[John H K]

Intelligence sources said then and still say now that some of the heaviest fighting by special forces occurred around Al Qaim, on the Syrian border. The Iraqis were desperate to keep that highway open to continue the access to Syria for those convoys which were carrying senior Iraqi officials, carloads of cash, and the people and materials key to Saddam's WMDs.

Despite all we were told about senior regime officials fleeing to Syria, almost the entire deck of cards has been apprehended, all of them in Iraq.

[Daphne]

Everyone knows that all the Dems who say there weren't WMDs are only saying that to oppose Bush. if the president were a Dem, they would be promoting that war more than anyone else. It's all political.

Shows how much they care about our security.

[Dog Gone]

The whole premise of this article seems incredibly naive. There's no way that a sneak attack with anything other than ballistic missiles can ever be conducted today.

In case this author can't recall, we weren't even able to unload the 4th ID until the war was basically over.

It takes time to assemble an invasion force, and the element of surprise in doing so is simply not possible in the 21st century. We weren't fritting away valuable time at the UN. We were getting the troops in place during that entire period.

[neverdem]

I believe we got a couple in the last month. I found this via Google:

All but 13 of Iraqi `deck of cards' rounded up


AP , BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Sunday, Dec 28, 2003,Page 7
Thirteen fugitives remain from the original "deck of cards" of top Saddam Hussein regime members, but US forces are increasingly focusing on new lists of individuals thought to be taking a more active role in the anti-US insurgency, military intelligence sources say.

To create these lists, US military units and their coalition allies have developed computer databases, which they have updated with information on every bomb blast, firefight, suspect detained and tip provided by a local resident.

The deck of cards, prepared by US intelligence before the March invasion, contains images of the 55 figures that the US military was particularly interested in capturing, beginning with Saddam himself as the ace of spades.

The US troops who entered Iraq also carried a so-called black list of hundreds of second-tier leaders targeted for arrest as well as an even larger gray list, which contains "persons of interest" -- Iraqis wanted for questioning. Those lists have not been updated and have grown less relevant to the current insurgency, a senior US military official said on condition of anonymity.

In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad, the Army's 4th Infantry Division has found its own informants and databases more useful than the CIA's lists of former regime loyalists, said the division's Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Russell.

The old CIA lists "were the starting point" for rounding up the top officials in Saddam's Baath Party, especially those believed to have committed or ordered atrocities or who had knowledge of unconventional weapons, said Lieutenant-Colonel Ken Devan, the top intelligence officer of the Army's 1st Armored Division, which controls Baghdad.

Since many of those fugitives have already been captured, their interrogations have provided fodder for further fugitive lists and arrests, Devan said.

"It's kind of like pulling on a string. You just keep on pulling and you don't really know what's on the other end," Devan said.
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[LS]

As to WMDs, though there are some realities:

Japan (today, posted here on FR) said Iraq had WMDs just before the war;

An Iraqi official (today, posted here on FR) said Iraq had WMDs just before the war;

the intel services of Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, and Germany in addition to the CIA, all said Saddam had WMDs just before the war;

the toxin levels in the Tigris have NEVER been explained. That story was dumped like a hot potato. The gas trucks were never sufficiently explained.

Now, I could believe the CIA was wrong---they were at some points in the Cold War. But I think it ridiculous to think that ALL THESE NATIONS, with their independent methods of verification (many not nearly so "nice" as the CIA's) all come to the same conclusion . . . and that all of them are wrong. That does not compute.

[HankReardon]

December 13, 2003 American armed forces found a WMD that was responsible for deaths of well over 1,000,000 Iraqi and Iranians. What a great success!

[elli1]

Despite all we were told about senior regime officials fleeing to Syria, almost the entire deck of cards has been apprehended, all of them in Iraq.

True, but you have to remember that the deck was put together by us, sitting out here on the outside. And some of the characters that went into the deck, we didn't even have photos of. Saddam was known for having a high turnover in management, so it was doubly difficult to know who was in charge of what & for how long. It wasn't like Saddam was running an open government & we had good info on all of the senior-type characters. Remember all the confusion over the various layers of Iraqi defense forces & who was in charge. Plus, you have to consider that once the deck was ''published'', those guys in the deck were probably just too hot to handle politically...think in the context of Powell's visit to Syria. Then, you have to remember that a good number of high-level Nazis made it out of Germany & into South America so I don't doubt that a significant number of other Baathists & assistant level senior Iraqis hightailed it out of Iraq.

[AmericanVictory]

It would have only taken a relatively few trucks.