Hans Blix delivered his report to the UN yesterday. I'd take a second to read the report if I were you. I'm not sure if this is the entire report or just the executive summary yet. We'll probably hear something about it in the State of the Union tonight.
People keep asking for a "smoking gun" in Iraq. They want us to find a few hundred tons of anthrax or some such. Iraq has had FOUR YEARS to hide this stuff. What makes people think we're going to find it? Iraq has over 400,000 square kilometers of land. And they've been hiding stuff for FOUR YEARS.
The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi Air Force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 tonnes. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.
They say they've destroyed all these. And the chemicals that went in them but they can't offer any proof. They can't even offer a hint of proof. They can't even show they spent money to do this. They certainly didn't do it under international supervision like South Africa. And what are inspectors finding?
I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.
I did some searching on Google and the largest use of thiodiglycol is to make mustard gas. I found one web site that mentioned certain limited industrial uses but apparently most people don't use it because it's so dangerous. Everyone else described it as a blister-agent used to make sulphur mustard.
Please take a second and read this document. It's time to decide if we allow someone like Saddam Hussein to have chemical and biological weapons. He's gassed his own people. He tortures his own people. You may be opposed to war but are you in favor of Saddam Hussein?