Yglesias and Atrios have expressed alarm that Rep. Chris Cox, in introducing Dick Cheney Thursday night, suggested that we’re still finding WMDs in Iraq. I recorded Cox’s speech. Here’s a quick transcript of the relevant passage:

Time and again the steadfast courage of Vice President Cheney and President Bush has kept America on course. They heard the dire predictions of chaos and failure from the so-called mainstream media, from academia, from the liberals in Congress, and the pundits of al-Jazeera. But Dick Cheney and George Bush didn’t capitulate. They knew the left were not offering accurate forecasts of America’s future, but rather their own ardent wish for America’s failure.

Imagine the president and vice president had taken the advice of Jimmy Carter, who said, “I personally believe we will be ready for an election in January,” or Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who told Wolf Blitzer just two weeks before the election, “We’re not going to have successful elections.” Or Ted Kennedy (boos), who predicted just three days before the vote that the election would lead to greater escalation, greater alienation, and greater death.” (more boos)

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the left persisted with conviction that the war distracted from the war on terrorism. No. This is the war on terrorism (cheers).

We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and the facilities to make them inside of Iraq, and even more about their intended use, including that a plan to distribute sarin, and the lethal poison ricin — in the United States and Europe — was actively being pursued as late as March 2003. The facility where the weapons were being made also housed a large inventory of perfume atomizers of various shapes and sizes to mimic the brands on store shelves in the United States. It doesn’t take a wild imagination to understand the chilling implications. It does take imagination to combat it. And that’s why we’re lucky have an administration that gets it.

Seems the first clause in the first sentence of the last paragraph is the doozy. It’s the first I’ve heard of the perfume atomizers too, though I could very well have simply missed those stories. Iraq’s not my beat, so I don’t have the time to read up as thoroughly as I’d like.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2005 at 3:32 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.