Oooooo, OUCH!

See, in order to accept that these weapons are 20 or so years old, you would have to accept that for the last 11-12 years while inspectors wandered around Iraq lifting up rocks and opening car trunks, stashes of chemical weapons were right under their nose; chemical weapons which in all their thorough inspections, they missed.

This, combined with the Mig buried in the desert and the huge stashes of weapons that have been found in schools and mosques, and you have to wonder, why are the anti-war folks so happy that this is "all they've found?" I would be hanging my head because at this point, all these finds are proving is that Saddam had plenty of stuff stashed all over the country, and it happened under the nose of the "experts" at the UN.

The big story here isn't as much what they found, and the more people insist its been there the more they prove one thing: In all those years of inspectors being there, they didn't find these shells that have supposedly been there for 20+ years.

You have to question the effectiveness of the inspectors for missing these, and that is the most interesting part of this discovery.

Every now and then, you find a bitchslapping that you just have to link to. Vinny, here's to you.

UPDATE: Blaster's Blog has a link to this article.

Ali Nimir, a former colonel in a Republican Guard artillery unit, said: "I remember seeing boxes of these kinds of armaments in our base two years ago. We were told that they were chemical weapons.

"They made a splashing sound inside if you moved them around. From what I recall they were removed from our bases and distributed to secret hiding places around the country about a year before the war. I never saw them again."

Ah, the more we learn.......

And this is completely off topic, but still a good bitchslapping to the AP.