War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq.
King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida."One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he said.
The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein's Iraq into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom.
If so, this may be the reason not much was found in the way of WMD by victorious U.S. forces in 2003.
In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets."
It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein's WMD threat.
As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.
There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.
There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada's comments came more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.
According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.
The Russian-assisted "cleanup" operation was entrusted to a combination of GRU and Spetsnaz troops and Russian military and civilian personnel in Iraq "under the command of two experienced ex-Soviet generals, Colonel-General Vladislav Achalov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev, both retired and posing as civilian commercial consultants."
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz reported on Oct. 30, 2004, that Achalov and Maltsev had been photographed receiving medals from Iraqi Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad in a Baghdad building bombed by U.S. cruise missiles during the first U.S. air raids in early March 2003. Apparently they did their job well.
An article in the fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly reports that in an appearance on Israel's Channel 2 on Dec. 23, 2002, Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, stated: "Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria." According to the article, about three weeks later, Israel's foreign minister repeated the accusation.
Syria has long had its own chemical weapons program, but the extent it may have been aided by weapons and materials transferred by Iraq before the war has only been the source of conjecture.
We may soon find out what happened to much of Saddam's WMD.
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ReplyDeleteWe KNEW that was happening and that was the very reason we waited as longcas we did before commencing hostilities. We knew they were being sent out of the country. We watched it happen. And we let it happen because we didn't want them used on our troops. NBC gear simply cannot be worn in a desert environment without killing our soldiers by heat exhaustion. So we made the calculation that Asad was sane enough to not use them on Israel, or allow them to fall into al queda's hands so we let him have them. And he was for a very long time. Then his government was pushed to the brink of collapse and he lost control of them. By who? Al queda of course.
ReplyDeleteStan... No. We were wearing all that gear for weeks, and the temperatures were not high that time of year. The only locations where these kinds of weapons might have been useful were fixed positions in Kuwait.It would have degraded operations as these were nonpersistent agents, but only slowed us down a bit. There really wasn't much in the way of military forces in southern Iraq and the march pace was pretty good. They had almost no Intel or comma. We were prepared for their use. The delay had more to do with the Brits conducting air strikes with a full moon - not what you mention in your comment.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the pillaging of the Soviet Unions nuclear cache after the collapse in the late 1980's.
ReplyDeleteThe Comrade media will NEVER acknowledge WMD's smuggled out of Iraq into Syria.
Again, "The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein's Iraq into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom." only makes the Iraq war look even more stupider and ill-advised than it was.
ReplyDeleteThat it is if "may in large part" is to considered "DEFINITELY IS" and so proven instead of a simple FOX News style allegation of 9/11 was an inside job.
Oh wait, "The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq."
Yeah, we now believe the No. 2 general in Saddam's air force.
LOL. Rightwingnuts are so hilarious! Last week, Obama had overstepped, then this week, Putin is King, next week, Obama caused Katrina.