W...M...D

According to an intelligence document that found its way into the hands of Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-NY), the military has found 500 chemical munitions shells in Iraq. The shells allegedly contained degraded mustard or sarin gas.

One wonders how long the intel community has been sitting on this piece of paper. Could there be good guys at the CIA who have finally started leaking good news from Iraq that vindicates the President's decision to invade? If so, what the devil have they been waiting for?

I'm guessing that these five hundred chemical shells didn't make it onto the Syrian Express truck. I'm also guessing that the DisLoyal Opposition will say either (1) so what, this stuff is so old it probably pre-dates Saddam, and besides, he still didn't have nukes, or (2) Bush had the military plant the evidence to frame Saddam right as the ex-dictator's trial is nearing the sentencing phase (and right as the 2006 mid-term elections approach, given that Santorum made the announcement).

Still, WMD is WMD is WMD. On top of bagging Zarqawi and his #2, rolling up the AQI network, and the elected Iraqi government getting internal security matters well in hand, it looks as if the war worm has decidedly turned against al Donka.

No matter what they say.

[h/t CQ]

UPDATE: The Cap'n makes a verrrry interesting cross-connecting observation in one of his updates:

Some will claim that the release is strictly for political purposes. They may have a point, but I doubt it will have anything to do with domestic politics. If Bush wanted to use it for that, he would have done so in October 2004 and not in June 2006. This information changes the picture about our pre-war intelligence in time for the Iranian confrontation - and I suspect that the White House wants to declassify it in order to convince European leaders that our intel actually paid off. [emphasis added]

From Morrissey's mouth to God's ears....

UPDATE 6/22: The Extreme Media is blacking this blockbuster news out, of course. Doesn't fit the "BUSH LIED!!!!!" template, dontcha know....

ONE MORE UPDATE: Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, Fox News military analyst, on Hannity & Colmes last night:

[M]y personal opinion is, I think the fact is that the Russians moved large stocks of weapons of mass destruction out of Baghdad and Iraq in the fall of 2002. We've all heard what General Sada, the Iraqi defector said. He said that they went into three locations in Syria and one location in the Bekaa Valley, and if you get in there and if you found those weapons and found the precursors, the fingerprints would go back to Russia, China and France. Those are the three countries that had the most conventional weapon sales to Saddam Hussein. We've done an inventory on that, so that's public, and I believe they were complicit, so I don't think the Administration wants to trash three of the five members of this Security Council. [emphases added]

And why does it matter a whit whether we embarrass the Russkies, ChiComms, and Frogs as they deserve to be (at bare minimum) for their complicity in aiding and abetting an enemy of the United States? Because the Bush Administration, long since gelded of the notion of unilateral pre-emption against national security threats, has, at Condi Rice's lead, bought totally into the multilateralist/United Nations/pointless diplomacy route as the only means it dares use of keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And guess which three permanent members dominate the UN Security Council, and are protecting the Iranian mullahgarchy as stoutly as they did Saddam Hussein?

The irony is such as to make one wish for his unmentionables to get mashed in an oarlock.