The Right Coast

May 17, 2004
 
Oh, that nerve gas
By Tom Smith

It's just a little. It's only one. It's probably the only one. Bush lied. It violates international law. We're just as bad as Saddam. Have I left anything out?

Then there's this:

Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam's regime, told Fox News that he believes many similar weapons stockpiled by the former regime were either buried underground or transported to Syria. He noted that the airport where the device was detonated is on the way to Baghdad from the Syrian border.

George said the finding likely will just be the first in a series of discoveries of such weapons.

"Saddam is the type who will not store those materials in a military warehouse. He's gonna store them either underground, or, as I said, lots of them have gone west to Syria and are being brought back with the insurgencies," George told Fox News. "It is difficult to look in areas that are not obvious to the military's eyes.

"I'm sure they're going to find more once time passes," he continued, saying one year is not enough for the survey group or the military to find the weapons.

Saddam, when he was in power, had declared that he did in fact possess mustard-gas filled artilleries but none that included sarin.

"I think what we found today, the sarin in some ways, although it's a nerve gas, it's a lucky situation sarin detonated in the way it did ... it's not as dangerous as the cocktails Saddam used to make, mixing blister" agents with other gases and substances," George said.


But don't worry. The chemical weapons have nothing to do with prison abuse and so are per se irrelevant, as we lawyers might say. Alternatively, just put your fingers in your ears and say, "I'm not listening, la, la, la, la, la . . . " It works for kids and it can work for you.