Okay, on the one hand, we have the head of Polish military intelligence (please, those jokes went out in the 70's) saying that they found these chemical filled warheads in Iraq, and both Secretary Rumsfeld and GEN Myers out telling people about it.

On the other hand, CENTCOM has published this press release:

Baghdad, Iraq - On June 16, 2004, an Iraqi civilian led Polish Soldiers to two 122mm rockets he had found in Al Hillah.

The rounds were tested and showed positive for Sarin gas. It has been determined that the rounds were left over from the Iran-Iraq war.

Due to the deteriorated state of the rounds and small quantity of remaining agent, these rounds were determined to have limited to no impact if used by insurgents against Coalition Forces.

The source led Soldiers to 16 more 122mm rockets over a period from June 23 - 26, 2004. Those 16 rounds were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals.

Okay, guys, get on the effing ball here. Maybe Sullivan is right and we have a bunch of incompetents running this war. The Poles would know whether what they found were empty or not. In fact, the Poles are saying the CENTCOM press release is wrong:

Political and military officials in Poland Saturday reaffirmed that missile warheads found by Polish troops in Iraq contained poison gas, despite denials by the multinational forces in Baghdad.

This should be a simple story to get straight. Either they found it or not. If we tested the rounds and found them not to contain any chemicals, then we should be telling the Poles and maybe the Secretary of Defense before we let him go and say something to the effect that there were chemicals. Instead, what is happening here is that CENTCOM is undercutting an ally and our senior military officials. Imagine the field day that Michael Moore will have with this. It doesn't even matter now whether those rounds contained chemicals or not. The message and our credibility has been stepped all over.

Somebody should get fired for this, and ASAP, and somebody needs to get out there and get the real story out. If there were chemicals, explain why this CENTCOM press release is out there. If they aren't, explain why our top military folks think they are.

Plus, this says that there were 18 rounds total, all rocket warheads, no mortars.

The AP story on the mortars found by the Poles has more interesting data:

Dukaczewski refused to give any further details about the terrorists or the sellers of the munitions, saying only that his troops thwarted terrorists by purchasing the 17 rockets for a Soviet-era launcher and two mortar rounds containing the nerve agent for an undisclosed sum June 23.

It doesn't say, but no doubt those are 122mm rocket warheads. A Soviet-era launcher, and one that we know was a delivery system for sarin/cyclo-sarin. Important tidbit, though, is the existence of the two mortar rounds with cyclo-sarin. Back in the hub-bub about the first reported sarin shell, I posted that UNMOVIC had discounted the Danish find of chemical mortar rounds in their latest report:

This is consistent with the Commission’s study on Iraq’s non-conventional munitions, as Iraq’s chemical warfare arsenal was not known to include such 120-mm mortars. Iraq is known to have filled mortar shells only with riot control agents and conventional explosives. A summary of what was previously known to the Commission and UNMOVIC findings during inspections with respect to Iraq’s chemical and biological munitions is set out in appendix I to the present report.

As I also noted in that post, US intelligence had reports of chemical agents in mortars as far back as 1986.

While drowsing on the sofa (I "work from home" when not at a customer site), I had Fox News Channel on, and somehow what I heard as the teaser before a break:

John Kerry's choice for Veep - it isn't going to be Marlon Brando.

Which is true, I am pretty sure, but not exactly what was said. I must have dropped off somewhere in there.

Implosion World. Stuff blowing up - that's cool!

It's back. This time from a Republican - though not an elective office holder - and along the lines that the argument comes from the right - universal service is a good thing. In today's Washington Post.

But the nation also needs a draft because it is one proven mechanism to bring unity to our rapidly separating parts. It needs a draft to provide that common civic grammar that encompasses those who have served and their families and friends. It needs a draft to honor, and to even out, the sacrifices we call upon our young to make for our nation.

I would say that Noel Koch has evidently forgotten all about the 1960s and the people who fled to Canada and all that, except this is his opening paragraph:

As a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon, I wrote the legislative message proposing an end to the military draft. The president sought to end the Vietnam War in a way that would advance what he regularly called "a full generation of peace." In the late 1960s, America's cities were set aflame by the civil rights revolution; in the early '70s, the campuses of the nation's universities were in similar peril. The draft was a target of antiwar protests. The president made a tactical retreat, ending it. He later regretted the move, urging that the draft be restored.

That doesn't sound like unity and shared sacrifice to me. Interestingly, Secretary Rumsfeld addresses the draft in the transcript linked below:

Q: Under any circumstances, Mr. Secretary, would a draft be necessary in the future, as you contemplate it?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, I can’t imagine it. I just can’t imagine it. There are people who can argue that a draft is a good thing because it gives everyone a chance to serve and understand the military and national service. Although it really never did, it never drafted women, only men, and it exempted people who were in school and people who were married and people who were teaching and a whole lot of exemptions they had. But in terms of the need of the services, goodness no, we’re perfectly capable of increasing the incentives and the inducements to attract people into the armed services.

As a matter of fact, despite all the talk about the stress on the force, today we still are having very good results with respect to recruiting and retention. And we do not have a problem of attracting and retaining the people we need in the military. And if we ever did get to that point we should, in my view, do exactly what you do in the private sector and that’s increase the pay and increase the incentives and the inducements, so that you can have the kind of skills and the numbers of people you need to help defend our country. We’re very fortunate to have so many people raise their hand and say, “I want to volunteer to go in the United States Armed Forces,” and they say, “send me” and God bless them for it.

UPDATE: Spotted at Best of the Web, Eleanor Holmes Norton is withdrawing her support for draft legislation because she thinks it would help the war on terror.

Now what’s actually happened? Right now you have the Iraqi Survey Group, which is a multinational group that’s out there reviewing documentation and looking at suspect WMD sites. I was with the Polish minister of defense this weekend in Istanbul, Turkey at the NATO Summit. And in the course of that, he pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across – I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 – warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas.

That's Secretary Rumsfeld.

Zarqawi wants to capture some female soldiers so they can really horrify the American public. (link via Powerline) Well, aren't they the tough guys?

Though they might be in for a bit of a surprise. Our women are armed.

So says John Keegan, military historian in a piece posted at NRO:

During the First Gulf War special forces attempted to attack the Scud threat by finding and eliminating the launchers themselves, a frustrating task given the ease with which they could be moved and hidden. The decision, in the Iraq war, to focus attention on potential launch sites proved much more fruitful. Very few of Saddam's surviving Scuds were launched against coalition targets and none against surrounding countries, such as Israel.

Hmm, I thought Blix and them said they had no Scuds.

From the World Tribune:

The United States has also expressed concern that Al Qaida, particularly Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi, could gain access to what officials said could be an arsenal of hundreds shells filled with sarin or mustard gas. Dozens of such shells have been found by U.S. troops over the last year.

Granted, this is in an article where a Russian guy says that terrorists are trying to get WMD by working with scientists in Iraq (which is what Duelfer said in an interview with Fox News in a post below) and the same guy says that Saddam and Al Qaeda are not connected, even though Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq thinks otherwise.

Lots of folks - including Michael Ledeen - are laying the smackdown on Paul Krugman for attempting a guilt by association or something on Simone Ledeen, Michael Ledeen's daughter.

Regardless of what it is that Krugman is attempting to say, there was a very extensive article about Ms. Ledeen and some of her colleagues at CPA in the Washington Post about a month ago. It does make the circumstances of her employment sound a little, well, sketchy:

Ledeen's journey to Baghdad began two weeks earlier when she received an e-mail out of the blue from the Pentagon's White House liaison office. The Sept. 16 message informed her that the occupation government in Iraq needed employees to prepare for an international conference. "This is an amazing opportunity to move forward on the global war on terror," the e-mail read.

For Ledeen, the offer seemed like fate. One of her family friends had been killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and it had affected her family deeply. Without hesitation, she responded "Sure" to the e-mail and waited -- for an interview, a background check or some other follow-up. Apparently none was necessary. A week later, she got a second e-mail telling her to look for a packet in the mail regarding her move to Baghdad.

With no other information about Ms. Ledeen's employment situation, an email "out of the blue" from the White House inviting her to such a job - especially since the paper also says that the people in the article - including Ms. Ledeen - ended up making the equivalent of six figure salaries (of course, remember, this is the Post - a group of people is described as having salaries from $30-75,000 - and "almost" everyone makes that equivalent.)

At any rate, Ms. Ledeen entire resume is presented as "cofounded a cooking school" - failing to note her MBA and that she had held a position as a Vice President in a company.

The article isn't totally negative:

Ledeen was determined to prove she could do her job. She and the others worked 100-hour weeks and ended up producing not only their assigned report but a searchable Web site of possible reconstruction projects. At the end of their six-week assignment, their bosses were so impressed that they were rewarded with more permanent postings.

And

Also, it appears that Josh Marshall did an article where he questioned Ms. Ledeen's qualifications, too.

UPDATE: Jinkies, this internet thing is pretty darn cool. Over at Roger Simon's, Ms. Ledeen is facing down some of her critics in real time. What a smackdown!

Well, kinda. He posted over on NRO that there were a couple of good but troubling posts at Volokh Conspiracy (actually, there are probably more than a couple, he just pointed to these two.) I wanted to respond to the posts and the good but troubling comment on them.

Post 1 - a discussion about Australian politics and US concerns about them. Seems that John Howard who has been a very strong ally may be in trouble against a guy who promises that he will remove Australian troops from Iraq. I don't know if that is true, but certainly following the results in Spain, it ought to be a concern. And if the Aussies think that our ambassador saying that there might be consequences if that happens is a threat from us, well, I dunno. Armitage's comment does seem over the top, but I am not a fan of his anyway. He said Iran is a democracy, for goodness sakes. If the State Department is over there bigfooting the Australians, though, it is troubling, since they couldn't seem to see their way clear to do that with Turkey when we needed it. Not sure that things are exactly as the TNR article that is the source for the post says they are, but don't know that it isn't that way, either.

Post 2 - the mainstream press - NBC - accuses the White House of not acting on Zarqawi in Iraq because it wanted to keep him around as a reason to go to war against Iraq.

The premise that it comes from a "mainstream" source so it has credibility is just silly these days. And the idea that we wouldn't conduct an act of war on Iraq so we could go to war with Iraq is kinda silly, too. The referenced MSNBC article says that more than once the Pentagon offered up some cruise missile strikes on a location in Iraq prior to the war in Iraq but that the White House vetoed them. This ignores that the President had made a point that military action should be more than shooting million dollar missiles and hitting a camel in the butt. Given the success rate of such attacks on bin Laden and the later success rate of precision bombing attacks on Hussein and Chemical Ali, it seems that launching such an attack in January of 2003 - a time when we were busy saying that we had not yet decided to go to war with Iraq - would have started the war with Iraq before we were ready for it.

Really. Don't give a hoot about the guy. But as far as his dopey movie, can someone get him to read this post?

Deb over at accidental verbosity hits the nail on the head, at least for me.

The money line?

"I don't exactly fear a Kerry presidency, I just get terribly tired even thinking about it."

And that about sums up my last three months.

I am tired of arguing about the war to Liberals. I am tired of the subject changes and the utter inability to stay within the scope of the discussion. I am exhausted by having to explain, yet once again, the distinction between striking an imminent threat and striking before a threat is imminent to a person who cannot, or will not grant that such a distinction is even possible. I grow weary when I hear a liberal explain that Iran having nuclear weapons is "not such a bad thing." My response slows, and my mind aches, when I offered evidence from either a Michael Moore video, anything from Moveon.org, Barbara Streisand, or Democratic Underground. CNN drains my energy, and the NYT renders me comatose.

Honestly, doing Kerry for 8 years would be a repeat of Bill Clinton, and who the hell wants to go through that again? With the growing threat?

Wading through bullshit is tiring. And it is especially tiring when there is an endless source and no end in sight. Curiously the Bar study has been an excellent break, and I feel energized. Mainly because I am wading through a different kind of bullshit, and there is an end in sight.

The turnover of the Iraqi government yesterday was a significant achievement and milestone. One shouldn't expect that John Kerry or the Bush haters would recognize it as such. But Bush's supporters, his natural allies, should be celebrating at least a little.

Instead, a barrage of doubt. Instapundit links to a John Keegan piece that concludes:

Looking back, better a Ba'athist Iraq than an Islamic one. Let us hope that it is not too late.

"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

And the Washington Post yesterday, Robin Wright on the front page editorializes that Iraq has killed the Bush doctrine though some of what he writes is demonstrably untrue, but our press has decided that the facts are not germane on this issue.

This isn't good, it isn't good at all. The turnover in Iraq is a win, and we shouldn't be turning back and going, oh, crap, we shouldn't have done that. Buckley thinking leaving Saddam Hussein in power was a good idea? Was he a participant in Oil for Food or something?

Ordinarily, I would shrug this off as part of the Bush cycle, when natural allies begin criticizing the President, and then everything turns around. It isn't insurmountable, but it isn't good.

UPDATE: I am one of the many readers who emailed Jonah Goldberg regarding WFB's statement. He offers up mighty thin gruel:

So here's what I think: I agree and I disagree. It is more than fair to say that if you thought the main reason to depose Saddam was to eliminate the threat of his Weapons of Mass Destruction to then say it wasn't worth it now that we believe with the benefit of hindsight that they weren't there. I think that is what Mr. Buckley is saying.

But this is also like saying, "If I knew then what I know now, I would have not ordered the fish." In other words, it seemed like the right decision at the time. Some think that, given new developments, this appearance was wrong and others do not. I still think the war was the right decision. Though, obviously, if we knew Saddam didn't have a major nuclear program the debate would have looked very different and the tactics available for toppling him would have been very, very different. But, ultimately, the "if I knew then what I know now" point is an academic one.

And once you concede that point we are back to the fundamental debate(s) about the war and reconstruction. Should post-9/11 America give tyrants like Saddam the benefit of the doubt in a climate of uncertainty? Was the WMD threat the only reason toppling Saddam was in our interest? Should opposition to the war justify obstruction of the reconstruction? Etc? Etc?

Okay, pace Reagan's 11th Commandment, this seems a very, umm, charitable reading of Buckley's statement. He didn't say a thing about WMD, but rather about being an "extra-territorial menace." Unless that is some $3 circumlocution for WMD, I don't see it. Buckley clearly is making the statement - assuming of course this isn't some dreadful misquote or outright fabrication by the NYT - that the war was a mistake. And by parsing and compartmentalizing that to a very narrow question about WMD, Jonah avoids the very debate that he brings up rhetorically. Was the war justified?

Having my BugOut Box post linked by Winds of Change is a good reminder to reinventory/restock (probably don't need those infant diapers anymore, for example!). Part of being prepared is preparing!

I had written before that I think that Charles Duelfer, the new head of the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG), has a different charter than David Kay - i.e., that he is going to put out more information on Iraqi WMD than previously. Alert reader and commenter AMac sent me the link to this story on Fox:

He also told Fox News that about 10 or 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been found in various locations in Iraq.

The shells are all from the first Gulf War era and thus weakened, though intelligence sources say they’re still dangerous.

The main point of the story is that Iraqi anti-Coalition forces are trying to get Iraqi WMD scientists to work with them. But I think this "10 or 12" rounds is significant. That they are from the "first Gulf War era" is not all that significant. The binary sarin round that was found was from that era, too. In fact, all of the unaccounted for WMD material is from that era, and is the reason for all of the sanctions.

I still suspect that more news is coming on this front - as the Niger yellowcake news in the Financial Times linked below shows.

I had suggested before that the reason why the WMD info had been held closely was that it was more valuable as actionable intel than as justification for the war. I think that as the political season goes into high gear, and time has passed, and the actionable intel gets acted on, that equation changes.

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

So much for the fake yellowcake.

And now the NYT is saying that Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together.

I've been saying all along that maybe the reason why the administration and the President haven't been apologizing for the intelligence is because they were right.

We've transferred power to Iraq a couple days early.

That's good news. Job well done, folks!

Noting some stuff from brief bits of news, and this post from Belmont Club, something tht I don't think gets much attention. This bit captures it:

From the looks of it, Zarqawi has brought in the Al Qaeda first team to derail the June 30 turnover to Shi'ite Iyad Allawi. But although he has quality, for his fighters are far better than Moqtada Al-Sadr's rabble, he has forgotten that the April upsurge of violence, which some had breathlessly hoped would signal the downfall of the US in Iraq, was only made possible by Teheran's decision to unleash simultaneous unrest in the south, in the hopes that a desperate America would pay any price for relief.

Think about this - Zarqawi is now considered to be the operational commander for Al Qaeda, the replacement for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And he's brought the AQ first team in to disrupt the June 30 turnover. This means that AQ has made Iraq their top priority (which also means the US is not their top priority!).

A lot of people like to say that Iraq cannot be a democracy because it has no history of it, and that we are embarking on folly to try to do it. But Zarqawi has made stopping that democracy a priority for Al Qaeda - he is putting its top resources into that. If he thought we were doomed to failure, he would just let us stumble. If he thought Iraq was incapable of democracy, he would leave us alone. But he hasn't - and that means that he knows that democracy is possible - even likely - and he fears that.

We're winning.

Well, we are back. A good vacation - saw some long missed friends, repaired some relationships, relaxed on the beach - all needed things. And the world continued on, even though I had no broadband for 9 days! That may be a dangerous discovery.

So, on one of the boards that I frequent, merely for fun, this guy posts that he is creating this site called a million sorries. You needn't bother going, because he hasn't created it yet, and there is nothing to see.

Here are some of his rationales.

In an effort to say "Sorry" for the insurmountable tragedies inflicted by an unjust war, I would like to collect and distribute a MINIMUM of 1,000,000 letters not only for our Troops, but for the people in the middle east.

And

Feel free to ridicule, but I believe what I believe. "An eye for an eye makes the world go blind." This is one way we may be able to change most of the world's view regarding America.

And

Yes, F9/11 influenced me to create this. I've been wanting to do something to help humanity for quite some time, and F9/11 was the pusher."

Lastly,

If this campaign does take off, I don't want *any* of the fame and recognition that the creator of www.amillionthanks.org has obtained.

I wanted to reply to the thread, but I could not be bothered, since the discussion would not go anywhere. My burning question is simply this:

What about 9/11 made you want to apologize? I had many emotions on 9/11, and after that day, but apologetic is not one that comes to mind.

So once again, in the fascinating realm of human disposition, we get to see types that defy definition.

You know, when you think about it, this situation we are facing is not all that weird. I have made the argument that this situation is analagous to the 1930's. And in some ways it is. Fortunately there are far more of the population that appear to be aware of the threat, then there were in the 1930's. It should be remembered that Churchill was almost utterly alone in his warnings about Hitler. However, I think this situation is more analagous to the late 1940's.

Once again, Churchill proved to be prescient in his warnings about the rise of Soviet Russia. Here we have the rise of Iranian nuclear power. We should keep in mind that the United States did not really consider the USSR much of a threat until the USSR detonated its nuclear weapon. And the USSR went from detonating its Nuke to being a dire threat, very, very, quickly.

If we would have turned on the Soviets in 1945 (Yes, I understand that this would have been highly problematic) we could have ended the cold war. We could have prevented 40+ years of staring down the barrel of Armageddon. We will have the foresight to stop it from happening again?

David Warren thinks not. I agree. Democracies, for all their positive attributes, remain remarkably short sighted. The American system is incredibly well designed to deflect the selfish interest of the electorate towards positive ends. However, this never overcame the shortsighted, reactionary, foreign policies of this country. Once again, it appears, we will not deal with the immediate threat. Instead, we will watch it grow until terminating it is neither easy nor fast.

As Michael Leeden says. Faster, please.