Sarin in Iraq?

Everyone really ought to stop hyperventilating (ok, please forgive me for that one) . . . in a political sense, I mean. It doesn’t sound very certain that it is sarin, and if it is, it’s just one shell that may not have had any markings. Has everyone on either side of the political spectrum forgotten that there are more important questions than who looks bad because of this? Our first concern ought to be getting those weapons out of the wrong hands, even if we have to go all the way to Damascus to do it. Our second concern ought to be whether our intel is any good. Whether or not this turns out to be sarin, or more than one shell, is beside the point.

As the right is trumpeting this shell as The Smoking Gun, at this moment, CNN doesn’t even mention it! Others are claiming that it doesn’t matter because we don’t know who made the shell–an idiotic claim given that Russian sarin is just as deadly and just as banned as Iraqi sarin.

Bush deserves to be judged by the quality of his judgment and leadership, not the quality of the intel he gets. Even good intel can’t be perfect when you’re talking about secretive dictatorships. Ditto North Korea. The real question is this–how much risk are you willing to let your government take with your life? I want my government to give the benefit of any doubts to my two-year-old, not Saddam or Kim Jong-Il.