As pre-emptive hysteria descends over the Butler inquiry's not-yet produced report on the use of intelligence about Iraq, which will be instantly denounced as a whitewash unless it says that Saddam was not producing WMD, which the anti-war mob know for a fact, inquiry or no inquiry thank you very much, and that Number 10 and the intelligence hierarchy lied through their teeth to take us to war on a whim, readers might care to marvel at yet more evidence of the demonstrable non-existence of Saddam's WMD. An Associated Press report last Friday said:

'Terrorists may have been close to obtaining munitions containing the deadly nerve agent cyclosarin that Polish soldiers recovered last month in Iraq, the head of Poland's military intelligence said Friday. Polish troops had been searching for munitions as part of their regular mission in south-central Iraq when they were told by an informant in May that terrorists had made a bid to buy the chemical weapons, which date back to Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 1980s, Gen. Marek Dukaczewski told reporters in Warsaw. "We were mortified by the information that terrorists were looking for these warheads and offered $5,000 apiece," Dukaczewski said. "An attack with such weapons would be hard to imagine. All of our activity was accelerated at appropriating these warheads." Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.'

Fascinating, isn't it, that the Poles went to such panicky lengths to buy Iraqi WMD that we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt do not and did not exist. No wonder such another non-existent non-find is not being reported by the press.

*Since writing the above, a reader has alerted me to the fact that BBC
Online did report this find. The American military appears to have dismissed it on the basis that the nerve agent was old and had deteriorated. But that is surely beside the point. As the Polish general said, the ammunition had been buried in order to avoid it being discovered by UN weapons inspectors. Why conceal it, if the intention to use WMD had really been abandoned?