Richard Spertzel, head of UNSCOM’s biological weapons division from 1994-1999, has a good article that gives further reasons why U.S. inspection teams haven’t found any WMD–they don’t know how to look.

Some pundits question, if Iraq had WMDs, why did it not use them? Iraq learned from the first Gulf War that coalition forces headed by the U.S. could advance very rapidly. Iraq also indicated in testimony to the U.N. Special Commission, or Unscom, that biological weapons would have little effect in stopping an advancing military force. Rather, their interest was to use biological weapons to intimidate their neighbors and cause them to “see things Iraq’s way.” Thus its failure to use biological WMDs should not be a surprise to anyone. The failure to use chemical WMDs is also not surprising considering the apparent confusion within the Iraqi command structure during the race to Baghdad.
Then, why have such weapons not been found? The answer may lie in the training and experience of the inspectors. The initial team looking for WMDs in Iraq was more reminiscent of site exploiters than inspectors. True, if they found a bomb or missile warhead, they were capable of further exploitation of the find to determine its contents. But they apparently did not have testing instruments capable of detecting trace amounts of biological-weapons agents.

The next iteration of the coalition inspectors was supposed to have a number of inspectors that had extensive experience in Iraq and has been so misrepresented in the media. I was asked in February to propose a list of Unscom experienced biological inspectors (a so-called A team) that had multiple inspection trips to Iraq. These were to be from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. In March, after the concept was approved, I was asked to contact those on my list to assure they were willing and able to devote the time. All but one agreed to the deployment. None of the individuals on that list ever made it to Iraq.

A few weeks ago David Albright, writing in the Washington Post, stated that he had been contacted by several Iraqi nuclear scientists who asserted that they were afraid to talk to the coalition inspectors because of the way they were being treated by the inspectors–interrogation, threats, etc., rather than with any degree of respect. The interviewing of Iraqi scientists is where extensive experience would have been most valuable. One doesn’t need to like what was done or the individual scientist to treat them with respect. Experienced inspectors knew this. Furthermore, experienced inspectors knew what, when, and how to pursue a subject that is unlikely to occur to a neophyte.

It’s now been almost three and a half months since the war began. Between not securing sites and having incompetent inspection teams, it’s clear that there’s been some serious mistakes made in the hunt for WMD in Iraq. Now the question has to be–where are they? Or, perhaps more chillingly–who has them?

This definitely does not fall in the category of good news:

NORTH Korea has enough plutonium to make six to 10 nuclear weapons and could test such a weapon by the end of the year, a former US negotiator with the Stalinist state said in an interview published today.

“To the best of my knowledge, based on very well-informed Washington sources, North Korea’s nuclear program is moving ahead very quickly,” Kenneth Quinones was quoted as saying by the Daily Yomiuri

“Basically, this means North Korea’s reprocessing (of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel) is almost finished, or has finished. This means North Korea now has enough plutonium to make six to 10 nuclear weapons,” he said..

It’s odd that North Korea’s nuclear program doesn’t seem to be attracting much media attention. Much as I love Ms. Hepburn and regret her demise, I would think that keeping track of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal better commands front page coverage.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum finds it odd, too…

In response to the fallacious claims made in the Washington Post and elsewhere that Abu Zarqawi is not part of al-Qaeda, Dan Darling has put together an extensive article and link-list of everything publicly known about him and his relationship with al-Qaeda and Iraq. It’s a must-read.

“The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made were real. They mattered.”
– Orson Scott Card

This is the way to avoid scandals - be up front and don’t care. I hope he wins.

County Democratic officials want a state Senate candidate to quit the race over a nude photo contest he entered, but Jim Morrison says he’s in to stay.
“If people want to know about it, they should know I won the contest,” the 32-year-old attorney said.
Sussex County Democratic Party Chairman Charles Cart said Morrison does not reflect northwestern New Jersey’s conservative values, and the party already has a hard enough time competing in an area where Republicans outnumber Democrats 3-to-1.

If every candidate was this upfront, the whole election process would be much more streamlined and less vicious.

It’s both!

Imagine a gun that fires a million rounds a minute — enough to shred a target in a blink of an eye, or throw up a defensive wall against an incoming missile.

This is Metal Storm, a weapons system that forsakes old-style mechanics for the speed of electronics.

Nice. Now if could just get that machine that turns trash into oil, this gun, and Asimo, the Honda robot, my Mechwarrior would be complete.

Jacob Sullum has a great column on the Bush Administration’s penchant for labeling people “enemy combatants” in order to keep them from due process.

Is it possible that the government simply did not have enough evidence to make a case against Al-Marri (which seems to be what happened with Padilla)? Not according to the Justice Department. “We are confident we could have prevailed on the criminal charges,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher said. “However, setting the criminal charges aside is in the best interests of national security.”

How so? The Justice Department isn’t saying, presumably because offering an explanation would not be in the best interests of national security.

You may be inclined to trust the government’s judgment on such matters. That attitude is fine, provided the government always acts in good faith and never makes mistakes. But if you assume public officials are fallible and occasionally malicious, you may have qualms about giving them unilateral authority to lock people up and throw away the key.

I know I do. Read the whole thing.

Strom Thurmond died today. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead when they’ve so recently passed on. But I won’t lie, either. So all I’m going to say is that he’s dead.

“The left they say I’m a fascist.
The right calling me a communist.
Hate hate hate hatred for all - one and all.
No matter what you believe.
Don’t believe in you - and that’s true.”
– from “We Hate Everyone” by Type O Negative

Matt Welch has a great article about immigration issues in Reason.

This news should cheer immigration-reformers who have been repeating the mantra “but they broke the law!” for years. (Presumably, these people have never jaywalked or written the wrong date on a check, and were among the loudest critics of President George Bush for appointing convicted felon Elliot Abrams to the office of the National Security Council.)

But ignored laws, suddenly enforced, will do more than weed out criminals and terrorists. It will drive people—including good, hard-working people—into the deepest of the black markets, never to interact with a government agency except maybe in the emergency room, or at the local jail.

In Chicago, undocumented Latino workers are being rounded up and deported. In Colorado, Tancredo keeps trying to get the DHS to start arresting people outside the Mexican Consulate. In Florida, where new post-Sept. 11 requirements forced drivers license renewals to include proof of legal residency, 35-year resident Ramon Saul Sanchez was immediately slapped with a deportation hearing. He came from Communist Cuba at age 13.

I don’t dispute that there should be some serious reform in the immigration system. But in my mind, the process needs to change in a manner that makes it easy to immigrate, but also maximizes the ability to keep known bad guys out. I say increase the numbers of visas and increase the ability of Mexicans who want to work here to come across the borders and do so. The easier it is to legally immigrate to this country, the less incentive there will be to illegally immigrate–which means that there will be fewer people immigrating illegally, making those bad guys who do slip through the net easier to catch.