No WMDs? Tons of Uranium, Sarin Gas, Buried MiGs

The U.S. has ended the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, with the press here and abroad describing the effort as a abject failure that turned up no evidence whatsoever that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

Even President Bush appears to be throwing in the towel, telling ABC's Barbara Walters in an interview set for broadcast Friday night: "I felt like we�d find weapons of mass destruction � like many here in the United States, many around the world. We need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering."

Predictably, Democrats are rushing to make political hay over the news.

"Now that the search is finished, President Bush needs to explain to the American people why he was so wrong, for so long, about the reasons for war," demanded top House Dem Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday, filled with pseudo outrage.

Instead of taking Pelosi's advice, Bush would do better to explain to the American people just what U.S. forces did find in their search for banned weapons in Iraq - starting with, for instance, the 1.8 tons of partially enriched uranium Saddam had socked away.

Here's how the Associated Press covered that news last June:

"In a secret operation, the United States last month removed from Iraq nearly two tons of uranium and hundreds of highly radioactive items that could have been used in a so-called dirty bomb, the Energy Department disclosed Tuesday.

"The nuclear material was secured from Iraq's former nuclear research facility and airlifted out of the country to an undisclosed Energy Department laboratory for further analysis," the AP said.

"Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham described the previously undisclosed operation, which was concluded June 23, as 'a major achievement' in an attempt to 'keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.'"

And if Bush needs more ammunition to refute Pelosi, he could cite the discovery of Sarin gas-filled artillery shells.

"We've found ten or twelve Sarin and Mustard rounds," Iraq Survey Group chief Charles Duelfer told Fox News, after his team uncovered the WMD cache last June.

"We're finding things and we're getting reports of hidden caches almost every day which we have to investigate," Duelfer added.

And if the White House wants some dramatic imagery to show how easy it was for Saddam to hide banned weapons, how about those photos of the 30 Iraqi jet fighters that weapons searchers found buried in the sand near Baghdad.

Here's how the Associated Press covered that development in Aug. 2003:

"American teams hunting for Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction found dozens of fighter jets from Iraq's air force buried beneath the sands, U.S. officials say.

"At least one Cold War-era MiG-25 interceptor was found when searchers saw the tops of its twin tail fins poking up from the sands, said one Pentagon official familiar with the hunt. He said search teams have found several MiG-25s and Su-25 ground attack jets buried at al-Taqqadum air field west of Baghdad. . . ."

The find astonished even then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman , now CIA Director, Porter Goss.

"Our guys have found 30-something brand new aircraft buried in the sand to deny us access to them," Goss told the AP. "These are craft we didn't know about."

No weapons of mass destruction? President Bush needs to spend more time examining the evidence, and less time working through his mea culpas with Barbara Walters.