Jane Harman:Old WMD News and Declassification Hypocrisy

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You would think that for something to be considered “news,” it would have to be, well, new. Yet Republicans including Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum are trying to spin a report on degraded pre-1991 WMDs that were found in Iraq as news of the utmost importance – despite the fact that we’ve known about the existence of these rusty canisters for many years.

There is nothing new here. Nothing in this report, classified or otherwise, contradicts the Duelfer Report, which assessed that we would find degraded pre-1991 weaponry in Iraq.


If Colin Powell had gone to the United Nations in February of 2003 and rested the Administration’s case on the fact that Iraq still possessed degraded weapons from before the first Gulf War, he would have been laughed out of the room. No one seriously believes we went to war over the weapons that are now being hyped, so we should treat this diversion with the lack of interest that it deserves.


In fact, David Kay, who led the U.S. team that searched for WMDs in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, called these stockpiles “less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink.” And Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s weapon inspector, called them “local hazards,” not WMDs.

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http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2006/jun/30/old_wmd_news_and_declassification_hypocrisy

[oasis]

1. Let the truth be told. eom