Sarin

The Sarin shell found in Iraq is pretty big news. Conservatives are accusing the "liberal media" of brushing over it. I generally don't buy into the idea that there is a "liberal media", but I think the conservatives may have a valid point. Now that it has been confirmed that the shell contained Sarin it's important to find out where it came from, without torturing anyone. From what I can glean it may not have been apparent to anyone that it was a chemical shell, the army engineers who destroyed it didn't seem to realize what it was, and it may have just been mixed with other artillery shells somewhere or part of a stach of chemical weapons.
Safire has a Op-Ed piece in the NY Times about the shell. He lays out "Four Noes" that he accuses liberals of making. The first one is that this one shell doesn't constitute a stockpile, but that doesn't prove there is not stockpile. Second he challenges that there was no link between Al Queda and Iraq. Third, that our mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib doesn't deprive us of our moral high ground because what Saddam did was much worse. Last he says that claims that Arab culture isn't capable of democracy are racist.
I agree that he has some points but they do not merit his predictions. First I'm going to start with his last "No". It would be racist, or culturally supremacist, to say that Iraqis aren't capable of democracy, but who exactly is saying that? I don't know of anyone that is seriously claiming that Iraqi culture will prevent Iraq from having a democratic government. This is a straw man that Bush raised during his press conference on 4-13-04.

Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing and free. I strongly disagree with that. I reject that, because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and, if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.

I have not heard a single peep about it since. People do argue that the way we are proceeding is aggravating factionalism and spurring demagoguery and hindering a possible democratic Iraq. These are substantially different claims than the alleged ethnic claims Safire raises.
His third "No" is based on another strawman. There are some hysterical elements on the left who are equating us with Saddam because of Abu Ghraib, but the general concern is that there were violations of the Geneva Convention and that little was done about it until pictures were leaked to the press. Red Cross reports from 29 visits apparently alerted officials of abuse in January and little was done. There are also concerns for Iraqis who were killed resisting arrest. Estimates of Iraqis who are in custody mistakenly range from 70 to 90 percent. This is substantially different from what Saddam did, but it is still wrong and needs to be addressed. Defending the atrocious actions at Abu Ghraib by claiming they aren't as bad as what Saddam did is detrimental to any claim of moral high ground that the administration might try to make. The U.S. needs to set a higher goal then "not as bad as Saddam" if it wants to make any claims about acting morally.
The "No" about Al Queda is consistently raised by conservatives, but without proof. The press has repeatedly aired stories about Iraq's meetings with Al Queda, but instead of proving any collusion they show that the two groups were unwilling to work together. Claiming that an influx of Al Queda operatives after the war or right before the war still completely fails to show any collusion between Iraq and Al Queda to commit terrorist acts against the U.S. before the U.S. had threatened Iraq with an invasion.
The only "No" that bears serious consideration is whether or not this Sarin shell is evidence of the WMDs. Until there is evidence about the shell's origin I don't see how a conclusion of weapons being spirited away to Syria can be justified. It is likely that there are several similar unmarked shells stashed around Iraq that were misplaced by the bureaucracies of UNSCOM and Iraq. That is more reasonable than hidden arsenals that still haven't been activated or an undetected transport of weapon caches across the desert to Syria. The U.S.'s intelligence was bad, but it's hard to believe it could have been that bad.
Whether or not the "defeatists" will admit they were wrong hopefully depends on some credible evidence and not some baseless predictions in an Op Ed Column.