Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Tom Blumer desperately wants to cling to the idea that weapons of mass destruction really were found in Iraq.
Blumer rants in a Sept. 29 post:
Apparently, "There were no WMDs in Iraq" is the left's Iraq War equivalent of their false "settled science" on human-caused global warming. Of course, climate science isn't settled at all, given that there hasn't been any warming in almost 19 years.
What is settled is that there really were WMDs in Iraq. The left's, Democrats' and others' claims that there were none — zero, zip, nada — is what is self-evidently false.
Wikileaks documents, purloined by Bradley/Chelsea Manning, considered a folk hero by many, show that there WMDs in Iraq.
Blumer cites as evidence of this a Wired report noting that the WikiLeaks findings show that "Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained" and that no "evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq."
Blumer also cites the existence of uranium yellowcake in Iraq as evidence of WMDs.
Blumer huffs that the Wired writer "tries to minimize the impact by overstating the Bush administration’s actual position." But Blumer is also overstating the opposite position. Nobody is claiming that "zero, zip, nada" chemical or nuclear weapons were found in Iraq. The standard as articulated by the Bush administration prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was amassing WMDs that posed an "imminent" threat to the U.S.
Degraded, decaying 20-year-old chemical weapons aren't WMDs as defined by the Bush administration. Non-enriched, natural uranium that Iraq had no capability to enrich aren't WMDs either.
Nevertheless, Blumer concludes: "There were WMDs at the time of the Iraq invasion, and it's not arguable." Actually, it is -- just don't expect Blumer to admit it.
