perfidy

Robert Novak, whose political antennae are unusually acute, is reporting that there may be an announcement of the discovery of WMD in Iraq come september:

"Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms."

Along similar lines, the British government, will soon announce that it has new evidence that Iraq had produced and subsequently concealed biological weapons.

This is welcome news for me, on several levels. First, we know for certain that the Iraqis had WMD of various types back in the late nineties. We don't know where they went, and that is not a good thing. The discovery of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft (derived from the Mig 25) in the desert indicates that the Iraqis were like squirrels, hiding the nuts of their warmaking capacity all over the desert. Given the size of that desert, it will be hard for us to dig it all up.

If we are beginning to discover the scope of the Iraqi WMD development program, there is a decent chance that over time we can assure ourselves that the most has been discovered or destroyed.

Of course, another benefit is that this will silence some of the more annoying criticisms of the war on terror. Not that I am against criticism in general, but this one always irritated me. Perhaps with the WMD issue behind them, Democrats and the left can engage in a more coherent and useful criticism of war policy.