From Reuters, by way of CNN.

U.N. arms inspectors have concluded that the 122 mm chemical rocket warheads found in an Iraqi bunker earlier this month did not contain any chemical agents, diplomats said on Wednesday.

After the Gulf War, some of my soldiers went to Northern Iraq as part of Operation Provide Comfort, helping the Kurds in Northern Iraq. They were there to help assist in the clearing of unexploded ordnance and land mines which were all over the place. One day, one of them found one of these 122mm rocket warheads on the ground. It had obviously been out there for a while, the blowing sand had scoured all the paint and markings from the round. Since he couldn't identify the round from its appearance, he x-rayed it, and noted that it appeared to be a hollow shell. Being a curious sort, he decided to see if it was really empty - and because he did know what he was doing, he was wearing his gas mask and chemical protective gear. He drilled into the shell, and as the drill broke through the casing, the pressurized liquid contents of the shell shot out, splattering him.

The liquid was G-Nerve Agent, or Sarin.

The soldier decontaminated himself and the surrounding area, sealed and packaged the round to prevent any further contamination. And then a guy in a camouflage uniform, with no unit or rank insignia, came to him and took the package, and said "this didn't happen." Just like in the movies. No debrief and warning that it was classified information that could not be revealed - just "this didn't happen."

Well, it did. Just in case you were unsure whether Saddam Hussein has possessed and used chemical weapons - he has. You can be sure that we have evidence that he still does - found out by guys from "this didn't happen" land.

But soon we'll all be seeing it on CNN. Because we all want to know what those guys know.

I finally figured out what has been bothering me about the argument "we must hear what we will do in Iraq after we win before we can undertake the fighting." I hear it from right and left. I heard it today on the Diane Rehm show, and David Brooks from the Weekly Standard was going along with the lefties on the show on that score.

I don't like it because it presupposes winning. Of course we will win, but we will not have won until it is done. Planning as if it has already been won will take away from the planning of the winning.

Imagine if, while planning to retake the Phillipines, MacArthur also had to start formulating the occupation government of Japan. Our planners need to be thinking about how to win, quickly and decisively. Determining the aftermath is best left to the aftermath. Sure, prior planning is good, but we cannot possibly account for all of the post-war requirements until the war is done. We may have a plan for who we would install in Baghdad, but what if Baghdad is a radioactive crater, or drenched in persistent chemical agents? What if "our guy" is a resistance leader, and he gets killed on the battlefield?

Yes, we need to have an idea of what we wish to do, but it is not necessary - it is in fact detrimental - to have the whole post-war Iraq plan prior to the start of hostilities.

Rod Dreher in National Review Online's Corner:

The New York Times reports today that European intelligence services are finding evidence that Islamic militants throughout the continent are preparing a wave of poison attacks and other assaults on Europe in the event of war with Iraq. This would explain, in part, the reluctance of Europeans to support the coming war. But you have to wonder: do you people really think you can appease these Islamofascist bastards forever? Sooner or later, they're going to come for you, and you're going to have to face them down. If they're planning terror strikes on you even though you don't support the Iraq war, how safe can you ever be?

Well, no mission to Mars, but I think it was brimming with optimism. And at the end, he said, essentially. Yes ma'am, I think we will have a war. But we'll win.

Also, watching the post-speech talk on Fox, Juan Williams seems to have been won over. That has to count as a win, because it was on W's issues he's convinced.

Yes, he was officially from the Federation, and a future that had abolished nationality, but he was American, nonetheless. And he was boldly going where no man had gone before - more than that - he was leading while the crew was going, too.

I haven't started TrekBlogging to drive up the geek traffic on the site, but because of the blog for spacegeeks (his term, not mine), Jay Manifold's A Voyage To Arcturus. It turned up in my referrer logs the other day, and then a lot in the past couple of days due to Instapundit linking to a post that linked to my post rewriting Sherman's letter to Atlanta. (Whew, that's pretty blogcestuous!)

Today, Jay Manifold writes on the State of the Union, and whether the President will "announce a Mars-or-bust initiative."

I hope that he will - I had an entry about a forthcoming announcement last week of just such a program. I think that a program like this is every bit as important to the State of the Union as the coming Battle of Iraq, and what we do with tax money, and how some everyday Joe or Jane is really a hero. Because a mission like that is about the future, and the future being a good thing. It represents optimism in a truly American fashion. Only a truly optimistic people could plan to go to the Moon in ten years, or to Mars in 30 (or however long we propose). Or build the Panama Canal, for that matter.

To me, the Apollo program represented a high water mark in American achievement, and optimism. We went to the Moon - a quarter of a million miles away - several times. But the last time we went, I was in first grade, and I'm no youngster. Our current space platform, the Space Shuttle, has an upper operational limit of about 300 miles. I can drive the 500 miles from Washington to Boston in less than a day. I know its not quite a fair comparison, but still. Some 30 years after Apollo, we can't do now what we did then. I am quite sure that Apollo would never get past the Environmental Impact Statement - probably the current shuttle wouldn't pass.

I visited Cape Canaveral on the Fourth of July, 1996, and there was a video to narrate the bus tour. It started: "Welcome to Cape Canaveral, where we are proud to be home to 15 endangered species." Really. And in 1997, NASA launched the "Mission to Planet Earth." As they say, "Earth to NASA: We're already here!"

Some may argue (and it looks like Jay may be in this camp) that manned spaceflight is a victim of its own success - that it cost too much and took away from other projects that could have provided more "real science"at a lower cost. But the robotic missions don't inspire the way manned missions do. Captain Kirk could no be replaced by the computer, or that living computer, Spock. President Kennedy was right - we chose to go to the Moon because it was hard. (Like it says on the Trekblog - To the stars through adversity. Ad astra per aspera.) It was a challenge, and that's what we do. Optimists seek challenge, and opportunity.

I think that manned space flight was a victim not of its success, but of the death of optimism. The 70's were a decade of pessimism, and that infection has not been cured. Our views of the future are not about it being a great place, but a bad place. Science fiction movies and books present a dystopian world, where advance in technology results in regression for humanity.

Today's world is one which contains war, famine, pestilence, and death. It can certainly make one pessimistic about the present - pessimism about the future can only make it worse. I often wonder about the 1939 World's Fair, and the people who attended. In 1939, World War II had already started in Europe and Asia, and in the United States we were still in the depths of the Great Depression. And people turned out in droves to the World's Fair, with the Trylon and Perisphere as the symbols of the "World of Tomorrow," the City of Light, and Futurama.

The Trylon and the Perisphere

Raymond Loewy designed locomotive

The City of Light

Elektro the Robot

A mission to Mars - a manned mission - would be a great start.

For all those folks who have been screaming "show me the evidence!":

U.S. to Make Iraq Intelligence Public

Evidence of Weapons Concealment to Be Shared in Effort to Boost Support for War

After a lengthy debate over what and how much of the intelligence to disclose, President Bush and his national security advisers have decided to declassify some of the information and make it public, perhaps as early as next week, in an effort to garner more domestic and international support for confronting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with military force, officials said.

She's concerned that because she's a comedian, we don't take her seriously. Howard Kurtz writes:

Entertainers must brave a certain degree of ridicule when they waltz into the public policy arena, whether it's Sean Penn going to Baghdad or Leonardo DiCaprio pitching Earth Day. They are, after all, using their fame to be heard in a way that would be impossible if they couldn't make people laugh or cry. Why, they are asked by the same programs that invited them on, should anyone care what you think?

Just a thought.

More marginalization:

While Garofalo believes Saddam Hussein is a menace -- but that U.N. weapons inspectors should be given more time -- she also tosses around the word "imperialism" and declares that "this is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

"There is no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. You never even get that idea floated in the mainstream media. If you bring it up, they hate the messenger. You've ruined everyone's good time."

Take the time to read this. It's long, but its worth it. It has it all. (via Misha). Just a teaser:

In this, I am guardedly optimistic due to our recent victory in Afghanistan. Not the military victory, magnificent though it was.

No, I am thinking of things like the reopening of their soccer stadium, the field where I have seen -- thorough the camera obscura of the internet -- women in burqas forced to kneel and then shot through the back of the head for the crime of adultery. Kids play football there again. That’s a win, Noam Chomsky, you lying son of a bitch.

Little girls march to school in the morning, singing. That’s a win, Robert Fisk. Old men wept as the Afghan national flag was carried by an actual Afghan army during their first free National Day in two generations. That is a win for the Good Guys, too, Harold Pinter. I hear of Special Forces sergeants organizing little league teams and I just smile like a little kid.

Because the idiots out there, if their ideas were in the main - would get us all killed.

Noone wants war. But noone wants to be killed, either.

OpinionsGalore has moved to new URL: http://jeffbrokaw.net/weblog. The old address still works - for a while.

That's what Jonah Goldberg gives the French today. And Victor Davis Hanson gives the other idiotarians.

And since the Germans don't seem to be getting their due, despite being a member of the Axis of Weasels, here's mine: The Germans have chosen the wrong side on the World Wars up to this point - why would they change that streak now?

Another winger makes an appearance. This time, R. Emmett Tyrell at The American Prowler.

For some not very well thought out reasons, Mr. Roh seems to think that the United States is the reason North Korea is a brutish tyranny. He blames the Bush Administration for not being more sympathetic to the North. He seems to think that Kim Jong Il is a reasonable man with whom he can do business. I say let him do business with Mr. Kim. In fact I say it is time we save ourselves the expense of those 37,000 rowdy troops in South Korea and bring them home. Let Mr. Roh deal with Mr. Kim unimpeded by Washington.

Trent Telenko says that this is exactly the right thing to do:

And it is good news for us and bad news for China. North Korea is a failed state doomed to fall because of its corruption no matter what anyone does. It is only a question of when and what the body count will be, despite China's providing the Kim regime 40% of its food and 88% of its oil. All America has to do is nothing, and it will win in North Korea, something Steven Den Beste pointed out recently. And no matter what else happens, China will be faced with a free, unified, Korea with lots of ethnic Koreans on China's side of their common border.

Apparently, Rummy has escaped from his lair at IMAO. According to this report on scrappleface:

Rumsfeld Sorry for 'Axis of Weasels' Remark
(2003-01-22) -- U.S. Secretary Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized today for referring to France and Germany as an "Axis of Weasels."

"I'm sorry about that Axis of Weasels remark," said Mr. Rumsfeld. "I didn't mean to dredge up the history France and Germany share of pathetic compliance with ruthless dictators."

If you don't know what it means, head on over to Misha's and get a lesson. He's on a tear.

Note to self: keep remembering that when you write something stupid, don't leave it where Misha can find it.

Gentlemen:

I have your submission to the UN Security Council, in the nature of a petition to revoke my orders removing the Ba'athist regime from Baghdad. I have read it carefully, and give full credit to your statements of distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the cause, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Iraq have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only in Iraq, but in the whole world. To secure this, we must stop the war that now desolates our once happy and favored country. To stop war, we must defeat the terrorists which are arrayed against the laws and culture of the West. To defeat those terrorists, we must prepare the way to reach them in their recesses, provided with the arms and instruments which enable us to accomplish our purpose. Now, I know the vindictive nature of our enemy, that we may have many years of military operations from this quarter; and, therefore, deem it wise and prudent to prepare in time. The use of Baghdad for warlike purposes is inconsistent with its character as a home for families. There will be no manufacturers, commerce, or agriculture here, for the maintenance of families, and sooner or later want will compel the inhabitants to go. Why not go now, when all the arrangements are completed for the transfer, instead of waiting till the plunging shot of contending armies will renew the scenes of the past month? Of course, I do not apprehend any such things at this moment, but you do not suppose this army will be here until the war is over. I cannot discuss this subject with you fairly, because I cannot impart to you what we propose to do, but I assert that our military plans make it necessary for the inhabitants to go away, and I can only renew my offer of services to make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our cultures. If the United States submits to appeasement now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of the Middle East, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always comes back to that of peace and security. Once admit the UN mandates, once more acknowledge the authority of the Security Council, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept Iraq into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation.

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Iraq can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

We don't want your oil, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the world. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.

You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Iraq, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that Iraq began the war by developing forbidden weapons, firing on its own population, shooting at Allied aircraft, etc., etc., long before Mr. Bush was installed, and before Iraq had one jot or title of provocation. I myself have seen among Iranians, and Kuwaitis, and Kurds, and Marsh Arabs, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Iraq, we fed thousands and thousands of the abandoned soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent money and developed weapons, to carry terror into New York and Tel Aviv, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.

Now you must go, and take with you the old and feeble, feed and nurse them, and build for them, in more quiet places, proper habitations to shield them against the weather until the mad passions of men cool down, and allow the Union and peace once more to settle over your old homes in Baghdad. Yours in haste,

W.T. Sherman, Major-General commanding

To space, I mean. But we will:

President Bush is set to endorse using nuclear power to explore Mars and open up the outer Solar System.

He is expected to back the US space agency's recent nuclear propulsion initiative, Project Prometheus, either in his State of the Union speech, due on 28 January, or later this year when he submits his 2004 budget to Congress.

Rich Galen comments on the fact that France says it will oppose a second UN Security Council resolution authorizing a war with Iraq:

The French government has, therefore, all but surrendered to Iraq in advance of any fighting, thus doing away with that pesky business of actually pick up rifles only to have to lay them down again and get them dirty.

All the papers are reporting this as a huge setback for the US. As if we were going to ask for a second resolution. We have maintained from the beginnning that was not necessary. Colin Powell (you know, the one guy in the Bush administration that the NYT actually respects) has said that from the beginning.

Its not like we actually need them anyway.

Okay, if they won't accept the environmentalists, how about we offer the full support of the University of California? They seem to be doing really well with our nuclear labs:

The university has been under intense scrutiny since the firing in November of two former police officers hired by the lab to investigate charges of lost or stolen equipment, credit card theft and mismanagement at Los Alamos. The officers claim they were fired as part of a coverup.

That's what I get on this test.

Hands down. From Tacitus.

There is only one reason that the United States should be going to war – because it is in the national security interests of the United States. The Bush administration has published, as required, a National Security Strategy. The introduction of the NSS contains this description of the greatest threat to our national security:

The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination. The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed.We will build defenses against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery. We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain, and curtail our enemies’ efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans, using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.

The cost of the destruction of one of the world’s cities – one of our cities - is literally incalculable. The cost in lives, the cultural treasures, the architecture, the businesses, the blow to the economies of the world will dwarf the 9/11 losses. And it is a cost that is simply unacceptable.

We must prevent, at all costs, the formation of that nexus of terrorists and nuclear weapons. Whatever nation or organization is closest to that nexus must be stopped. Iraq is the closest to it. Saddam Hussein’s support of international terrorism is blatant. He publicly supports Hamas with millions of dollars. The mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing left the US and flew to Baghdad. Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas both found homes in Baghdad, and despite the claims of many, the ties between Hussein and al Qaida are extensive and well documented. We know he possesses chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and that he is trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Think about the following “threat matrix” – on your x-axis, you have your capability and desire to obtain nuclear weapons. On your y-axis, support or opposition to global terrorism. The upper right quadrant becomes the danger zone – a country that both supports terrorism and has nuclear weapons is in that zone. Below, I have created a matrix and placed countries into it (KSA= Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, PI = Philippine Islands, YEM = Yemen, the rest should be intuitive).

One can argue whether the subjective locations of one country or another on the scales of capability/desire and support for terrorism are correct. But I think most people can agree on the general placement. Iraq is the most supportive of terrorism and the closest to achieving nuclear weapons. Iran and North Korea are the two next closest to the area of “Impermissible Danger.” But Pakistan isn’t that far off – we need to keep a very close eye on them.

Understanding the danger in terms of both dimensions is the key to understanding why there are different policies for different countries. And the key to understanding why Iraq, and why now.

UPDATE: See! (via littlegreenfootballs)

From FoxNews:

Following urgent two-hour talks Sunday morning held in a last-resort effort to evade war, top U.N. inspectors said Baghdad revealed that it had found four more empty chemical warheads like a dozen others discovered last week.

This story, though, is something different:

United Nations weapons inspectors have uncovered evidence that proves Saddam Hussein is trying to develop an arsenal of nuclear weapons, The Telegraph can reveal. The discovery was made following spot checks last week on the homes of two Iraqi nuclear physicists in Baghdad.

A dozen years ago I was in the Army. By December of 1990, I had watched the buildup going on since August. Some of my closest friends were on their way to the desert, and I didn't know whether I would be going myself. I had plans to get married on December 29th - but I had a packet of letters ready to go to throw in the box if the unit got alerted and I couldn't make it.

My main source of news was a half hour of CNN broadcast daily on Armed Forces Television. Most of the news stories were about units deploying, and the various games being played by Hussein for the camera - like his holding foreigners hostage. The look on that one little boy's face said it all.

The news from the homefront, though, was troubling. The anti-war protestors were out in force, their chant: "No blood for oil." They shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, and blocked federal buildings in San Francisco and New York. I wasn't sure what to think of it all - there was a huge amount of support for the troops who were deploying, and there was a big push for letter writing campaigns to "any soldier" at Christmas, there was no draft, and we were countering the naked aggression of Saddam Hussein. And there they were. I was actually concerned that, since I was to be married in the Boston area, that someone would come and throw oil on my Dress Blue Uniform that I was planning to wear for the wedding.

The time came for me to come back to the US, and I was on course to get married. And on the 29th, I donned my Dress Blues and walked down the aisle. And at the restaurant where our reception was held, noone threw oil on me, noone said an unkind word, noone gave me a dirty look. Many people asked me if I was headed to the desert, and I told them I didn't know. And the next question, even on that late date, was "do you think there will be a war?" I answered, "Yes ma'am, I think there will. But don't worry, we'll win it."

The protestors who were out in DC and San Francisco today are nothing new - they don't even have a new slogan. And they have actually weakened - they haven't shut anything down, and the protests smaller than before - and a dozen years ago, we were countering Hussein's invasion. Today, the situation is more complex, and seemingly more ambiguous.

I think we are in the same place today as we were then - about 2 weeks away from war. And don't worry, we'll win it.

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

- George Orwell (or at least attibuted to him)

A thought both settling and unsettling at the same time. Settling, because we need not get out of our comfort zones - someone else will take care of it. Unsettling because it means that the someone else is rough, and visiting violence.

Orwell's thought played on the big screen in the person of Marine COL Jessup in A Few Good Men, a rough man indeed, played to his oily fullest by Jack Nicholson, a foil to the dashing young Navy lawyer portrayed by Tom Cruise.

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

In the real world we hear of it, too. In Blackhawk Down, we saw those rough men and what they do. And we can read in the story vignettes like this:

Inside the stone house adjacent to the crash site, the men blew a hole in one of the walls and began moving the wounded and dead into the adjacent space. Through the new hole a Somalian woman in a flowing orange robe stepped in screaming words the men couldn't understand. When she stepped out, gunfire ripped through windows and openings. Then the woman came back, screamed more, and left. Again came the rain of gunfire.

``If that bitch comes back, I'm going to kill her,'' one of the D-boys grumbled.

She did, and he did.

But the odd thing is, we don't have a special breed of rough men that guard us while we are sleeping. We only have ourselves.

These are the people who are out there keeping us safe - if you have broadband (and Windows), watch this video.

Thank you, and Godspeed.

Today, the editors of the National Review are expressing their doubts about President Bush's course. They begin:

The ominous feeling of drift in American foreign policy at the moment is, we hope, the product of two failed policies — inspections in Iraq and appeasement of North Korea — coming to the end of the line, in one final whimper. The time for President Bush to separate his administration from these policies is rapidly approaching, especially in the case of Iraq. If he doesn't, the consequences for America's standing in the world and for his own presidency will be grave.

More hmmmmm.

UPDATE: Even more hmmmmm. Read Steven den Beste and Trent Telenko.

"We believe a persuasive case will be there at the end of the month that Iraq is not cooperating," the American secretary of state said to a gathering of German journalists, according to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.

"We have always made clear that the U.N. will act without a second resolution," Powell was translated by Reuters as saying, "if we are of the firm opinion that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction or wants to produce new ones."

Hmmmmm.....

posted by blaster at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

I actually believe the Iraqis on this chemical warhead thing. Well, up to a point.

I haven't seen any good stills or the video, so its hard to identify what the warheads actually are, but this analysis says 122mm rocket warheads, and from the stills I have seen, that is consistent. And I know for a fact that the Iraqis have used 122mm rockets with chemical agent warheads (sarin) in the past - that's another story for another time.

The ones found by the inspectors today were empty, and they have not reported whether they were ever filled (I suspect not, as they are difficult to empty - another part of that story for another time). Yes, it is hard to answer the question of why they have chemical warheads if they don't have chemicals to put in there. They will get a lot of attention on that, for sure. Even from Blix and crew.

But the Iraqi answer to why they had those warheads is just "I forgot." This is from the CNN story:

Hossam Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, dismissed any allegation that the find is significant, calling the material "forgotten."

"It is neither chemical, neither biological," Amin said. "It is empty warheads. It is small artillery rockets. It is expired rockets. They were forgotten without any intention to use them, because they were expired since 10 years ago."

He added that "this type of rockets were declared in 1996 and again in the new declaration."

I doubt that these will become the material breach that becomes the cause for the war on Iraq. Truthfully, not attached to rockets, these are essentially empty cans. Their existence isn't going to move the UN, the rest of the world, or even the US to action. Because they are not the warheads we are looking for.

No, the warheads we are looking for won't be found by Hans Blix, because the real stuff isn't forgotten. It has been hidden. And we know where it is. Reports of Special Forces operating within Iraq to observe and pick targets have been in credible sources, not just the Debka file. I think that one day, real soon, the US will produce the evidence, and it won't be a dozen empty shells. There will be large quantities of live munitions, and it will be US Special Forces showing the live pictures on the satellite video phone on CNN that convinces the world that we've been right all along.

Of course, it will be a military action to take those locations and take the video, and a US strike inside Iraq will obviously mean war. There won't be time for a UN vote, because it will already have begun.

UPDATE: Looks like Beaker is thinking the same thing.

[As noted by Jennie and Charles - full story.]

PARIS — Police evacuated the Sacre Coeur basilica on Tuesday after an explosive device -- but no detonator -- was found inside, police said.

The device, apparently homemade, consisted of bottles of cooking gas and gasoline taped together and concealed in a trash bag and a shopping bag, police said.

The good news is that it was found, and there was no damage or injury. But just like the ricin in England, there was no serious impact, but it is cause for worry. Because it means there are people out there doing it. It doesn't matter that they are not an organized cell - the sympathizers can be every bit as deadly, like the DC snipers. And it should be a wake up call for France - probably the most officially anti-Israel, pro-Arab country in the West. Just like the French tanker in the Gulf, they were targeted because "they are all infidels." It doesn't matter that they are reflexively anti-American, and actively hindering our efforts in the war on terror.

It should be a wakeup call, but I doubt it. One wonders whether a country that won't fight for its own existence deserves to exist.

Alerted to this by Michele, I have decided to participate in the Blogging Lovefest declared by Robyn.

My ode is to frankj at IMAO. How could you not love a guy so - excessive - in his ways. Right straight to my heart like a Denny's Meat Lover's Skillet. Were it biologically possible, I would have his babies. And so, let me count the ways of this love with his own words:

1. Nothing that can't be solved by nukes, nukes, and more nukes.
   
2. On the other hand, I would like to say I know a number of atheists who are good, moral people even without a belief in God and I don’t think they’re going to hell or anything. God thinks they’re going to hell, though, and His opinion counts more.
   
3. But we will have, because just then a sniper bullet will explode his head because it will be one of this special head-exploding rounds U.S. intelligence sometimes uses when, for the purpose of gaining an advantage in negotiations, we need to make it look like one of our diplomats is a Scanner.
   
4. This immediately caused Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfled to inquire, "What kind of crack are they smoking."
   
5. [another Rummy quote] We will kill them all in such a cruel and painful manner that even I will feel sorry for the dumb, Commie bastards. That doesn't mean I won't laugh as it happens, though.
   
6. So why can’t we be more creative than nuking people. My idea is to nuke the moon; just say we thought we saw moon people or something.
   
7. There is plenty to fear about us; we're armed, violent, and mean. Also, our tolerance of stupidity is surprisingly low. What we need is to get more people to realize how fearsome and violent we are.
   
8. So, if Sharon, a nice non-terrorist, says something and then Arafat, a dirty terrorist, contradicts him, my response would be, "I believe you Arafat." Then, soon as he drops his guard, I shoot him in the head.
   
9. Rumsfeld then produced a small handheld computer. "See this. This is a PDA." He then took out the stylus and touched a few points on the screen. "I just had some placed bombed."
   
10. This is why I suggest we finally change our "Don't Kill Saudis" policy to a "Kill Lot's of Saudis" policy.
    
11. Next time we get fired upon, let's not respond immediately and blow up the installations with anti-radar missiles. Instead, let's send some special ops people to follow the soldiers responsible to their homes. After we find out where they live, we destroy those entire cities.
    

UPDATE: See what I mean? I'm crying, here. Read it. All. Now.

Another winger.

North Korea is a temporary problem that may offer some long-term benefits to the US. Hardly anyone in Washington is enthusiastic about the present massive troop commitment to South Korea, a 50-year-old ceasefire preserved in aspic, a M*A*S*H rerun that never ends. Plenty of ingrates in the South want the Yanks out. The Chinese and Russians are pally with Seoul these days, and, judging from his offer to ‘mediate’ between the US and the North, the South’s new unfriendly President Roh doesn’t seem to understand that Uncle Sam’s there to defend him and for no other reason. For some years now, the Americans have been stuck in the middle getting screwed by Koreans North and South. Given the antipathy of the