OK, so maybe not the shortest post ever. That's an accusation that requires a bit of explanation. You see, back in 2006, Rick was in a tough reelection race against Bob Casey. Things weren't going very well -- Santorum would later lose that election in a landslide -- and he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. So Santorum teamed up with Rep. Pete Hoekstra to declare that WMD had been found in Iraq.
Fox News:
The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.
"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.
Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."
Well there ya go then; George W. Bush was right, those anti-war hippies were wrong, America had saved the world, and Rick Santorum was instrumental in all that. Good thing Rick had the foresight to offer 100%, unquestioning support of the invasion of Iraq, huh?
But there was a problem here -- the word "degraded." Sarin and mustard gas have a shelf life. And, as chemical agents, that shelf life is pretty predictable. In short, the agents couldn't have been fresh when we invaded. Santorum and Hoekstra had nothing.
Here's what stale chemical agents do, again from Fox News, this time from 2004:
A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.
[...]
Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.
Those symptoms consisted of a headache. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the shells pre-dated the 1991 Gulf War.
Put Santorum's argument in the proper order here; instead of using this to justify the invasion after the fact, imagine this intelligence being used to justify the invasion itself. We suspect Iraq has a few hundred headache bombs, that means Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is an "existential threat" to our nation. We absolutely must invade.
Last time I checked, giving a couple of guys a headache and "mass destruction" were two entirely different things.
Not even the Bush administration -- desperate for some justification for a war turned horribly, horribly wrong -- could bring themselves to get behind Santorum and Hoekstra. And no one in the military would back them up either.
Griper Blade:
Santorum got his defeat on home turf -- Fox News. ThinkProgress reports, "Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are 'not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.'
Of course, Santorum wouldn't back down. He told Alan Colmes, who'd broke the news that his big revelation was a bunch of horse**it to Santorum, "I’d like to know who that defense dept, spokesperson is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says."
As far as I know, the White House never addressed Santorum's claims directly. And Rick dismissed the DoD response that Colmes informed him of. His big "The Iraq War was worth it!" story quickly fizzled, Santorum wound up looking like an even bigger fool than he did before, and went on to lose his reelection bid by over 700,000 votes -- or about 20%. As I said, a landslide.
This is what Santorum looks like when his back is against the wall. Not just a bad liar, but a hopelessly incompetent one. At some point, Rick is going to pull some ridiculous claim out of his pants and remind everyone just how much of a boob he really is.
I'm hoping that happens in the general election, but I doubt he'll make it that far.
-Wisco
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