraq were never searched for WMD by the ISG or the CIA tasked to that job. They were pulled off well before they could have done so. If you want to blame anyone for that, point your fingers at Bush for giving up on the whole WMD issue too soon. Prairie Pundit notes that the ISG conclusions are based largely on Saddam's former henchmen, and not from a search in the field. A secret destruction makes no sense unless you had something to hide in the first place, which leaves the disturbing possibility that there are WMD stocks still hidden somewhere in Iraq.

Shrink Wrapped notes that there's a bit of confirmational bias going on, and that the latest revelations about finding WMD in Iraq severely undermines the WMD argument that had been used by the anti-war Left against the Administration for the last three years. Also pointed to is an article by Former Spook, who provides some good backstory on how the intel community works.