It was my impression that many barrells of chemical weapons, illegal missiles, warheads for chemical weapons, germ warfare labs,etc had already been found. Iraq is a big country, this stuff was no doubt hidden or sent offshore or dismantled. If Saddam truly didn't have it, why indeed didn't they cooperate with the invstigations? I suspect this will become another leftwing urban myth. No matter what they find, various leftwing reporters will continue to quote each other that nothing was ever found.
Wow... and you leftists are still insistent that this group should be involved with the rebuilding of Iraq? *************************** http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/75038.htm May 6, 2003 -- John Belushi would have loved it. Restaurant workers at the United Nations cafeteria staged an impromptu strike last Friday in a dispute over a new contractor's refusal to honor their vacation pay. That left delegates and others - including Secretary-General Kofi Annan and members of the Security Council - unable to find anyone to serve their meals or clean their tables. OK. Things like that happen. But guess what happened next. The high-end U.N. crowd went wild, grabbing everything that wasn't bolted down, including $10,000 worth of food - including a raid on the delegate lounge bar, which was stripped clean of liquor. Even the cafeteria silverware disappeared en masse. And this is the outfit that wants to administer the rebuilding of Iraq? Ha! The last thing Iraq needs is a delegation from "Animal House" in charge. http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2003/5/4/122256 Sunday, May 4, 2003 12:17 p.m. EDT Baghdad Museum 'Outrage' Dwarfed by Diplo Looting Spree Now that many of the irreplaceable treasures supposedly looted from Baghdad's National Museum are turning up in Jordan, it seems that all handwringing over the episode by media types desperate to paint the Iraq war as a failure was vastly overdone. But while Iraq's art looters weren't all they were cracked up to be, there's still plenty of cause for concern on the looting front - especially when it comes to the media's favorite deliberative body, the United Nations. "It was chaos, wild, something out of a war scene," said one executive with the food service that Aramark, which runs the U.N.'s cafeterias. "[Rampaging diplomats] took everything, even the silverware," she told Time magazine. Other U.N. workers confirmed the devastation wrought by the diplo mini-riot on Friday, saying that at least one eatery had been "stripped bare." One described the cafeteria raiders as "unbelievable, [there were] crowds of people just taking everything in sight." Time identified some of the looters as "well-known diplomats" who "finished off the raid with free drinks at the lounge for delegates." The well-stocked lounge bar was a favorite target of the international peacemakers, with one delegate telling the magazine that bottles of top-shelf U.N. booze were disappearing faster than priceless Iraqi art treasures on a warm spring day. The U.N. melee was prompted by a decision by cafeteria workers to stage an impromptu walkout in a dispute over vacation pay. After a high-ranking U.N. official gave the order to keep the cafeterias open despite the job action, the diplo-pillagers ran wild.
From WSJ "BEST OF THE WEB" BY JAMES TARANTO Tuesday, May 6, 2003 4:15 p.m. EDT Bring Back Saddam! Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman, sharing space on today's New York Times op-ed page, have different versions of the same column, a sure sign that liberal conventional wisdom has gelled. The moods are different: Kristof is pensive, while Krugman is splenetic (but isn't he always)? Basically, both of them are pounding the table over the coalition's "failure" thus far to unearth weapons of mass destruction in liberated Iraq. Now, of course, this could mean a lot of things. It could mean the weapons have been found but tests are still under way to confirm what they are. It could mean the weapons are well hidden. It could mean that Saddam's cronies destroyed them or spirited them away to Syria before the coalition arrived. It could mean intelligence agencies made honest mistakes and overestimated the degree of Iraq's weapons programs. It could even mean--hey, it's logically possible, anyway--that Saddam destroyed the weapons years ago but didn't bother informing the U.N., as mandated under Security Council resolutions. To Kristof and Krugman, however, there's only one possibility worth considering: President Bush lied. "I don't want to believe that top administration officials tried to win support for the war with a campaign of wholesale deceit," Kristof writes pensively--but it's hard to believe Kristof isn't lying about his desires, since he's writing a column suggesting just that, based on thin evidence. Anyway, given Kristof's and Krugman's track record, the fact that both of them think President Bush lied bolsters our confidence in his honesty. (Besides, we thought presidents were allowed to lie. Or is that only when they're under oath?) In any case, before these guys complain about the coalition's failure to find weapons of mass destruction, wouldn't it behoove them to wait at least as long as they wanted to give the U.N. inspectors? Here's a thought: Let's revisit this issue a year from now. If coalition troops still haven't found weapons of mass destruction next May, then we'll concede the argument may have some merit. And there's a way to test it. The Democratic nominee, whoever he is, can make righting this wrong his top promise if elected. Sounds like a winning rallying cry: Bring back Saddam! Assuming, that is, that he ever existed.