What would fit the definition of “weapons of mass destruction”? Surely 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium would qualify – that’s more than 1,100,000 pounds of the stuff.

On July 5, 2008, various news sources reported that’s what was found by American allied troops near Baghdad not long after the allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. For obvious reasons, the discovery was kept secret for the next five years, but in June of last year it had been shipped to Canada, and by July 5 it was in Montreal and is now being used in Canada’s nuclear energy program.

Given such news, would it be presuming too much to imagine that there might have been similar discoveries that were also kept secret?

And, according to a Molly Ivins column from July 14, 2005, the most conservative estimates of international human rights organizations state that between 1980 and the allied invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Saddam Hussein regime killed at least 300,000 people. Included in the carnage were 182,000 Kurds, who were the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1998. At least three Kurdish villages were wiped out by poison gas, and as of July 14, 2005, allied soldiers had uncovered 271 mass graves containing the bodies of at least 20,000 people.

Just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.

Terence McManus, New Sharon