The believers

Scott Shane had an interesting story in The New York Times dated June 23 that discussed the various people who still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to a couple of members of Congress, the story mentions a name my readers might have recognized -- Duane Clarridge. Dax, as he's known, thinks the WMD went to the Sudan on a ship.

The article includes a couple of new quotes from Charles Duelfer, who wrote the official US government report concluding the WMD programs ended more than a decade ago:

"I've seen lots of good-hearted people who thought they saw something," he said. "But none of the reports have panned out."

The article gives a lot of space to a researcher who appears to be the source for one of Representative Curt Weldon's claims.

Dave Gaubatz, described as "an Arabic-speaking investigator who spent the first months of the war as an Air Force civilian in southern Iraq" says that he knows of four critical sites in Iraq that have never been inspected. Iraqis living near those spots told him there were underground WMD bunkers.

As I've said before, even if these believers are right, it means the Bush war has been a security disaster. These are still uninspected and unsecured sites nearly twelve hundred days into the war!

Gaubatz told the NYT he does not "want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands." Is it too late? Does anyone know with certainty?

Maybe someone should have thought of these risks three years ago. We already know that the US failed to secure known ammo dumps that had powerful "conventional" explosives.

It is clear why no one in the administration seems eager to pursue this lead as it is now a lose-lose situation. If they look at those sites and there are weapons, they will look like fools for failing to look before. And people might wonder why these places weren't secured.

If they look and there are no signs of any weapons ever being in the identified spots, the hunt would just remind everyone of a sore point. There were no wmd.

If they look and the weapons are gone, with evidence that they were once there, then it suggests a security disaster: missing wmd.

This last result would make this the Tora Bora story of wmd.


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