Refuting the Stupid Arguments of Your Wingnut Friends, Part VI

The primary justification for the Iraq war offered by the Deserter was the claim that Saddam was stockpiling WMD and concealing them from U.N. weapons inspectors. The failure to find any such stockpiles has not deterred the wingnuts, though. Post-war statements from U.S. and British weapons inspectors to the effect that such stockpiles likely do not exist also have not deterred our intrepid wingnut friends. One of my favorite wingnuts, Mike from Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, writes: "To date there have been at least 12 warheads found mixed in with the regular ammo dumps that have contained Sarin. The fall is going to be hard when that limb gets sawed off beneath you."

I would generally relish the opportunity to refute the astonishingly stupid wingnut argument that the Deserter's claims of Iraqi caches of concealed WMD are somehow vindicated by the existence of aged sarin shells left over from the Iran-Iraq war, shells invariably found laying about in Iraq in distinctly unstockpiled fashion. However, the definitive refutation of this argument has already been done by Newzmaniac at DemocraticUnderground.com.

Thanks, Newzmaniac. I found the following paragraph from Newzmaniac's trenchant analysis particularly piquant:

Apparently lost to the Bush fans is the fact that Iraq and Iran were at war for most of the 1980's, raining down chemical weapons on each other. Considering the proficiency of both armies, it's fairly safe to say that many of these shells didn't hit their intended targets and instead landed somewhere out there among the camels and the shepherds. If we put 150,000 U.S. troops all over Iran, as we've done in Iraq, these "deadly chemical shells" would be turning up in equally frequent incidents there, too. Two neighboring countries who spend nearly a decade lobbing these things at each other usually do leave quite a pile of relics in their wake.

I would greatly appreciate hearing from readers of EOTP who have encountered particularly stupid or amusing wingnut arguments. Just leave a comment by clicking on the hyperlink at the end of this message and together we will bring the light of reason to our wingnut friends.