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An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday. Furthermore, according to a report leaked to the TV channel, Syria has arrested 10 intelligence officials following the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh.

The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile has been completed, Barack Obama has said. The US President welcomed the development, but said Washington would seek to ensure Damascus fulfils all its commitments. "Today we mark an important achievement in our ongoing effort to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction by eliminating Syria's declared chemical weapons stockpile," he said. He added that the destruction, carried out aboard a US Navy ship on the Mediterranean Sea, sent "a clear message that the use of these abhorrent weapons has consequences and will not be tolerated by the international community".

A quick update on the largely forgotten half of President Obama’s shambolic Syria policy. You’ll recall, of course, the blown chemical weapons “red line” and the subsequent, humiliating Putin/Assad plan that accidentally became US policy due after John Kerry blundered into it. Kerry has since admitted that the entire proposition has collapsed, forcing the White House to publicly disagree with its own Secretary of State. Nevertheless, a loyal band of administration lackeys triumphantly cheered news of Syria’s alleged disarmament when it broke over the summer, after several missed deadlines. ‘No Drama Obama’ had done it again, they crowed, achieving...

Pentagon: Ship Leaves for Italy to Destroy Syrian Chemical Weapons By: Sam LaGrone Published: June 25, 2014 12:48 PM Updated: June 25, 2014 12:52 PM The U.S. ship that was quickly put into service to neutralize Syrian chemical weapons has departed Rota, Spain to take on the arms at an Italian port, Pentagon officials announced on Wednesday. MV Cape Ray (T-AKR-9679) will take on the chemical weapons at Gioia Tauro and neutralize the weapons taken from the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as part of a deal — negotiated by the United Nations — that prevented U.S. retaliatory strikes...

A Canadian company has purchased 550 tons of Iraqi uranium concentrate worth $90 milllion. Sakatoon-based uranium producer Cameco Corp., the world's largest producer of uranium, won the contract last year. But although the Iraqi cabinet only approved the sale on Tuesday, the last remains of the country's uranium concentrate or "yellow cake" had already been secretly transported to a Canadian port in July 2008 with US support. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP on Tuesday that since the country has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it no longer needs this material accrued by former dictator Saddam Hussein, and the...

RUSH: The Republican presidential candidates are being hit with, "Well, knowing what you know now, would you go back into Iraq?" And they've mostly accepted the premise that Iraq was a big boondoggle, a huge mistake, Bush lied, we shouldn't have done it, and they're answering on that basis. Well, on Fox News Sunday, which I didn't see, during the group panel discussion, Chris Wallace speaking with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Wallace said, "The politics of Iraq have gotten a lot of attention the last couple of weeks with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, bunch of others, and these...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

Iraq uncovers al-Qaeda 'chemical weapons plot' The authorities in Iraq say they have uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons, as well as to smuggle them to Europe and North America. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said five men had been arrested after military intelligence monitored their activities for three months. Three workshops for manufacturing the chemical agents, including sarin and mustard gas, were uncovered, he added. Remote-controlled toy planes were also seized at the workshops. Mr Askari said they were to have been used to release the chemical agents over the target from a "safe" distance of 1.5km...

It's easy for people--with the possible exception of Jeb Bush--to say that they would not have supported the invasion of Iraq knowing what we know now about WMD there. But Chris Matthews took things a foolish step further on this evening's Hardball, actually claiming that "there was no intelligence they had a weapon. Never was." Really? So Hillary, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy et al. were collective fabricators when they issued dire warnings, based on the intelligence they had seen, about Saddam's WMD? View the video here.

In this article on Capitol Hill Blue, there are the following lines:"The report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings." Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said. "He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured...

Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter, has blown a big hole in the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying to avoid blame for outing a CIA agent. Miller was a key witness in Libby’s trial, but in her new book she has repudiated her testimony. Libby was “railroaded in his conviction” by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, she said in an interview on Fox News yesterday. In her book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, she writes that Fitzgerald cajoled her into testifying in 2007 that Libby had told her Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic...

Revisiting Ansar al Islam's CBW capabilities kurdmap (Back-to-Iraq photo) With the upcoming Senate Intelligence report due shortly, perhaps the question of where and how Ansar al Islam received CBW know-how (which included ricin, botulinum and possibly cyanide) and equipment will finally be answered. Initial reports from American media outlets mentioned the findings of the Ansar al Islam camps in Northern Iraq included directions on making high grade explosives and Iraqi military grade TNT in addition to the CBW starter kit. As mentioned by both the 9-11 Commission and Senate Intelligence Committee, the group's support from Saddam Hussein's regime included various...

A former top CIA official said Thursday that despite the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is likely to be looking for weapons of mass destruction within the next five to 10 years. Paul Pillar, who until last year was in charge of intelligence assessments for the Middle East, said the CIA warned the Bush administration before the Iraq invasion in 2003 that a change of regimes would not necessarily solve any WMD problem. In a speech at the Middle East Institute here, Pillar said Iraqis live in "a dangerous neighborhood," with rival countries pursuing weapons of mass destruction. So the...

A few weeks ago, the US Central Command announced that an air raid had killed an ISIS chemical weapon expert in Mosul. The ISIS operative, Iraqi engineer Mahmoud al-Sabawi, used to work at Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons program before he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 US led invasion. The idea that ISIS terrorists have access to chemical weapons brings back images of the genocide inflicted on the Kurds by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980’s. The Halabja Massacre killed up to 5,000 and injured between 7,000 and 10,000 more. If ISIS jihadists have a stash of chemical weapons,...

The following is a translation of a newly posted Iraqi document done by an unofficial translator. The document, posted in Arabic, is from a Department Of Defense program. It is dated July 13 -- probably 2003.In it an Iraqi opposition source (a Kurd) working in Syria reports on the movement of Iraqi trucks to Syria before the start of the US invasion of Iraq. It is his understanding that the trucks contained proscribed weapons of mass destruction.EnlargeEnlargeHere is one page from the pdf file showing the original document in Arabic:Enlarge

Saddam killed his top commander as Marines stormed Baghdad SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COMSunday, May 4, 2003 LONDON — Iraqi President Saddam Hussein killed his leading military commander on charges of treason as U.S. forces captured Baghdad. The London-based A-Sharq Al Awsat daily said Saddam and his younger son, Qusay, executed Gen. Seif Eddin Al Rawi on April 8. The newspaper said Al Rawi, commander of the elite Republican Guards, was accused of treason and shot in the head and back. Al Rawi was summoned by Saddam and executed on the day U.S. marines captured the Iraqi capital. The newspaper...

The U.S. government suppressed information about chemical weapons it found in Iraq, and several servicemembers were injured by their exposure to those weapons, The New York Times is reporting. In an article published late Tuesday, the newspaper says it found 17 American servicemembers and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to mustard or nerve agents after 2003. They were reportedly given inadequate care and told not to talk about what happened. "From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam...

he Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials. The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets...

The New York Times...details U.S. forces in Iraq finding thousands of chemical weapons during the Iraq war. "From 2004 to 2011...troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule," "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads

Baghdad, As-Sabah , July 21, Page 1 The official sources at the ministry of interior and the national security advisor department have refrained commenting on the news of seizing three missiles of nuclear heads in the course of arresting Khudir al- Dori the former leader at the dissolved Baath party.Notably, Iraqi political sources on anonymity affirmed that the detaining of al- Dori by the Iraqi security departments resulted in the seize of three nuclear heads missiles .The sources indicated that Khudir al- Dori occupied top party and security posts during ex-regime. Al-Dori death announced after the collapse of the regime...