Last night Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-MI, released the declassified overview of a report produced by the National Ground Intelligence Center, the group that has searched Iraq for Saddam Hussein’s WMDs since 2004. Its stunning revelation: there were WMDs, after all.

Since 2003, Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions, which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf war chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf war chemical munitions are assessed to still exist. That means in addition to the 500, there are filled and unfilled munitions still believed to exist within the country.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-MI, noted this is significant, since “the impression that the Iraqi Survey Group left with the American people was they didn't find anything.”

The report further justified President Bush’s rationale for toppling Saddam: he had WMDs that he may have transferred to terrorists.

All of which makes the anti-Bush, antiwar Left’s rhetoric sound more shrill and opportunistic than it did at the time:

• President Bush “engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate the facts in service to a totalistic ideology.” – Vice President Al Gore in a 2003 speech before MoveOn.org.
  
• “As in Vietnam, truth was the first casualty of this war.” – Ted Kennedy in a speech at Johns Hopkins University early last year.
• “What we see today is very much like what was going in Watergate. It turns out there is a lot of good evidence that President Bush did not tell the truth when he was asking Congress for the power to go to war.” – Howard Dean, in the same interview in which he said “the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.”
  
• “We know now that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction over there. But Coretta [Scott King] knew, and we know, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.” – Rev. Joseph Lowery, at Coretta Scott King’s funeral.
  
• “He misled every one of us.” – John Kerry in 2003.
  
• “He lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and he lied about the war.” – Maxine Waters, D-CA.
• “We cannot lead if our leaders mislead.” – Former President Jimmy Carter at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

These rhetorical assaults made against a sitting president during a time of war would be somewhat less vicious, egregious, or gratuitous were they born of heartfelt conviction. However, yesterday’s disclosure was not exactly news. For one thing, many of the “Bush lied”/”Saddam never had WMDs” brigade had thundered that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons before, during, and after the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Only after the Soros-funded "base" of their party made a pro-war stance political suicide did most of today's critics turn against the president, the war, and the mission they had sent more than 100,000 American troops to die achieving.

Then the president’s harshest detractors turned a blind eye to proof of Saddam’s verboten cache.

• In early 2004, Dutch officials discovered five pounds of yellowcake uranium ore in scrap metal imported from Iraq.
• In subsequent months, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) found parts of banned al-Samoud 2 (SA2) missiles shipped around the world as “scrap.”
• In April 2004, Jordanian officials seize 20 tons of WMDs from al-Qaeda containing 70 different chemical agents, including Sarin and VX gas. King Abdullah announced on April 17 the stockpiles originated in Iraq. If detonated as planned, they would have killed at least 80,000 people.
• The following month, Saddam loyalists fired a “chemical binary projectile” filled with Sarin gas at U.S. troops in Iraq.
• In early 2006, Gen. Georges Sada, the number two man in the Iraqi air force, told American media outlets that Saddam Hussein buried some WMDs in concrete underground bunkers in Iraq; others he shipped or airlifted to Syria with Russian assistance.

A few have responded. The Daily Kos featured the headline “PA-Sen: Santorum Makes Up.” To justify its profane assertion, it cites all the inspectors who didn’t find WMDs – which is rather like the defense calling witnesses who had not see the accused commit the murder.

Even as incontrovertible proof exonerated the president, Gucci Marxist and ignoramus Robert Scheer told MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson last night, “We’re talking about whether it’s right to lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction…so I want a candidate that will tell the truth about the lies of this administration.”

As the weeks unfold, the Democratic Party’s base will likely adopt Scheer’s m.o. as their own: after all, the Big Lie tactic has proven successful elsewhere. The Left’s hardcore activists, invested in American defeat in Iraq and Republican defeat in ’06 and ’08, will not refrain from calling President Bush a lying Nazi even if Saddam, in a fit of hunger-induced insanity, admitted every sin and dark machination lurking in his evil heart.

But their continuing to do so should underscore their idiocy and mendacity."

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