We know there were WMDs, over there

At the recent funeral of Coretta Scott King the Reverend Joseph Lowery made tsunami-like waves by proclaiming "we know there were no WMDs over there..".

The crowd went wild, providing plenty of subsequent fodder for talk radio and cable news. Yet throughout the fray the media darlings largely focused on the crassness of the comment, not the veracity of the comment. Was the Reverend wrong on both counts?

Laurie Mylroie has a new piece about this very subject. An expert on Saddam and the Middle East and author of several books, Ms. Mylroie explores the much-vaunted Syrian connection:

Damascus now harbors a significant number of Saddam-era officials, while current Iraqi officials assert that Syria is the main external source of support for the Iraqi insurgency. Ties between the Syrian and Iraqi Baathists are very close

The problem is there's always been a gulf between Baghdad and Damascus. Syria lined up against Saddam in the Gulf War, and their Ba'athism is not the same. So any alliance would represent strange bedfellows to some degree.

But think about the route used by most of the Algerian and Saudi holy warriors on their way to become ordnance in Iraq. Their road leads through Syria. And as Ms. Mylroie indicates, Ba'athist Syria has already allied itself with Islamic Iran, who are themselves using the Palestinian-Israeli issue as a rallying cry. So these two also appear strange bedfellers. Yet all share a common enemy--the Great Satan.

I agree with Luigi in that large scale chemical WMDs seem more useful in controlled operations like Halabja rather than by stealth terrorist operations in New York or DC:

The first class of weapons is exemplified by the chemical munitions Saddam fielded in his war with Iran: nerve gas, blistering agents, and so forth. These are relatively bulky, probably require traditional delivery systems such as bombs and sprayers, and do not really rise to the level of WMDs.

But as for the biologicals,

Former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith suggests there may be a loose Iraqi WMD problem, similar to the problem of loose Soviet nukes. It has been over four years since high quality, weapons-grade anthrax was sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy. That material was more lethal than the anthrax produced by the U.S. and Soviet biological weapons programs. The FBI’s claim that it was produced by a lone scientist was always a stretch; indeed, it is much more likely that it was produced by an enemy state. Notably, the FBI has provided no explanation of who was responsible.

With Great Satan presence higher than ever, one has to wonder if there's any correlation between Iran's brass ball sabre rattling and Saddam's ever-elusive WMDs?