Iraq War Justified Retroactively -- With more WMD Lies 
The Bush Administration and supportive Republicans have been lying about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction since time began. Amazingly, numerous bloggers were able to find and highlight these lies many months before a single U.S. troop hit the ground in Iraq.
But truth seems not to matter in politics -- only perceptions matter. And Rove, Santorum, Hoekstra, and the rest of the Republican jihadists are always quick to exploit that fact.
Their latest lie enlists the ongoing deception and betrayal of the American people birthed by this administration years ago.
As Fox News reports, "Top administration officials said today that chemical and biological weapons have indeed been found in Iraq and they now worry what this could suggest about other hidden weapons there and the possible dangers to US troops." US intelligence officials "believe the weapons were made prior to the Gulf War in 1991 and officials say they have seriously degraded over time. But the declassified report says they are still lethal and Secretary Rumsfeld said that is a concern for all those in Iraq."
The fact is that these relics of pre-'Desert Storm' history were lost to the sands of time and for Republicans to pretend these are somehow related to or justification for Bush's lie-pressed war is total and complete hokum. Even so, they can keep a straight face -- clearly desperate people in desperate times scraping for the justification of unjustifiable acts.
At issue is a classified overview of chemical munitions found in Iraq since 2003 that was completed in April by the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center. One of the report's key findings was that since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, coalition forces have recovered about 500 shells, canisters or other munitions that contain degraded mustard gas or sarin nerve agent.That finding was seized on by Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a strong supporter of the war who is trailing his Democratic opponent in his reelection bid. The two said that the study indicated that Saddam Hussein, as president of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction.
[...]
...representatives of three intelligence agencies told reporters that the study differed little from a 2004 report of a team of American weapons inspectors led by Charles A. Duelfer that concluded that Hussein was not in possession of significant stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons at the time of the U.S.-led invasion.
The intelligence officials also said that the munitions referred to in the report were produced before the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and that they had degraded and could not be used as designed. "There is no evidence today of any post-1991 WMD munitions," said the official...
[...]
Harmon, noting the age of the munitions said that the 20-year-old degraded chemical weapons were "being spun up to support a political argument for the war and the public won't buy it for second."
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The intelligence officials also suggested that they were pressured by Hoekstra into declassifying the study in recent weeks. Hoekstra first sought its release June 15 and June 19 and made the request again giving John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, 48 hours to declassify it, according to a senior intelligence official.
The Pentagon itself has asserted that the munitions were "not the WMD's for which this country went to war."
Even if they weren't lying again -- even if they did find something that qualified as the WMD Bush says thousands of our friends and family have died for -- is it moral to retroactively rationalize a war?
Moot question. There are no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
KEYWORDS: Iraq War, Lies, WMD, Peter Hoekstra, Rick Santorum
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