I received an email from a reader this morning, taking me to task for something I said in the posting about Mitt Romney's answer to Iraqi weapons inspections:
-----Original Message-----
From: tmohr00[at]yahoo.com
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 10:32 AM
To: conblog[at]conservativeblogger.com
Subject: Comments
Um, your reading comprehension seems to be lacking. You wrote: "People also seem to forget that, once we liberated Iraq, other weapons which were also banned in the UN Resolutions were found..."
Too bad this is completely wrong. One example - from page 30 of the UN report:
"Thiodiglycol
121. A small quantity of thiodiglycol (500 ml) was destroyed under UNMOVIC supervision in January 2003."
That was before the invasion, not after.
Nice try.
Yep, I'm wrong. There was no attempt to be deceitful on my part, it's an honest mistake. I took the list of substances that was on Wikipedia, cited the reference, and published it. I blew it and I have removed the entire list from the original posting.
My reply to the reader:
-----Original Message-----
From: Conservative Blogger
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 1:03 PM
To: 'tmohr00[at]yahoo.com'
Subject: RE: Comments
That IS my mistake and I will correct that. The report was written in May of that year. The bulleted list itself was taken from Wikipedia directly.
However, regardless of MY mistake, he STILL had weapons that he wasn't supposed to have, as well as a substantial amount of uranium...let's not lose sight of that.
I absolutely will correct my mistake, but...c'mon...he HAD the stuff to begin with and it was supposed to be destroyed as far back as 1991 and he was in violation of a minimum of TEN other UNSCOM/UNMOVIC resolutions.
The note that I have put on the original blog posting looks this way:
[Ed. note: the bulleted list that originally appeared here was called into question by a reader since some of the substances on it had been destroyed before the war. I made a mistake and grabbed the whole list from Wikipedia and pasted it on the page with a reference to the original source material. While Saddam shouldn't have had any of those things after 1991, I did make an error by not checking each individual date of when each item was found and I apologize for the error.]
My larger point in referring to the bulleted list was that Saddam still had weapons and weapons components that were prohibited by the UN since 1991. I got one item of the list wrong, so I removed the entire thing because I was wrong and I didn't want the important point about Romney's answer to the question to be undermined.
Saddam did not comply with 1441 or nine other UN Resolutions. He even had two tons of uranium and buried fighter planes. Yes, I made a mistake...but Mitt Romney's answer is still right and Saddam did have weapons he was not supposed to have after having been given "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations."
I honestly try not to make mistakes. I decided long ago that when I did make one, it would go front and center like every other blog posting, as I have done with this one.
I apologize to all of you for my error and thanks to the original reader for pointing it out for me.
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com
