**Video from Hannity & Colmes is here.**
He’s reading from a document about it right now with Pete Hoekstra by his side. The shells allegedly contained degraded mustard or sarin gas. He says they believe there are other shells inside the country that haven’t been found yet.
WMD is WMD, but finding a shell here and there when Iran’s about to get the bomb next door leaves me somewhat … underwhelmed.
Update: Actually, is that true? “WMD is WMD”? The knock on Ron Suskind’s “mubtakkar of death” is that, as scary as it sounds, it wouldn’t kill any more people inside a subway car than a conventional bomb would. Or a small-arms attack, possibly. Are chemical shells any scarier than, say, grenades? They have a lot more political value, obviously.
Update: And when I say political value, I don’t mean just for Bush. Santorum’s re-election bid is on life support, and of course there’s a debate raging on the Senate floor about the war right now. I’ve been meaning to write about it but don’t have much to say except that it’s entertaining to watch Democrats trying to figure out how defeatist is too defeatist for purposes of getting re-elected.
Update: A commentator I respect e-mails with a most excellent question indeed:
how can you fail to cheer the revelation about the wmds in iraq? and why haven’t you asked the next question? how long has this information been in the hands of the intel community? why haven’t we heard about this before?
it’s quite an interesting story, i think we will discover.
See-Dubya agrees. Captain Ed is already weighing the political fallout.
Update: I’ve got the video of Santorum via Fox but it’s going to take me awhile to get it uploaded, unfortunately. (Damned Tivo.) It should be up by 8 p.m. EST if you’ll bear with me.
Update: CNS News reports on Santorum’s press conference.
Update: Austin Bay comments:
Artillery rounds are tactical weapons–but nerve gas is still nerve gas and it puzzles me as to why this information took so long to release.
Saddam used WMD and once the Desert Storm santions were lifted I believe he intended to reconstitute his programs. To believe otherwise about Saddam is to put you in league with goofs like Michael Moore and George Galloway.
Update: Raw Story is covering this, too.
Update: Alex C. of Santorum Blog e-mails to say that the Senator has issued a press release on the chemical shells.
Update: As promised, here’s video of the press conference. Santorum’s supposedly going to be on Hannity & Colmes tonight; we’ll have video of that too if anything interesting is said.
Update: The document Santorum read from during the presser is available for download here in PDF form. Hugh Hewitt had Santorum on this afternoon and says the transcript should soon be up at Radioblogger.
Update: Austin Bay says it’s put-up-or-shut-up time for Santorum.
