Now That the Sarin Gas Has Cleared, the `Four Noes' Become Clearer

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

(10:32 PM ET)

By William Safire

Safire is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the New York Times, based in Washington, D.C.

These may well reveal the successful concealment of WMD, as well as prewar shipments thereof to Syria and plans for production and missile delivery, by Saddam's Special Republican Guard and fedayeen, as part of his planned guerrilla war -- the grandmother of all battles. The present story line of "Saddam was stupid, fooled by his generals" would then be replaced by "Saddam was shrewder than we thought."

The Houston Chornicle
You may have missed the news because it didn't get much play, but a small, crude weapon of mass destruction may have been used by Saddam Hussein's terrorists in Iraq this week.

The apparent weapon was sarin gas, a highly toxic nerve agent that causes victims to choke to death. Developed by the Nazis, it has been used in the past by terrorists in Japan to kill a dozen subway riders and panic thousands, and by Saddam, who produced tons of it to kill Iraqi Kurds.

Rigged as an "improvised explosive device," or roadside bomb, the 155-millimeter howitzer shell was accidentally detonated by a U.S. ordnance team. Two men were treated for what an Army spokesman called "minor exposure" to the nerve gas.

You never saw such a rush to dismiss this as not news. United Nations weapons inspectors whose reputations rest on denial of Saddam's WMD pooh-poohed the report. "It doesn't strike me as a big deal," said David Kay.

"Sarin bomb is likely a leftover from the '80s" was USA Today's Page 10 brushoff; maybe the terrorists didn't know their shell was loaded with sarin. Besides, say our lionized apostles of defeat, a poison-gas bomb does not a "stockpile" make. Even the Defense Department, on the defensive, strained not to appear alarmist, saying confirmation was needed for the field tests.

In this rush to misjudgment, we can see an example of the "Four Noes" that have become the defeatists' platform.

(More: company)

2004 © William Safire.

Dan