[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.

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

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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.

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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.

[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,