WMDs in California? (Insider Report).

Bush administration officials and loyalists continually remind us that Iraq is roughly the size of California. Supposedly this accounts for our inability to find Saddam's much-discussed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which, according to President Bush, were so potent and plentiful that they posed a threat to our nation's very existence.

The president's pre-war rhetoric conjured images of U.S. cities disappearing into Iraqi-created mushroom clouds, or of unmanned Iraqi drones raining chemical or biological agents on defenseless Americans. In the war's aftermath, the president seized on the discovery of two rotting tractor-trailers, purportedly used as mobile biological weapons labs, as proof that Saddam had WMDs. This, despite the fact that there was no evidence that the tractor-trailers had ever served such a sinister purpose.

While an intensive search has failed to turn up WMDs in California-sized Iraq, prosecutors in California claim to have found at least one WMD: a pipe bomb constructed by 34-year-old Hai Duc Le, who was severely burned when the homemade explosive went off in his car. Le was charged under the Patriot Act with "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction, maliciously destroying buildings and vehicles, and using and carrying a destructive device," Assistant U.S. Attorney John Hueston told the Santa Ana Herald Tribune.

Le's car was parked outside a campaign office for Democrat Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, with whom Le's family had been in contact. "The fact that a congresswoman's office is there is important to us in determining possible intent and motive," explained Hueston. "But it was not the only reason why we proceeded on these charges."