Written by: Beck

There are two major news items out of Iraq today, neither of which seems to be receiving much press attention--at least not yet. First, the President of the Iraqi Governing Council was killed in a car bomb attack today. He's the highest ranking Iraqi killed to date, and the second member of the Council killed since its inception. Apart from the fact that his death represents the loss of another Iraqi helping the US to rebuild the country, it also reflects our inability to protect even the most important people.

Abdel-Zahraa Othman, a Shia Muslim, who was most widely known as Izzadine Saleem, was one of eight Iraqis killed in the blast.

He was traveling in a five-vehicle convoy with a police escort, and waiting to go into the green zone, the coalition headquarters in Baghdad, when an adjacent car exploded.

While not as big a news item now, the potentially more significant news is that an improvised explosive device was discovered loaded with sarin gas. The device was an unexploded artillery shell of a type Hussein claimed to no longer possess after the first gulf war. Fortunately, no one seems to have been hurt; nonetheless, maybe this will help to wake up a few of the head-in-the-sand types who have seem to have forgotten that at one point in time, pretty much everyone in the world believed that Saddam had WMD, regardless of whether they thought that was a legitimate reason for invading Iraq.

Kimmitt said the artillery round was of an old style that Saddam Hussein's regime had declared it no longer possessed after the Persian Gulf War.

Kimmitt said device was designed to mix two relatively passive chemicals after being fired from an artillery piece, creating the potent nerve gas, and that it was ineffective as an improvised explosive device.

The question now is, what will come of all this? While there are plenty of answers to that question regarding what should be done, I've got a hunch those answers diverge significantly from what will be done.