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Syria had their own chemical weapons program, in addition to whatever they got from Saddam. That being said, there were massive convoys between Iraq and Syria for months before the 2nd Gulf war, while France delayed us from action. There were undoubtedly large amounts of chemical weapons that were moved form Iraq to Syria, during that time.

The frustrating thing is that MSM meme was there were no WMD in Iraq and the Bush administration was totally passive in accepting that meme despite all evidence to the contrary. Not only did they never make the case for the transfer in the months leading up to the war, but they also just accepted the media judgement that the weapons they did find never met the ‘threshold’. There were several finds of caches of chemical weapons but they were always characterized as too small or too old to matter. There were numerous finds of missile technology that Iraq was prohibited from having after the 1st Gulf war, but the media reaction was always ‘well that just missile technology, its not WMD’. There were even some biological weapons labs that were found, but the reaction was ‘well maybe they were working on civilian medical projects’.

GWB made many mistakes, but maybe his greatest mistake that we are still living with is he spent his second term totally passive in terms of letting the media paint him and his policies (and by extensive all conservatives) as inept and wrong. To a large extent, that four year silence on the part of GWB gave us the disastrous electoral outcome of 2008.

I have an operative theory that whatever one hears in the open media is what the powers that be want us to hear, (and by extension, the enemy, who also gets his news from the same sources). I wonder if the lack of evidence of wmd’s as presented by our government was not intentional, starting with the fact that if we admitted we found them,WE would be responsible for stewardship of the munitions. They would have become a major target of the jihadis, the wmd’s would have to have been guarded 24/7 and then comes the problem of disposal.

When we wanted to dispose of the chemical weapons at Dugway, we had to build a special incineration facility that cost some hundred million dollars. If we didn't do the same in Iraq, I guarantee that before all sorts of shysters would be coming out of the woodwork and suing the U.S. in international courts every time somebody's goat got sick.

On the other hand, given that Syria already had an extensive wmd stockpile under heavy military security, I can see some back channel communications to Sadam saying that we'll let you you move your munitions to Syria or you can keep them in your inventory and if you attempt to use them on our troops prepare for us to use tactical nukes back on you.

Just some speculation on my part.