| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syria's Chemical Weapons Came From Saddam's Iraq |
| 2012-07-20 |
| 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. |
| Posted by:Beavis |
| #7 I still feel that remediation of Saddam's WMD stocks is why a good number of Russian vessels and personnel have arrived recently in Syria. Hopefully they brought their own cargo handling equipment... |
| Posted by: Pappy 2012-07-20 18:57 |
| #6 The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) LIED! The Marsh Arabs LIVE! Those 1000 acre remote, desert facilities were tomatoe blight research centers! LIED I tell you, lied! The evil Bushitler started the war.... FOR NO REASON!!! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-07-20 17:23 |
| #5 they could find barrels of chemical weapons with iraq written on them in syria, and the msm would never report it. |
| Posted by: chris 2012-07-20 17:22 |
| #4 I still feel that remediation of Saddam's WMD stocks is why a good number of Russian vessels and personnel have arrived recently in Syria. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2012-07-20 16:54 |
| #3 Just like Debka kept reporting. Indeed, Slineter Big Foot3417. And we here at Rantburg have been discussing it since the 2003 invasion of Iraq was preceded by long caravans of tractor-trailer trucks made their way from Baghdad and other points to, eventually, the Bekaa Valley. It wasn't a secret to anyone who chose to see and remember. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2012-07-20 16:34 |
| #2 Just like Debka kept reporting. |
| Posted by: Slineter Big Foot3417 2012-07-20 15:09 |
| #1 look for containers marked 'Baby Food' or 'Medicine for Emergency' |
| Posted by: lord garth 2012-07-20 14:25 |