Roger Simon, American Idiot

Apparently demented Pajamas Media aka Train Wreck Media Mogul Roger Simon stops playing WMD Charades and tries to start another WMD snipe hunt in Syria:

“Another Mass Grave in Iraq. . . . As for the WMD part of the equation, can anyone paying the slightest attention to revelations about Syrian government say these thugs had nothing to do with the disappearance of weapons from Iraq?”

Actually, the answer to that question is “yes.”

Undercutting the Bush’s administration’s rationale for invading Iraq, the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction when international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, an administration official said Wednesday.

More key findings from the Duelfer report:

• Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

• Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.

• While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991.

• There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.

• With the economy at rock bottom in late 1995, ISG judges that Baghdad abandoned its existing BW program in the belief that it constituted a potential embarrassment, whose discovery would undercut Baghdad’s ability
to reach its overarching goal of obtaining relief from UN sanctions.

• In practical terms, with the destruction of the Al Hakam facility, Iraq abandoned its ambition to obtain advanced BW weapons quickly. ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specifi c work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s, despite evidence of continuing interest in nuclear and chemical weapons, there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the Presidential level.

Anyone paying even the slightest attention has noticed that the US Iraq Survey Group concluded that Saddam abandoned WMD programs and rid himself of WMDs over a decade ago, and that even Bush acknowledges the WMDs did not exist. If they didn’t exist in the first place, it stands to reason they couldn’t have “disappeared” or been moved to Syria. Is Syria also involved in the “disappearance” of unicorns and faeries?

And just how does a mass grave in Iraq from 1991 add up to WMDs in Syria in 2003, in the absence of advanced dementia?