Okay, so one shell doesn't make a stockpile, but even so. As might have been predicted, the discovery in Iraq of a shell filled with sarin nerve agent has been totally downplayed by the media. It's been dismissed as 'old' since it dates from before the first Gulf War. Er, excuse me -- isn't that precisely the point? Saddam was required to prove he had got rid of all his WMD. The fact that he didn't led rational people to suspect that he still had it. As the Telegraph reported today:

'Iraq is known to have manufactured about 800 tons of sarin between 1984 and the first Gulf war in 1991. A UN Special Commission set up to oversee Iraq's destruction of chemical and biological weapons was able to locate and destroy only 70 tons. The whereabouts of the missing sarin has never been established.'

The anti-war lobby has claimed with ever greater certainty that the missing 730 tons of sarin, along with the rest of Saddam's WMD, were either destroyed years ago or never existed. It is currently busy trying to destroy George Bush and Tony Blair on the grounds that they lied that Saddam possessed WMD, or at the very least were hopelessly duped. And so how does it respond when a shell of sarin actually turns up? It dismisses it. A reader tells me that last night Channel Four News, a shrill leader of the 'it never existed' school, had the brazen gall to say the sarin attack 'revealed what we already knew...' that there was unaccounted for WMD in Iraq. And on this morning's Today programme, John Humphrys caused another reader to choke on his cornflakes by repeating his mantra that 'the case for war turned out not to be true', as if one of the deadliest nerve agents known to man had not just exploded in the country where Humphrys insists it didn't exist.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal points out that two weeks ago, WMD hunters discovered Iraqi insurgents with a shell that contained mustard gas, believed to be one of 550 such shells that Saddam possessed before the war -- and another one Hans Blix managed to miss. As the Journal comments:

'Mr. Blix seems ready to believe that Saddam destroyed them all himself--which is hardly reassuring given the former dictator's record. We'd put more stock in Gazi George, a former Iraqi nuclear scientist under Saddam, who told Fox News that he believes the weapons were either buried underground or transported to Syria. Saddam and his henchmen buried tanks, and even fighter aircraft, so it's easy to believe they were willing to hide barrels of gas or liquid under the sand.'

Those who heads are firmly buried alongside it also dismiss the following:

'Though it gets little attention, the Iraq Survey Group that is searching for WMD has also found warehouses full of commercial and agricultural chemicals. Mixed and packaged properly, those could quickly become chemical weapons, and Saddam had no a legitimate need for so much pesticide. Survey Group head Charles Duelfer has testified to Congress that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the raw materials that would have allowed him to produce such weapons on a moment's notice once the international pressure was off. Insight magazine also reported this month that, in Karbala in central Iraq, U.S. forces found 55-gallon drums of pesticide, some of which were stored in a "camouflaged bunker complex." The alleged agricultural site just happened to be located alongside a military ammunition dump.'

Readers may care to speculate how the anti-war lobby will react when the remainder of the WMD finally turns up. Rest assured, they will find a way of dismissing, minimising or otherwise negating it. For if it turns out to be true, too many glittering reputations stand to go straight down the pan.

Posted by melanie at May 18, 2004