Grasping at straws

It's panties in a twist time for the Bush faithful. It seems for years now the Bush Administration has been sitting on the explosive news that WMDs have been found in Iraq and they just hadn't gotten around to boasting about it. But today little Ricky Santorum decided to break the glorious news. This, and forgive the source, from Fox News:

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "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."

If this is such big news why is the White House so blase?

Offering the official administration response to FOX News, a senior Defense Department official pointed out that the chemical weapons were not in useable conditions.

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

So much for BREAKING NEWS. Rick Santorum should be ashamed. He has taken the political stunt to an all new I'm-desperate-to-be-reelected low. Pass the Kool-Aid please.

Think Progress has more.