Sen. Santorum: Saddam's WMD Are a Fact

During Wednesday’s debate on Capitol Hill on whether to resolve to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by a time certain, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., resurrected the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) issue, pointing out the claim by several Senate Democrats that no WMD had been found in Iraq is disproved by a declassified document - according to a Fox News report.

"This is an incredibly - in my mind - significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false,” Santorum argued.

The lawmaker read from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit:

"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.”

However, a senior Defense Department official pointed out to Fox News that the chemical weapons in question were not in useable condition.

"This does not reflect a capacity that was built up after 1991,” the official said, adding the munitions "are not the WMD this country and the rest of the world believed Iraq had, and not the WMD for which this country went to war.”

The same official conceded that the findings did raise questions about the years of weapons inspections that had not resulted in locating the trove of chemical weapons. He further noted that the report suggested that some of the weapons were likely put on the black market and may have been used outside Iraq.

Joining Santorum at a Wednesday evening press conference, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a fellow Republican from Michigan, also pointed to yet other unclassified portions of the intelligence report.

"This says weapons have been discovered, more weapons exist, and they state that Iraq was not a WMD-free zone, that there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq,” said Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Hoekstra added that the report shows that "there is still a lot about Iraq that we don’t fully understand,” and that he is going to ask for more reporting by the various intelligence agencies about weapons of mass destruction.

"[W]e are going to put additional pressure on the Department of Defense and the folks in Iraq to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war,” Hoekstra said.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are reportedly poised to reject two Democratic-sponsored resolutions today that would press President Bush to start withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq.