This information was public in January of 2003
7 weeks later we invaded
I cannot think of a better example as to how much spin has been put on this matter
Those item existed according to Saddam existed
Those were items according to the UN they were never destroyed
In the 500+ munitions that were found in 2004 that were later classified as WMDs were also not destroyed as they were to be and as far as I can find Saddam never made claim they existed
By the way there condition in 1994 has nothing to do with there condition on 9-11-2001, or in 1991, 94, 98
Those were the reasons we went to war
Saddam could have put an end to all of this
It certainly seems that he could have. Talk about going all in and losing the hand...
WMD conjecture in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Do you realize that we had been talking sense 1994?
Let me add that many thought (and some claim to be true) Saddam was moving these and other weapons out of the country from 01 until we invaded
Stockpiles transported to another country
Rumors have abounded of possible transportation of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to foreign countries, namely Syria, Lebanon and Iran, in the weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom began. John Bolton told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that these reports give "cause for concern."[12]
Alleged Russian involvement
Romanian intelligence defector Ion Mihai Pacepa alleged that an operation for the removal of chemical weapons was prepared by the Soviet Union for Libya, and that he was told over thirty years ago by Romanian President Nicolae Ceauşescu, KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Yevgeny Primakov, about the existence of a similar plan for Iraq. It is "perfectly obvious", wrote Pacepa, that the Russian GRU agency helped Saddam Hussein to destroy, hide, or transfer his chemical weapons prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. "After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place."[13]
John Loftus, director of The Intelligence Summit, said in the November 16, 2007 issue of FrontPage Magazine that many documents from Iraq point to WMD being transferred to other countries such as Syria: "As stated in more detail in my full report, the British, Ukrainian and American secret services all believed that the Russians had organized a last minute evacuation of CW and BW stockpiles from Baghdad to Syria." His researchers allegedly found a document ordering the concealment of nuclear weapons equipment in storage facilities under the Euphrates River a few weeks before the invasion.[14]
[edit]Syria
Map of Syria, showing its adjacent location west of Iraq
Former Iraqi general Georges Sada claimed that in late summer 2002, Saddam had ordered all of his stockpiles to be moved to Syria. He appeared on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes in January 2006 to discuss his book, Saddam's Secrets: How an Iraqi General Defied and Survived Saddam Hussein. Anticipating the arrival of weapon inspectors on November 1, Sada said Saddam took advantage of the June 4 Zeyzoun Dam disaster in Syria by forming an "air bridge", loading them onto cargo aircraft and piloting them out of the country.
They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.[15]
In January 2004, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who moved to Western Europe, said in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he knows the three sites where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are kept inside Syria. According to Nayuf's witness, described as a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence he had known for two years,[16] Iraq's WMD are in tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria, in the village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp, and in the city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city. Nayouf also wrote that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat, Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family.[17] U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to this accusation by saying "I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead, and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen."[16]
A similar claim was made by Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, a former Israeli officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from July 2002 to June 2005. In April 2004, he was quoted as saying that "perhaps they transferred them to another country, such as Syria."[18] General Ya'alon told the New York Sun more firmly in December 2005 that "He [Saddam] transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."[19] The Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly also reported Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as having said in a December, 2002 appearance on Israel's Channel 2, "...chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria."[20]
In February 2006, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a former Iraqi general who defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991, gave an interview to Ryan Mauro, author of Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq and founder of WorldThreats. In the interview, al-Tikriti, who was once known as the "Butcher of Basra", told Mauro:
I know Saddam's weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn't going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists. He also has wanted since he took power to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, whom he has a personal grudge against. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.[21]
Al-Tikriti's interview has been featured prominently on conservative web sites such as FrontPageMag and WorldNetDaily, but hasn't received main stream press attention. Salon magazine editor Alex Koppelman doubts both Sada's and al-Tikriti's story, arguing that Syria's decision to side with the coalition against Iraq in 1990 would have nullified any previous military deals. [22][23]
The Iraq Survey Group was told that Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards from the Syrian border and replaced them with his intelligence agents who then supervised the movement of banned materials between Syria and Iraq, according to two unnamed defense sources that spoke with The Washington Times. They reported heavy traffic in large trucks on the border before the United States invasion.[24] Earlier, in a telephone interview with The Daily Telegraph, the former head of the Iraqi Survey Group, David Kay, said: "[W]e know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."[25] Satellite imagery also picked up activity on the Iraq-Syria border before and during the invasion. James R. Clapper, who headed the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in 2003, has said U.S. intelligence tracked a large number of vehicles, mostly civilian trucks, moving from Iraq into Syria. Clapper suggested the trucks may have contained materiel related to Iraq's WMD programs.[26]
ISG formed a special working group to investigate and consider these claims. Charles Duelfer, head of inspectorate at time of publication, summarized the group's conclusion: "Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials."[27][28][29]
[edit]Jordan
On April 27, 2004, Fox News reported that "operatives" had confessed to planning an attack on "the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan using a combination of conventional and chemical weapons." Acting under the orders of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, self-professed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, officials said the plotters entered Jordan from Syria with trucks filled with 20 tons of toxic chemicals. The attackers allegedly planned to kill some 80,000 civilians.[30][31] The chemicals, reported as "Iraqi nerve gas" by Hal Lindsey's TBN International Intelligence Briefing, were said to have been part of a much larger cache buried in Syria. Georges Sada claimed these were the same weapons Saddam Hussein transported out of the country before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.[32] The defendants later denied the charges, saying they were beaten and forced to sign confessions.[33][34]
[edit]Lebanon
A road through the Bekaa Valley
American Internet newspaper World Tribune reported in August 2003 that Iraq's WMD may have been moved to Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley. According to the story, United States intelligence identified "a stream of tractor-trailer trucks" moving from Iraq through Syria to Lebanon in the weeks before invasion.[35] WorldNetDaily followed up the same story in May 2004 adding affirmatively "much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley."[36]
Former United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw also alleged that the Russians played an extensive role in transporting materials into both Syria and Lebanon, "to prevent the United States from discovering them." Shaw claimed trucks were transporting materials to Syria and returning empty. In addition, containers with warnings painted on them were moved to a Beirut hospital basement. "They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz (special forces) units out of uniform, that were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence". China is also alleged to have helped remove WMD equipment.[37][38] Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Lawrence Di Rita called Shaw's charges "absurd and without any foundation." DiRita noted that Shaw "has been directed on several occasions to produce evidence of his wide-ranging and fantastic charges and provide it to the DoD inspector general. To my knowledge, he has not done so."[39] In reply to official denials, Shaw claimed that the Bush administration had made efforts to cover up the intelligence data that he had revealed. "Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," he said, insisting the Russian "clean-up" operation "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."[40] Former Russian Foreign Intelligence director Evgeny Primakov rejected the story, telling Kommersant that "all of Shaw's sensational revelations are complete nonsense."[41]
[edit]Iran
In addition to Syria and Lebanon, former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command Lt. General Michael DeLong claimed that some weapons of mass destruction were transported to Iran. Speaking to WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg, he remarked: "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon and Iran. ... We also know that before then, they buried some of the weapons of mass destruction".[42]
John Loftus also saw information that led him to believe Iran had acquired illicit material. In a story on Dave Gaubatz, The Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips quoted Loftus as saying "Saddam had the last laugh and donated his secret stockpile to benefit Iran's nuclear weapons programme."[43] Phillips followed up her report by reproducing a letter from John Loftus calling for a congressional investigation of John Negroponte, whom he accused of concealing the information.[44] Salon magazine columnist Glenn Greenwald accused Philips of promoting a moronic and deranged conspiracy theory.[45]
[edit]Pakistan
Former head of the Indian counter-terrorism division and member of the National Security Advisory Board, B Raman, suggests A.Q. Khan may have assisted in shifting Iraq's WMD to Pakistan. Writing for the South Asia Analysis Group, he cites unnamed Pakistani sources claiming Khan agreed to aid Iraqi intelligence officials "who sought his help" in having some prohibited material airlifted from Syria to Pakistan to prevent it "falling into the hands of the UN inspectors." According to Raman, Pervez Musharraf has been working hard "to see that this is not played up in the Pakistani media."[46][47]
[edit]Indian Ocean
In 2003, the Jerusalem Post reported that Iraq's WMD might be found on cargo ships that were cruising aimlessly around the Indian Ocean.[48]
