More unaccounted for WMD found in Iraq

Reuters:

The U.S. military has found more Iraqi weapons in recent months, in addition to the 500 chemical munitions recently reported by the Pentagon, a top defense intelligence official said on Thursday.

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, did not specify if the newly found weapons were also chemical munitions. But he said he expected more.

"I do not believe we have found all the weapons," he told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, offering few details in an open session that preceded a classified briefing to lawmakers.

Responding to questions from lawmakers anxious to make political points ahead of the November congressional elections, U.S. defense officials said the 500 chemical weapons discovered in Iraq were "weapons of mass destruction." However their degraded state may make them more dangerous to those who find them than anyone else.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), wrote to U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte accusing intelligence officials of downplaying the significance of the finds.

Hoekstra said intelligence officials at a June 21 press briefing told journalists the weapons predated the 1991 Gulf War, were too degraded to be used as originally intended and posed no threat to U.S. forces deployed in the region during the run-up to the 2003 invasion.

"I am very disappointed by the inaccurate, incomplete, and occasionally misleading comments made by the briefers," Hoekstra said in the letter.

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Democrats continued their state of denial about the unaccounted for WMD. What is not argueable is that these weapons were not accounted for as required under the terms of the cease fire and the UN resolutions and we do not know what other unaccounted for WMD may yet be found in Iraq by our troops or the enemy.