Posted on 12/18/2005 6:22:02 AM PST by SJackson
Former IDF Chief-of-Staff, Lt.Gen. Moshe Ya’alon, said in an interview with the New York Sun last Thursday that Iraq moved its chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started.
"He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria,” said Ya’alon. “No one went to Syria to find it.”
Ya’alon’s assertion that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were clandestinely sent to Syria on the eve of the war contradicts President George W. Bush’s statement last Wednesday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., that “much of the intelligence” on Iraq “turned out to be wrong.”
Despite his admission to what could be one of the greatest intelligence blunders of all time, Bush defended his decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
“Given Saddam's history and the lessons of September the 11th, my decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision. Saddam was a threat - and the American people and the world is better off because he is no longer in power,” said Bush.
Ya’alon, who was IDF Chief-of-Staff from July 2002 – June 2005, speculated, however, in April 2004, that Iraq transferred its weapons “to another country, such as Syria.”
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has also contended that Iraq’s WMD were transferred from Iraq to Syria before the war. In December 2002, Sharon told Israeli television Channel 2 that “chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria."
Syria has long been known to be developing its own chemical weapons of mass destruction. In March 2004, former CIA director George Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "Damascus has an active CW development and testing program that relies on foreign suppliers for key controlled chemicals suitable for producing CW."
A senior official in the Iraqi embassy, Entifadh Qanbar, generally supported Ya’alon’s claim that Iraq moved its chemical weapons to Syria, but said that his government “is basically operating in the dark” because it doesn’t control its own intelligence agency.
Not finding WMD does NOT mean that they are NOT there.
WE KNOW he had them so where are they? Someday we will find out!
I totally agree. The simple fact of the matter is that if we don't get a handle on that region of the world soon, nuclear war on some level is an inevitability. Either force reform now or face much worse consequences and many more dead Americans down the road.
ARGH!!!!
(beating my head against the keyboard)
I may be flamed, but I can think of worse people to have them. Of course they may very well end up in the hands of the terrorists.
Maybe in 2006.
Yep. I even watched Dick Cheney say that the WMD were just one selling point of the invasion. I always thought it was a mistake to sort of build the whole thing up around that point but I also understood why it was necessary for it to be done that way (media/politics etc).
The way I see it this administration was thinking longer range- for the actual long term good of the USA (and free world) rather than just making a decision that would benefit his own administration. This had to be done. Once we actually have a fighting force on the ground in the region (and we occupy 2 countries- Afghanistan as well) this would allow us to do a lot more in the region later.
While we're on the ground in Iraq it isn't very difficult to make the case for regime change in Iran; particularly when they are helping us make that case so effectively themselves at the moment. The way we're positioned in the region, we could enter Iran from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as from the sea. And it looks like we're going to have to...
Breaking news - just in...
You may be right, but I hope not. It would be better to do it through surrogates. There are now plenty in the region thanks to previous actions. Weather or not they are capable in achieving these ends at this time is the real question. The Iranian nuclear time bomb is ticking.
Like the police would say: "Just because there were no witnesses doesn't mean it did not happen."
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