Posted on 01/26/2006 11:56:46 AM PST by French_for_Bush
Edited on 01/26/2006 12:02:58 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Iraq Official: Saddam Moved WMD to Syria
The former number two official in Saddam Hussein's Iraqi air force claims the former Iraqi dictator moved weapons of mass destruction from Iraq to Syria in the months preceding the current Iraq war.
Georges Sada revealed the charges in an interview Wednesday with the New York Sun. They are detailed in his new book, "Saddam’s Secrets.”
"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Sada told the Sun. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians.”
The former Iraqi general said Special Republican Guard brigades loaded WMDs onto two converted Iraqi Airways planes.
He said he was told of the operation by two pilots that helped transport the materials. Sada says 56 flights were made, and were accompanied by a ground convoy of trucks carrying similar materials.
The Sun reports that the flights attracted scant international attention because they occurred at the same time that Iraq was sending relief to Syria for a dam collapse.
Sada’s claims echoed those made by Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s top general in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yaalon told the Sun in December that Saddam had "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”
According to the Middle East Quarterly, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon issued a similar warning in a Dec. 23, 2002 television appearance on Israel’s Channel 2.
"Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria,” Sharon said.
Together, their claims challenge the conventional wisdom in the United States and Europe that pre-war intelligence estimates were incorrect in suggesting the mass-murdering Iraqi dictator either possessed or was close to possessing WMDs.
Even President Bush has conceded the point, telling Americans in a televised address in December, "It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.”
Recent reports by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard have similarly challenged the conventional wisdom on Saddam’s relationships with al-Qaida.
Hayes is calling for the release of approximately 2 million unclassified documents recovered in Iraq from the Hussein regime. He claims the documents could prove Saddam maintained significant contacts with al-Qaida.
Sada’s and Yaalon’s claims will be even more difficult, if not impossible, to prove, but several U.S. Senators will try to get to the bottom of the claims. Sada is scheduled to meet with Senators Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., next week. Both are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The weapons are useless without the delivery systems. The bioweapons are useless in any case.
Syria has plenty of short range ballistic missiles that could carry chem warheads. Hezbollah probably has them right now in So. Lebanon poised to strike Israel.
Maybe so, but Israel can overfly Syrian airspace at will. Syria would want to launch everything right away; they will have nothing to launch after the first few hours.
Correct, Syria/Hezbollah would have to launch their entire load simultaneously for such an attack to be effective. .....but that's no comfort to Israelis, obviously.
They can't prepare for a surprise attack without attracting attention, and that attention would probably get there before they can fire their broadsides.
So what were these WMD's, chemical? Nuclear, assembled nuclear bombs? Enriched Uranium?
If the preparations were done relatively quickly Israeli intel would indeed take note and the IDF/IAF would then act appropriately/pre-emptively. But if the preparations were done over a long period of time - Saddam's WMDs have been missing for three years now - it could be done without attracting attention.
Big surprise!
Brit Hume's about to report on the Saddam/WMD story in his "Grapevine" segment after the break....
What good is it? Bush has already said the weren't any WMD in Iraq.
Is this is a "slam dunk"?
;o)
Can't be too many times. I had not seen it before.
If this is true.. this is what Isreal told us before we went to war - and maybe is why Iran is so bold. I am sure it wouldnt take much to move those stock piles over to Iran.
No surprise. If only we can *prove* it. Otherwise this amounts to hot air. You can't even get the media to talk about things actually found like yellow cake and illegal chemical weapons left from the Iran/Iraq war.
I would imagine the Israelis, for whom the weapons are also a threat in the hands of the Syrians, know pretty much where they are. They've always had pretty good HUMINT capabilities in the region.
If it's JL, it's always too good to be true.
"Kind of like tipping off a drug dealer that a raid is coming so they can flush the evidence down the toilet."
Thanks alot Rockefeller.
"Syria would want to launch everything right away; they will have nothing to launch after the first few hours."
That would be a doomsday scenario for the Syrians. The use of chem/bio weapons against Israelis would mean Damascus would be no more.
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