Liftingthefog: Political Humor from Barbara Sehr

Exposing the Foggy Bottom from the Third Rail

Exposing the Foggy Bottom from the Third Rail

Saddam Imports "Cheap" Hydrogen Bomb from US

Smoking Gun Traced to Infamous Sniper Gun Store

War with Iraq?

America to Face Spitting Images of Saddam

Bush shows concern for Iraqi -gun shop link WASHINGTON — Hours after Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix told a private meeting of the UN Security Council that more than a month of inspections in Iraq could produce "no smoking gun," the Bush administration revealed that US agents had traced the purchase of at least three nuclear weapons and a dozen cans of pepper spray by Saddam Hussein to an infamous Tacoma, Washington, gun shop.

Gun store owners say the nuclear weapons were acquired through a military surplus distributor and were second-rate weapons. "We sold them primarily to deer hunters who wanted the pleasure of hunting down an animal, but didn't want to go to the trouble of preparing a venison dinner," a spokesman for the store said. "We did discourage selling these bombs to high school students and anyone who voted for Walter Mondale in 1984."

Weapons experts acknowledge that the relatively low $1,995 price tag for the surplus hydrogen bombs could attract attention-seeking, low-profile, high-power dictators, and members of the Jenny Jones or Jerry Springer studio audience.

Blix told members of the press that the lead came when Iraq's 10,000-page questionable weapons declaration was compared to a recent declaration by the gun store that it could not trace more than 300 weapons - including the gun used in last fall's Washington, DC sniper attacks. "The handwriting on the two reports turned out to be very similar, demonstrating that it was either written by the same person, or someone of similar record-keeping habits," Blix said.

Weapons inspectors have traveled unannounced to numerous sites where intelligence reports have hinted that the Iraqi government might hide weapons of mass destruction. "The idea that the weapons might actually be imported from the United States never occurred to us," a Bush administration spokesman said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the role of the Justice Department in not keeping an eye on what some called "sloppy record keeping" by the gun store. "When our founding fathers gave all Americans the right to bear arms they clearly did not add any provisions that sales of these weapons should be monitored," Ashcroft recalled. "The founding fathers may have been uncertain about certain other rights we allegedly have, like 'freespeech' or the supposed right of citizen terrorists to oppose the manifest destiny of this administration, but they were absolutely clear that we don't have to tell anyone when we buy or sell a weapon."

Iraqi officials say Hussein used his own name and credit card in purchasing the nuclear weapons from the gun shop's Web site. "Sure there were conditions in the UN resolution about Iraq creating weapons of mass-destruction," Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations recalled, "But there is absolutely not a single provision regarding the purchase of nuclear weapons from the Internet."

Owners of the gun store are unlikely to face any criminal charges in the sale, ATF officials say. In fact, sources say, the store's bookkeeper has been nominated to head the administration's record-keeping office for enforcement of the Clinton administration's Brady bill. The nomination has the overwhelming approval of National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston and the Republican majority in Congress.