American troops in Iraq have run across chemical artillery shells on quite a number of occasions. There’ve never been more than a handful found in any particular cache, and all of them have been old, easily dating back to the period of the ’90-’91 war. These shells were probably stashed away for “safekeeping” and then forgotten. Apparently none of the shells are usable, and in most cases the chemicals have deteriorated or leaked away.
Yes, these chemical warheads don't work. But the point is that they remained hidden even when we were driving around for years in some cases without finding them. If these shells could remain unfound, what else is out there?
Iraq is a big country and I don't assume we've had the chance to find everything there is to find out there. I'll wait for the new conventional wisdom on Iraqi WMD to develop. We will find them.
