Thanks Bray. It is possible that the WMD were moved to Syria but according to my reading of the documents, my analysis, and knowing the paranoid nature of Saddam, I doubt that this happened.
So really what your saying in a verbage sense is that if GW was to talk about these precursers PravdABDNC would claim they were Fertilizer or Pesticides. He would be in a no win situation, even though he knows they were about to become WMD.
Pray for W and Our Troops
It’s possible that both things happened.
Some materials as well gold and currency (1 heavy truck with about $1 billion in gold and currency was intercepted early in the Iraqi Freedom on the way to Syria) may have been smuggled to Syria - possibly by Russian Spetsnaz, before moving most of it back to Russia - Syria is not the most reliable of safekeepers - some of it may have been stolen there or left as payment for “right of way” service as I remember that Jordan stopped a plot of chemical attack by some Syrians a couple of years ago - may have been from the same stock.
Some may have been moved to the region where Saddam thought he could get access to it later, since he was planning on continuing the “war”.
Some chemicals that can’t be easily deployed, presented a program disclosure problem and may have been dumped to Tigris and Euphrates - I remember some reports of heavy concentrations of cyanide and other WMD or “dual-use” (aren’t they all?) chemicals found there.
Bush has long stopped trying to justify WMD part (as it’s only being mocked and would be a distraction for him now) and moved on to the things he needs to do in WOT. Also, silence may serve several purposes :
1. Do not disclose that there are WMDs in the area, lest cause an incidental “treasure” hunt.
2. Those who were sitting on the fence here at home about WMDs (like Hillary) may feel safer to criticize it now and would be more open to being proven wrong later, possibly near election... BTW she was pretty cagey and shrewd about that and limited herself to the “conduct” of the war.
3. Possibly getting information and/or cooperation from interested sources on more important matters or not disclosing methods and operations for now demands silence.
4. Anything that isn’t provable, i.e. in your hands, with embedded reporters right there and then, would be dismissed by Dems and al-media, so why bother for now?
Hi Joseph -
I believe that some WMDs were moved to Syria during the time that Blair and President Bush spent all that time and months preparing to go speak to the UN.
I can’t recall where I read an article in those preceding months before the war - (I believe it was) something about our troops seeing some movements of large trucks moving somethings toward the Syryian border by Saddams’s army in late summer or early fall -
Before - we actually went to war in the spring.
Do you recall reading anything like that either in the news or in your translations?