I recently made an error when reporting statistics that I would like to
clear up.

I stated that Iraq had used WMDs on hundreds of thousands of its own people.
I referred specifically to the Kurds. As of an Associated Press story in
this morning's paper by Niko Price, my figures were in error. I had said
hundreds of thousands, when it was ONLY 180,000 and therefore did not reach
the 200,000 figure that would have made it plural. The poster who corrected
me said that the figure was about 5,000 in reality. I guess the real figure
is somewhere in between, but find the 5,000 number to be unbelievable. I
apologize to all statisticians, netnannies, and anal retentive people here
who require everything to be stated in explicit terms, which I did not do.
But this is not computer programming, and one minor mistake does not negate
the whole thing.

As for WMDs, and all those wailing that no WMDs have been found, what is a
WMD? In the Cambodian purge, tens of thousands of people were killed with
sticks driven into the back of their heads. Would a stick not then qualify
as a WMD to a reasonable man? Many of the hundreds of thousands of people
killed in Iraq were probably shot. Wouldn't that qualify a gun as a WMD?

This story today about Iraq says that human rights officials estimate up tp
to 500,000 people were murdered in Iraq, and Iraqi political officials
estimate the number could go as high as one million. Since there are
numerous mass graves in Iraq, and no need to excavate them all and count the
bodies, the exact number will never be known. All the sites of all the mass
graves will never be known.

So, for the purists in this debate, and for just us regular humans, what
constitutes a WMD? Is it the ability to kill 100,000 people at once, or
kill 100,000 people over a course of time? The Hussein regime certainly did
wreak havoc and mass destruction. The facts and evidence are there. All
that is left is this endless prattle by purists as to just how it was done.

Saddam Hussein WAS a WMD himself. And no, he has not been found. So, on
that point, I would agree that particular WMD has not surfaced. As for the
others, we have ample evidence that mass destruction of humans was carried
out. Do we really need to debate whether it qualifies as mass destruction
merely because it wasn't done by some particular means? Dead is dead.

Until 9/11, no one considered an airliner as a WMD.

Steve