I spend hours reading the news everyday but I have been pretty lethargic when it comes to blogging about the stories I find most intriguing. A friend with a different political point of view is insisting I watch the Commie News Network (CNN) tonight and watch Dead Wrong: Inside an Intelligence Meltdown. He believes that watching this program will open my eyes to how he believes our President has lied to the American people in order to wage an unnecessary war. In preparation for this event I have started sending him articles supporting my contention that Saddam did have WMDs.

In this vein I have decided to blog about a recent WMD story that I did not have a chance to mention yet on E*D.

I would like to discuss the WMD/Chemical weapons factory found in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. This factory contained 1500 gallons of chemical agents and precursors that when combined would have deadly consequences. Although the press is unwilling to call this a chemical weapons factory and a WMD storage facility, I am willing to go out on a limb and say as much. I believe that calling this an "alleged chemical weapons factory" is a bit of an understatement (source). One may argue that my calling this a WMD factory is a bit of an overstatement; however, what SHOULD we call a site that contains thousands of gallons of deadly chemicals? What should we call a chemicals factory operated by insurgets (think terrorists), with the intended result of using the chemicals as a weapon against our soldiers and the Iraqi people?

The press has gone to great lengths in this story to emphasize that this factory is an insurgent factory and that what was being produced there was a relatively new product, not a holdover from the Saddam era.

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from sometime after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein's government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.
(source)

Well this begs the question, "Where did all the equipment for this NEW factory come from?" Lets be serious about this, the insurgents can't exactly walk into a walmart over there and pick up all the necessary equipment for producing chemical weapons. They can't just go out to a vending machine and purchase deadly chemical precursors. Where did they get this stuff? I mean its not like it was just sitting around over there... or was it? Was this simply a matter of knowing where the hidden caches were and taking what was necessary to begin chemical weapons production anew?

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to figure this one out.

The press can call this an "alleged" factory all they want (as if it needs to be proven in a court of law). The press can split all the hair they like by saying this is a new chemical weapons factory and that we never found a single chemical weapons factory that was Saddam's, even though all the components from this new factory were likely looted from Saddam's. I'm willing to go out on the limb and declare this further proof of Saddam's capability and probabilty of WMD production. The fact that we are are finding this stuff in the hands of his cronies, the insurgents, should be damning to Saddam, not to the US Administration.

Read more about WMD's in Iraq.

Pics from the recent chemical factory raid: