Did Saddam’s WMD Go to Syria? Part III

Flopping Aces ^ | 06-20-07 | Scott Malensek

[Starman417]

The 1990-2003 War Against Saddam has millions of untold stories. Perhaps one of the most important happened at the onset of the invasion. On the evening of March 22 there are several reports that Russians were witness to an American airborne assault near the Syrian / Jordanian  / Iraq border, on or near Highway 11, and in the vicinity of Akashat. Allegedly American airborne troops and/or Special Forces were trying to seize WMD. They were detected by Iraqi forces,  surrounded, and as many as 30 were killed or captured. Forces from Jordan were sent to provide air support and rescue for the survivors.

There are no reports of this incident in the mainstream media, but Russian intelligence reports that were published on the internet during the invasion were generally close to the mark in accuracy (albeit embellished with a distinct political slant), and the Department of Defense has said affirmed that the reports do seem credible and accurate-particularly the ones that reference radio intercepts. This report of the border incident stems from such radio intercepts. It’s also echoed in Yossef Bodansky’s book, The Secret History of the Iraq War, but he cites several Russian eyewitnesses as well.

That the casualties are not listed in the DoD’s casualty list is not unusual since the words “Ranger” and “Green Beret” are missing from that list entirely. It seems Special Forces casualties are not generally reported in the same manner as conventional forces. If true, the presence of American forces captured and taken into Syria perhaps might be one of the reasons why more pressure hasn’t been exerted on the Assad Regime. In any event, on March 24th President Bush called Russian President Vladamir Putin and there can be no doubt that the issue of Russian support for Saddam’s regime was discussed. That the phone call (widely reported by the press at the time) came immediately in the wake of the border incident is interesting and poignant.

On March 29 and 30, Saddam contacted Belarus. The former Soviet Republic had been one of many that offered Saddam exile in the days just prior to the war. Instead of accepting the offer, Saddam had a Belarusian IL-76 transport plane flown to Baghdad, allegedly loaded with “sensitive cargo” and immediately flown back to Belarus. In December, Yevgeny Primakov’s plane had been reloaded with “sensitive cargo” (ie cargo the Americans would want-like WMD, WMD equipment, documents, and people), and flown to Belarus. All flights in and out of Saddam International were monitored closely by the USAF, British Intelligence, and a list of other foreign intelligence services.

Many of the Russian-made weapons procured through Syria’s front companies-like SES International-had come from Belarus. After the fall of Saddam’s regime, it was found that many of the senior leaders who had fled went to Syria and Belarus (sometimes in that order). If one asks, “What happened to all that WMD?” Then a finger can be pointed towards the former Soviet Republic at the very least for enabling the former leaders of Saddam’s regime to escape and orchestrate an insurgency, clearly for removal of “sensitive items” from Saddam’s regime, and very likely for accepting Saddam’s WMD, WMD equipment, documents, and people.

On April 5th, CENTCOM reported spotting a large column of Iraqi vehicles, and braced for a possible counterattack. Rather than race south to certain defeat and death, the column slipped into Syria. Russian intelligence reports reiterate this event as do Lebanese sources. Mainstream media reports only confirm the convoy’s sighting. Allegedly the convoy included Russian-made mobile rocket launchers some with chemical weapons.

The exodus from Iraq to Syria by Saddam’s allies and the highest ranking members of Saddam’s regime didn’t end on April 9th, but it was fully brought to the attention of the world when American Special Forces intercepted a Russian convoy headed into Syria. The Russians said that the convoy was on a diplomatic mission following a convoy that carried Primakov himself. To this day no one knows for sure. Some reports claim that Primakov’s convoy carried Russian WMD people, documents, and equipment that could not be left to fall into the hands of the Coalition. The contents of the convoy that American commandos attacked remain classified, but former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology and security, John A Shaw, reports that American intelligence has documents confirming that Saddam’s Regime paid Russia to provide security forces for Iraq’s Russian-made arms and paid Russia to conduct counterintelligence activities that would prevent the Coalition from discovering the illegal arms supply line from Russia through Syria. “An Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003.” Other intelligence officials confirm the possession of these documents and more. “The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said.”

One wonders how differently the war in Iraq would look if American commandos had been able to seize elusive WMD and present it to the world? As more and more captured documents are being released every day, why not present these documents as well? That answer will come later.

Part one here
Part two here

[TBP]

Why do you think that the liberal left was so insistent that Israel not go into Syria during the Lebanon war last year? One reason, IMO< is becaue thy know that unlike american politicians, the Israelis would not be afraid to find the WMDs that were moved there and would not be afraid to say so publicly.

then their lies would be exposed again.

[agincourt1415]

bump

[george76]

The exodus from Iraq to Syria by Saddam’s allies and the highest ranking members of Saddam’s regime didn’t end on April 9th, but it was fully brought to the attention of the world when American Special Forces intercepted a Russian convoy headed into Syria.

The Russians said that the convoy was on a diplomatic mission following a convoy that carried Primakov himself.

[Mo1]

As more and more captured documents are being released every day, why not present these documents as well? That answer will come later.

The question is ... Why isn't the media reporting more on these documents

Like the UN oil for food scandal .. they drop that story like a hot potato

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Plausible deniability at the best.

[Sparhawk]

I seem to remember the UN running interference for about 6 months or so, just before the coalition went in. My memory is not what it used to be, but thats the way I remember it.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

After Bush’s insipid and idiotic comment about “looking into Putin’s soul”, we were expected to whimper and say “yes master”.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[SamuraiScot]

One wonders how differently the war in Iraq would look if American commandos had been able to seize elusive WMD and present it to the world?

I'd guess not at all. We're talking about people who ignored the oil-for-food scandal. Euros and American liberals are like the American Communists who heard from Communist friends about the terrible conditions in Stalin's Russia—and refused to believe them. They can look past anything, because the weapons aren't the point; the dashed vision of Clinton's Camelot is the point. And hating America for its own sake.

On the "Where the heck are they?" question, I find it hard to believe that no hint of WMDs has bubbled out of Syria or turned up in any al Qaeda operation since then, even as Saddam was tried and executed. So far, the explanation that holds the most water for me is that Saddam's scientists told him they had almost-working WMDs, but they were lying. Considering his record of shredding scientists, they would have been too terrified to tell him the truth.

[Thunder90]

Many of Saddam’s former regieme members moved to Russia, of all places.

[Eagles6]

save

[BreezyDog]

ping

[Candor7]

Of course the WMDs went to Syria!....along with Saddam's fruits of oil for food trade scandal, including Russian, German and French weaponry. Not all of the French weaponry made it out. There were literally dozens of Frances latest generation of Surface to Air missles photographed and published by Newsweek magazine at Bagdad International as the US MArines took control of it.

The Russians, French and Germans were seeking Oil Options from Sadaam and were kneck deep in the Oil for Food Scandal. The WMDs and other weapons were Oil for Food gravy demanded by Sadaam. Why do you think President Bush invaded WHEN he did? He had all the intelligence on Russian, German, and France's activities, and knew that if he waited longer to act, then Iraq would have been a bastion Bristling with Euro-weaponry.

Why were the French, Russian and German governments so bent on wooing Sadaam? They wanted to diminish the US presence in the ME to the point that the Euro would supplant the US dollar as the world accepted currency for the International Oil trade. They failed, thanks to GW Bush.And our economy booms, but for how much longer thanks to the liberal socialist moonbat Democrats who are still in Utopian denial?

It will be years before this truth comes out as intelligence documents are released decades from now. They will show that the Oil for Food scandal, and the complicity of the UN's Khofi Annan CAUSED the conditions which required US intervention in Iraq.

WMDs went to Syria? You bet they did. President Bush caught the Europeans with their pants down, and Putin is still smarting over it.

Many of the conventional weapons from the Europeans were left behing while the WMDs were hustled out to Syria.

*************************************************

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/10/22/154815.shtml

****************************************************

Photos Prove Iraq Violated U.N. Weapons Ban

Charles R. Smith

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2003

French Weapons Dated 2001

Below: French Roland Missile in Iraq, Vintage 2001 French Arsenal

Below: French Bomb Ordnance In Iraq, 2001 French Arsenal NewsMax has obtained exclusive photographs proving that Iraq violated a U.N. Security Council ban on importing weapons. The photographs show a wide variety of imported weapons with production dates as recent as 2001.

A U.S. military inspection team that visited an Iraqi air force munitions site in late September 2003 took the photographs. The site, located in the Suni triangle near Baghdad, has at least 13 concrete bunkers filled with missiles, bombs and bomb-fusing devices.

U.S. military teams uncovered several examples of U.N. violations, including a number of French bomb fuses with a production date of "2001-Sep-5."

The French-made aerial bomb fuses had documentation noting that the devices were produced in 2001. The French bomb fuses were stored in a box stating the manufacture date was 1985 in an apparent effort to mislead U.N. and U.S. inspectors.

Cluster Bombs

Another series of photos shows that U.S. inspection teams discovered a cache of South African CB470 cluster bombs. According to the declaration made in November 2002 by Saddam Hussein, Iraq had no such weapons.

Saddam denied that he had cluster bombs but U.S. State Department photos prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom showed that Iraqi Air Force engineers were working on modifying conventional cluster bombs into chemical weapons.

Cluster bombs carry a large number of "bomblets" or "sub-munitions," small, softball-sized grenades that separate from the main bomb unit. The falling bomblets then shower a large area with explosions.

Cluster bomb technology can be adapted to chemical or biological warfare by replacing the conventional explosive submunitions with biotoxin-armed bomblets.

Russian Bombs

Another example was a large quantity of KMG-U cluster bomb dispensers developed in Russia by the Spetztekhnika Vympel NPO in Moscow and manufactured by Bazalt State Research and Production Enterprise.

The Iraqi KMG-U dispensers were armed with the PTAB2.5 anti-tank bomblets and AO2.5 bomblets. According to the Russian manufacturer, the KMG-U dispenser and submunitions were not available for export until 1993. However, there are no reported export sales.

The U.S. teams also found fully active Russian-made AA-8 air-to-air missiles, French-made Durandal anti-runway rocket bombs, Russian anti-personnel cluster bomblets and huge quantities of unguided rockets. Many of the munitions were piled into large heaps or simply scattered over the open countryside.

The condition of the find illustrates the huge task faced by U.S. forces as they try to disarm Iraq. Saddam loyalists could easily obtain and use the munitions found lying in the open desert against American forces.

Moreover, the discrepancies between documentation, box markings and actual items found show that an intentional effort was made by Iraqi troops to mislead U.N. inspection teams. In some cases false shipping documents written in English were discovered with the weapons.

In addition, the effort to find chemical or biological weapons is being hampered by the vast quantity of conventional munitions stored in dangerous conditions. The Iraqi army was well-known for storing chemical weapons with its conventional explosives.

******************************************************

You can get a complete history of the linked news articles on the European weapons trade contrary to UN sanctions ( bogus sanctions ) from this page:

http://www.softwar.net/iraq.html

The Russians, French and Germans wanted Sadaam dead more than anyone. They were afraid he would sing. Too bad he did not. Then we would know the full WMD story from the lips of one they damned.

[Atlantic Friend]

Well, the old Roland missile story that was debunked on this very site in 2003. The missile whose picture is on this article certainly does not look like a Roland, BTW. Looks more like an air-to-ground missile, and not a French one to boot.

As for Roland missiles, they are hardly “latest generation” : IIRC, their production stopped in the late 1980s - to make it short, 20 years ago. When the Polish troops found them, they acknowledged they confused the production date and the “best before” date. The press officer who had released the first communiqué got a slap on his hand for the pointless diplomatic row, AFAIK.

Now, the WMD issue. I personally think the WMD is a dead horse, which won’t be flogged into life. And so is the endless droning by the anti-war crowd about the supposed insincerity of the war rationales.

In 2003, Saddam knew his regime was going down. If he had WMDs, why not use them ? Why send them to rival Syria - while he,at the same time, would just stay hidden like a cockroach in some Iraqi hole ? That doesn’t make much sense - if he wanted to use the WMD as a bargaining chip with Syria, he would have secured a safe place for himself, not live like a beggar like that.

The other thing is, a WMD program just has to involve literally thousands of people who either know what they’re doing or can at least give credible evidence. You need scientists and technicians, and army specialists. You need a lot more people to build the labs, mobile or not, to certain specifications. I personally find it significant that after 4 years none of these people were rounded up, put up before a bank of cameras, so the Coalition and WH spokespersons could tell the whole world “See ? We were right all along, and you were dead, dead wrong”.

As for the old “Oil-for-Food” meant “Money-for-no-invasion” theory, it’s all nice and dandy, except that, well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense once you think about it. Every person in the world who opened a paper in 2003 knew that Iraq was going to be invaded by a US-led army. Every government in the world knew the Baathist regime was already dead as a dodo, and hold no illusion as how fast it would crumble.

So why seal deals, potentially damaging and damning ones to boot, with a dead regime ? The “Oil-for-Peace” theory goes, France and Germany did it for oil, because oil means money.

But wait, to secure rights over exploitation of Iraqi oil, France and Germany had but one thing to do, and that was to jump on the invasion bandwagon. A few weeks later, there would have been French and German troops rolling in Baghdad, and both nations would have found themselves sitting at the table of the victors to talk about the spoils of war.

The way I see it (which you’re free to sneer at or not) is that setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion was a bit like sending an OED team to detonate a time bomb.

Consider Iraq in 2003. The Baathist regime had been considerably weakened after GW1, but still tried to enforce absolute rule over the country. Saddam was getting older, and his rule was bound to grow weaker. In a dictatorship like Iraq, the repressed aspirations and ambitions at every level, be that political, social, religious or ethnic, were bound to make the regime explode and the country erupt into flames. One day, there would be an Iraqi civil war, fueled by its neighbors. One day, the Kurds would decide to declare de facto independence, and Turkey would be drawn into invading this Kurdistan. One day, Iraq would be very weak when Syria and Iran would be much, much stronger. One day, the Baathist regime would collapse and send shockwaves that would be felt all over the world. The time bomb was very much ticking.

So the choices were, IMHO of course, whether to let things run their course and risk to have this device explode at the worst possible time, or to decide where and when the explosion will occur. It was a preemptive war in the sense it preempted Saddam’s eventual demise and injected American power in Iraq in the hope of trying to change the geopolitical situation.

In this respect, I think OIF has been largely successful. Of course, it’s been a costly success, in terms of lives, matériel, and money. And of course, the geopolitical forces that were at play in Iraq still have a lot of momentum. The antiwar crowd should realize that these forces are far from being dammed, and that as soon as the US forces leave, they will resume their deadly course.

[JB in Whitefish]

Thank you for the behind-the-scenes look at international intrigue involving Bio-Chemical Weapons potentially in the hands of Islamofascists worldwide. However, anyone claiming to have the inside dope on “all” such shenanigans is a fool and a dangerous one at that.

I have reason to believe that not only “known” stockpiles are being actively traded and transported, but that ongoing “illegal” research and development is going on in a number of locations, including right here at home. It’s worth pondering how these things came into being in the first place, who wants them, and why.

If you would like some concrete information on how the U.S. came to be one of the major manufacturers of such items, go here:

http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14556

If you don’t believe what is posted there, then go here:

http://www1.va.gov/SHAD/

[Freeport]

Since none of the three articles provide sources, I can treat this series of articles with no more credibility than any other conspiracy theory floating around out there... i.e. ZERO.

As much as I’d like it to be so, bring me the sources, the evidence, the RF communications intercepts...

Until then, unfortunately, this is all hot air.

Sorry, but I don’t care if it’s 9/11 nut jobs that know zero about physics, optics, and materials science, or liberal flamers who deride some very smart people about foreign policy, or right wing curmudgeons who believe any idea not put forward by them is an automatic knee jerk “Heck no!”....

Show me the money.

[M. Espinola]

I always felt while Saddam was on trail it was paramount securing the details of precisely how Saddam transfered his 'WMDs' to Syria (with Moscow's assistance) - and that was not done. It's a very valid question, why was Saddam not repeatedly questioned publicly, on all the locations of his dictatorship's WMD asked until a full response was issued.

The liberal media continues pushing the vicious lie there were never any 'WMD' (the term sounds like 'nuclear weapons'). The media is also cognizant of that false effect on the public, yet continue the 'big lie'.

Syria & Hezballah could attempt using some of Saddam's 'WMD' against northern Israel in any future full scale attack on Israel, from both Syria & southern Lebanon.

I Found Saddam's WMD Bunkers / Israel Hasbara Committee,

[Candor7]

Interesting Freeper Page you have:

Quote: All right, where to begin ? I'm a 34 year-old Frenchman - and yep, French as a frigging frog. I used to come to FR and enjoy the debates, and so I decided to be part of it instead of a mere lurker. I chose FR because I'm politically conservative and heavily interested in world politics (and a bit of a history buff, as you could put it), and I look forward debating with like-minded Americans. As for the Franco-American flame war going on, I can only say this : I love my country as you love yours, and such love compels me to be grateful for the people that liberated France. And so (if you pardon the pun), thank you all for you made us a free Republic,too. Unquote ******************************** That photo may not be a Roland, but Newsweek published photos of the Rolands located AT Baghdad International Airport, as it was being occupoied by US Marines. Of course, why Newsweek must have made a mistake...Oooops! And of course, France said they were black market, but Ooops Again, they were proven to be latest generation Rolands....Ooops! You have a very large OOOOOOPS! factor going there!

France was playing hard with Russia and Germany to diminish US influence in the ME. They lost that gamble, tucked their tails between their legs and headed for Syria with the very WMDs that required them to leave conventional weapons behind, such as the Roland.

Then all three nations launched a propaganda war decrying US involvement in Iraq, siding with Islamofascism. Now the same players are basically hyping their wares in Iran, only the nuclear stakes make the game much higher, and China is in aid. Nuclear whore live very short lives, as will again be the case in Iran for any European nation who deems to play both sides of the fence. There is only one side of the fence, a simple truth which France seems to have missed in its machinations. And France needs to get on that right side, or take what it has coming: a diminished capacity in world affairs and world trade.I long for the France represented by LaFayette, is it truly dead?

Perhaps now, with a new conservative leader in France, the modern Vichy French politicians who perpetrated the oil for food scandal( food=WMDs)will recede into their anti-semitic holes in the ground where they belong.

[TBP]

We hvae satellite intelligence that picked up Russian trucks carrying teh WMDs (under cover) from teh WMD plants in Iraq to Syria (as that conspiratorialist nutjob Bill Gertz reported) and we have two Iraqi generals who have said that the WMDs were sent to Syria.

I’m pretty sure that the liberal leadership knows this and that is why they were so adamant that Israel not go into Syria last summer. Israel might well have found the WMDs and when tehy did, they’d say something about it and another liberal lie would be exposed.

In which case...one down and billions to go. The entire foundation lf liberalism is built on lies.