STEEEERIKE 75!

So where are those weapons of mass destruction we've been hearing about?

Time after time the Bushies and Blairies claim to have proof of WMD in Iraq. But then . . . Niger documents were forgeries . . . Powell's dossier is old and plagiarized from a high-school student . . . unmanned drone turns out to be made of balsa wood and ductape . . . pounds of uranium turned out to be ounces of non-fissile material . . . just last week, US troops found a site with vials of white powder. Is that it? Er, no, it turned out to be explosives.

And today, Americans who logged onto the internet or turned on their 24-hour infotainment stations this morning saw screaming headlines saying that SARIN GAS had been found!!! At an Iraqi site! And suddenly the gun appeared smoky.

Curious but out of time, I bounded off to class, returning an hour later, to find that oops! Nevermind! It was just pesticide.

NEAR NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - A facility near Baghdad that a US officer had said might finally be "smoking gun" evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons production turned out to contain pesticide, not sarin gas as feared.


A military intelligence officer for the US 101st Airborne Division's aviation brigade, Captain Adam Mastrianni, told AFP that comprehensive tests determined the presence of the pesticide compounds.

Initial tests had reportedly detected traces of sarin -- a powerful toxin that quickly affects the nervous system -- after US soldiers guarding the facility near Hindiyah, 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of Baghdad, fell ill.

Mastrianni said: "They thought it was a nerve agent. That's what it tested. But it is pesticide."

He said a "theatre-level chemical testing team" made up of biologists and chemists had finally disproved the preliminary field tests results and established that pesticide was the substance involved.

Mastrianni added that sick soldiers, who had become nauseous, dizzy and developed skin blotches, had all recovered.

If there's any consolation, I suppose we can add the Orkin Man to the axis of evil.