The New Road

Republicans, keeping us safe...

From the kind of stuff you could find under your kitchen sink:

They probably would have been intended for chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, said David Kay, who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq from 2003 until early 2004.

He said experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s would no longer be dangerous.

"It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point," Kay said.

And any of Iraq's 1980s-era mustard would produce burns, but it is unlikely to be lethal, Kay said.

Asked about the potential danger to U.S. troops, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "They are weapons of mass destruction. They are harmful to human beings. And they have been found."

Wow! Good job Republicans! Nice over-reaction to the news that anyone informed by sources other than Fox News already knew, that there were shells filled with very old chemical agents hanging around. I wonder if they will rediscover all of the weapons caches that we left unguarded in the days after the war (because we didn't have enough troops there thanks to Rumsfeld) that the early insurgents used to build IEDs.

Speaking of that kind of stuff, Frontline had an awesome show that is available online that covers Dick Cheney and his role as the War On Terror czar. It's fascinating to see how cronieism from the 60s is still dominating our foreign policy a half century later. Honestly, the way we are fighting this war you would have to think someone just replaced the word 'communist' in our war plans with 'islamofacist' and that's how we are fighting. Which would be, and is, a complete misunderstanding of this enemy, it's motives, tactics, and capabilities.