TSA Detention Is No Joke

"• 26,000 liters of anthrax -- enough to kill several million people.

"• 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin.

"• 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents.

"• Almost 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents."

Saddam was still working hard to get nukes, too. "He recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, according to the British Government," the Web site posting, put up just before the invasion began in March, says. "He has attempted to purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons, according to our intelligence sources. Yet he has not credibly explained these activities."

Betcha he's singing now about that uranium.

Explaining the Error of His Ways

Meanwhile, the Pentagon's favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, now on Baghdad's governing council, has laid claim to the Nobel "Heroes in Error" Prize. Chalabi, accused of peddling phony tips about Iraq's weapons, shrugged off charges that he had deliberately misled U.S. intelligence, the London Telegraph reported.

"We are heroes in error," he told the Telegraph in an interview Wednesday in Baghdad.

"As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Not even to the families of all the killed and wounded?

On Short-Term Loan

Speaking of Baghdad, Robert Tappan, a longtime Washington public affairs guru and now principal deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs, has departed Foggy Bottom for Iraq on a temporary assignment as director of the Coalition Provisional Authority's Office of Strategic Communications.

Eating His Words

White House Council on Economic Advisers chief Gregory Mankiw was scalded last week for saying that sending jobs overseas was a good thing for the economy. So on Tuesday, he tried to, as they say on the Hill, revise and extend his remarks at a luncheon with economists. The restaurant? Chinatown Garden on H Street NW.

The Bombay Club was booked?