Rather than actually investigate the WMD information revealed by Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the legacy media is instead either ignoring the report or dismissing it with the claim that the recovered war gasses have 'deteriorated to the point of harmlessness.'

Now, this may true of nerve gasses like sarin and taubun, which can deteriorate in a matter of hours on contact with oxygen, but mustard gas? Au contraire. A cursory web search reveals hundreds of stories testifying to the persistent properties of mustard gas, many dealing with an incident with roots in WW II.

At the end of the war, the Allies were left holding stockpiles of thousands of tons of war gasses in Nazi armories. It was decided to get rid of the stuff by the simplest means possible — by dumping it. Tens of thousands of shells and containers, the bulk of it (over 300,000 tons) being mustard gas, were dropped into the Baltic, where, according to this article sourced from none other than The New York Times, they remain to this day.

That is, the portion that hasn't been dredged up by unwitting fishermen, as occurred, according to this story, in 1969. That's twenty—three years on the ocean bottom for that particular sample, which was still potent enough to put a man in the hospital for three months. That one's courtesy of Reuters, a notorious WMD doubter.

In fact, it's well known that mustard gas deteriorates slowly even under the most severe conditions, as this story reveals:

'Mustard gas can damage DNA, causes cancer and survives for at least five years on the ocean floor before dissolving.'

It also quotes Dr. Jiri Matousek stating that the hazard will last "tens to hundreds of years". That one's from Newsweek. Do reporters ever read their own publications? Good question — maybe somebody can take a poll.

But it gets even better with this piece, covering a gas pipeline being laid beneath the Baltic. The pipeline's route passes close to a gas dump, and concerns exist that construction work may flood the Baltic with — you guessed it — deadly mustard gas. Note the date: June 13, 2006.

From horrific to harmless in only two weeks. That's fast.

We could go on — all these stories are off the very first page of a web search. There are three—hundred—odd more if anybody cares to look.

(As a bonus, here's a story about Czech scientists who have introduced a new, low—impact method of neutralizing mustard gas. God bless 'em, I say. As Nicholas Cage put it in The Rock, 'It's something we wish we could disinvent.')

J.R. Dunn   6 29 06