About Those Iraqi Weapons . . .

"A year after the war began, Americans are questioning why the administration went to war in Iraq when Iraq was not an imminent threat, when it had no nuclear weapons, no persuasive links to al Qaeda, no connection to the terrorist attacks of September 11, and no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons."

--Edward M. Kennedy, April 5, 2004

"There were no weapons of mass destruction."

--Howard Dean, April 4, 2004

SENATOR KENNEDY and Governor Dean speak as Democrats. They speak as opponents of the war in Iraq. But on the issue of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities--the tyrant's development, possession, and threatened use of chemical, biological, and nuclear arms--they also speak as standard-bearers of the conventional wisdom. Over the last several months, ever since David Kay stepped down as head of the Iraq Survey Group and told us that "we were almost all wrong" about Saddam's arsenal, what was once a universally accepted truth (Saddam had weapons of mass destruction) became an apparently self-evident fiction (Saddam had no such weapons). It seems the whole world now agrees that Saddam rid his country of weapons stockpiles shortly after the first Gulf War ended in 1991. With respect to weapons of mass destruction (WMD), at least, there was really nothing to worry about.

But what if that judgment, too, is wrong? Just as wrong, in fact, as was the assumption that Iraqi WMD would be found quickly and easily? Senator John Kerry, interestingly, has been cautious. As recently as April 27 he commented, "Who knows if a month from now, three months from now, you find some weapons? You may."

The truth is Kennedy is right, at least in one regard: There are many questions that deserve answers. Here are a few we would like to pose--both to those who, like Kennedy and Dean, are so certain Saddam was weaponless in March 2003, and also to the Bush administration, which has been virtually mute, and has not explained what it has found and what it now believes to have been the truth about Iraqi WMD.

* Where did the sarin come from? Last week the Pentagon reported that two U.S. servicemen were hospitalized in Baghdad for exposure to nerve agents. The soldiers were part of an American convoy that came across an unmarked 155 millimeter shell lying on the side of a Baghdad street. When the soldiers attempted to disarm the makeshift bomb, it exploded, spilling out part of its poisonous contents. The shell later tested positive for sarin, the poison developed by the Nazis and used by Saddam against the Kurds in Halabjah in 1988.

The shell in question appears to have been made prior to the first Gulf War. The terrorists who planted the bomb may not have known it contained the deadly poison. But the claim always was that Saddam had not fully relinquished or done away with his pre-Gulf War arsenal. And if the terrorists didn't know the bomb contained sarin, because the casing had no distinctive markings, doesn't that suggest an effort at deception? Doesn't it also suggest that there could have been--and could be--many more of these shells around?

The New York Times wasn't worried: "No one can be certain" whether the bomb "did really contain sarin," it editorialized. Besides, "finding some residual weapons that had escaped a large-scale destruction program would be no great surprise--and if the chemicals had degraded, no major threat." But it now seems the bomb did contain sarin. And we do not know that there are only a few such "residual" weapons. Do we?

* How did Jordanian terrorists apparently obtain chemical weapons? Last month the Jordanians thwarted a terrorist attack in Amman. A terrorist cell linked to Abu Musab al Zarqawi--previously connected to Saddam--planned to explode trucks carrying 20 tons of poison chemicals outside the headquarters of the Jordanian intelligence service. The Jordanian authorities said the blast could have killed up to 80,000 people and wounded around 160,000. Where did the chemicals come from?

* Who is killing Iraqi weapons scientists? In closed testimony to members of Congress earlier this year, David Kay reported that Saddam Hussein's top scientists have been targeted for assassination. Terrorists and Baathists have killed nine prominent scientists since April 9, 2003. All those killed had worked in one way or another on Baathist weapons programs. All had been questioned by the Iraq Survey Group.