Weapons of Minor Discomfort / Weapons of Major Distraction

Reality Check Time:

What Bush's former Iraq Survey Group chief, Dr. David Kay says about Lil Ricky Santorum's found "WMD":

They probably would have been intended for chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War, said David Kay, who headed the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq from 2003 until early 2004.

He said experts on Iraq's chemical weapons are in "almost 100 percent agreement" that sarin nerve agent produced from the 1980s would no longer be dangerous.

"It is less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink at this point," Kay said.

And any of Iraq's 1980s-era mustard would produce burns, but it is unlikely to be lethal, Kay said.

AND:

...that Senator Santorum's comments are, quote, "wrong as to the facts and exaggerated beyond all reason as to the interpretation of the facts."

What Joseph Cirincione, author of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, had to say

About the "danger" of the "WMD":

"an irritant"

About Rumsfeld's statement trying to back up Ricky:

"That is really parsing your words very ...intentionally misleading"

What the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee has to say about the timing of the report's release:

"What worries me is that the intelligence community — Ambassador Negroponte in particular — may be playing a partisan role in the 2006 election," California Rep. Jane Harman .

So, was this some big cache of weapons? NO:

Intelligence officials said the munitions were found in ones, twos and maybe slightly larger collections over the past couple of years. One official conceded that these pre-Gulf War weapons did not pose a threat to the U.S. military before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They were not maintained or part of any organized program run by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

And, what does this make Tricky Ricky Santorum?

A big lying freak.