Santorum's Magical WMDs

Republican Senator Rick Santorum has, since yesterday, been parading around cable news networks with a declassified report from Iraq claiming that 500 WMDs had been found in the country since the invasion. The only problem is that Santorum is twisting the content of the report beyond recognition in order to make it seem that these WMDs had something to do with the American invasion in 2003 (story here).

In fact, the "WMDs" were found buried near the Iranian border, where they had been abandoned in 1988 and had since completely degraded, making them unusable. Everyone knew that Saddam had WMDs in the war against Iran in the 80s, so this is nothing new. Furthermore, the presence of old, rusted, degraded weapons would almost certainly not even be considered a violation of UN resolutions regarding Iraq -- i.e. the find does not prove in any way that Saddam "hadn't gotten rid of his weapons" -- because the weapons were completely non-functioning and were effectively destroyed.

Nevertheless, Santorum and his little puppy Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich) continue to make appearances on cable news touting their amazing find. As might be expected, Sean Hannity spun the find into much more than it was, claiming this to be a vindication of Bush's pre-war claims of WMDs (link here).

A certain amount of the insanity regarding this can be attributed to the extremely exaggerated report by Fox News, which buried qualifications regarding the uselessness of the weapons far into the story and parroted most of Santorum's fantastic claims (link here).

Despite the obvious meaninglessness of this find, no doubt hardcore Republican apologists will continue to pretend that these WMDs are in some way a vindication of their stubborn insistence that Saddam had WMDs. Like most dubious claims by Republicans, these lies need not have any basis in reality, nor will they always be rebutted by rational argument. Insofar as Santorum has given the loyal Republican base something to have faith in, he has succeeded with this pathetic ploy, however these claims are unlikely to win over anyone not previously drinking the GOP Kool-Aid.