DoD Report: 50 Trucks Carried Iraqi WMD To Syria

Sweetness & Light ^ | July 28, 2006 | N/A

[Sam Hill]

The following is a translation of a newly posted Iraqi document done by an unofficial translator. The document, posted in Arabic, is from a Department Of Defense program. It is dated July 13 -- probably 2003.

In it an Iraqi opposition source (a Kurd) working in Syria reports on the movement of Iraqi trucks to Syria before the start of the US invasion of Iraq. It is his understanding that the trucks contained proscribed weapons of mass destruction.

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Here is one page from the pdf file showing the original document in Arabic:

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[ravingnutter]

We didn't miss it, I've had this on file for a long time:

On June 9th [2004], the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council about the export of Iraqi WMD, missile and nuclear components shipped out of Iraq before, during and after the invasion. As reported by MENL news service, UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the Council, "The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks," and said inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

The World Tribune reported on Perricos's briefing. "He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month... The Baghdad missile site contained a range of WMD and dual-use components, UN officials said. They included missile components, reactor vessel and fermenters ... required for the production of chemical and biological warheads. 'It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for,' Perricos's spokesman, said. 'You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter. You can also use it to breed anthrax.'"

Source

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria."

Source

"Last month Moshe Yaalon, who was Israel's top general at the time, said Iraq transported WMD to Syria six weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.

Last March, John A. Shaw, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian Spetsnaz units moved WMD to Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

"While in Iraq I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives," Mr. Shaw told NewsMax reporter Charles Smith.

Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong was deputy commander of Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In September 2004, he told WABC radio that "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon and Iran."

In January 2004, David Kay, the first head of the Iraq Survey Group which conducted the search for Saddam's WMD, told a British newspaper there was evidence unspecified materials had been moved to Syria from Iraq shortly before the war.

"We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD program," Mr. Kay told the Sunday Telegraph.

Also that month, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who defected to an undisclosed European country, told a Dutch newspaper he knew of three sites where Iraq's WMD was being kept. They were the town of al Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria; the Syrian air force base near the village of Tal Snan, and the city of Sjinsar on the border with Lebanon.

In an addendum to his final report last April, Charles Duelfer, who succeeded David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said he couldn't rule out a transfer of WMD from Iraq to Syria.

"There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation," Mr. Duelfer said."

Source

"The short answer to the question of where the WMD Saddam bought from the Russians went was that they went to Syria and Lebanon," former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw told an audience Saturday at a privately sponsored "Intelligence Summit" in Alexandria, Va. (www.intelligencesummit.org).

Source

"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Source

"Two days before the war, on March 17th, we saw through multiple intelligence channels - both human intelligence and techinical (satellite,eavesdrop) intelligence - large caravans of people and things, including some of the top 55 Iraqis, going to Syria."

Source

[Whit]

I just took a stab at converting the date, 10 Moharram in Gregorian year 2003, to the Gregorian date... it's March 10... ie 10 days prior to the March 20 invasion.

[jveritas]

This is the same document that I translated few days ago!!!

Here is the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671897/posts

[AFPhys]

This confirms the NIMA assessment from just after the war. In addition, DEBKA had announced exactly this same story a bit earlier, but I haven't located that link yet:
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Oct. 30, 2003 - This week the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency released an assessment that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were transferred to neighboring Syria in the weeks prior to the U.S.-led war against the Saddam Hussein regime. The assessment was based on satellite pictures that showed a huge number of Iraqi trucks entering Syria from Iraq just before and after the start of the war there.

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/october/10_30_1.html

Source:Middle East Newsline
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- For the first time, the U.S. intelligence community has released an assessment that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were transferred to neighboring Syria in the weeks prior to the U.S.-led war against the Saddam Hussein regime.

U.S. officials said the assessment was based on satellite images of convoys of Iraqi trucks that poured into Syria in February and March 2003. The officials said the intelligence community assessed that the trucks contained missiles and WMD components banned by the United Nations Security Council.

The U.S. intelligence assessment was discussed publicly for the first time by the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in a briefing in Washington on Tuesday. James Clapper, a retired air force general and a leading member of the U.S. intelligence community, said he linked the disappearance of Iraqi WMD with the huge number of Iraqi trucks that entered Syria before and during the U.S. military campaign to topple the Saddam regime.

"I think personally that the [Iraqi] senior leadership saw what was coming and I think they went to some extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," Clapper said. "I'll call it an educated hunch."

[slowhandluke]

Sam, I am a bit skeptical on this one. A convoy of fifty trucks just before the invasion?

It's only a guess, but:

Monitoring may have ignored the 50-truck WMD convoy, as it was busy looking at the 100-truck convoys carrying the swag from the Oil-for-Food scam to a safe place in Syria.

[Sam Hill]

"This is the same document that I translated few days ago!!!

Here is the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671897/posts"

+++++++

I thought it looked familiar. But I've been reading so much of this stuff that it's all getting blurred.

I will Freepmail you as to how this came to me. (Shows you're work is getting noticed in high places.)

Anyway, it bears repeating.

Congrats.

(I will amend the article at S&L to give you credit of course.)

[jveritas]

Thanks Sam.

[Lazamataz]

Oh my freaking gosh.

So what's the problem?

[smonk]

index for later.

[malia]

that is just a picture and should have been id'd as such.

Whatever was moved - and it was moved - was moved over a period of time and under cover.

[okie01]

Sam, I am a bit skeptical on this one. A convoy of fifty trucks just before the invasion? We had to have been monitoring that place constantly, plus our guys on the ground.

Fifty trucks is a long convoy, tough to miss on satelite images.

Recall that there were reports that reconnaisance (satellite and aerial) detected these convoys.

[AFPhys]

Yes, it is the same document. I thought I'd pinged you when I placed PREWARDOCS for indexing this, but I guess not. Anyway, here is one DEBKA link regarding these same shipments, but I know I saw some other DEBKA stuff from much earlier, but I've not run across it yet. NOTE that the WMDs were taken out of Iraq in the interim period between the stupid UN's dumb "resolutions" and the US finally taking care of business.
-------

from http://www.debka-net-weekly.com/issue.pl?username=&inumber=176#640
October 08, 2004: The Duelfer Report
Still No Closure on WMD Issue


“Adams once said: facts are stubborn.” This quote came from Senator Edward Kennedy of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee when he questioned the Iraqi Survey Group’s leader Charles Duelfer on October 6 on the massive report he had just presented to the committee. He was referring to the conclusion reached by the ISG that in the moment of time before the US-led invasion, no weapons of mass destruction stockpiles were present in Iraq. Duelfer concealed his indignation with difficulty when the senator termed “speculative” his judgment that Saddam Hussein intended restarting his WMD programs when UN sanctions were lifted. That is not speculation, the ISG leader protested, but analysis based on exhaustive work on the ground by many people, some of whom paid with their lives.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly does not propose to join the argument between Kennedy and Duelfer, or step into the political debate between Republicans and Democrat on the rights and wrongs of the Iraq War. Both claim that the new report supports their respective positions. The John Kerry camp argues that it demolishes the claims made by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of WMD in Iraq prior to the war. The Republicans pounce on Duelfer’s conclusion that Saddam Hussein was determined to develop weapons of mass destruction and was therefore a threat.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources have checked and rechecked the data published on these pages and finds it as solid – or as “stubborn” - as ever. Therefore, they reiterate that the reason the ISG found no evidence of WMD stockpiles in Iraq in 2003 was that most of Saddam’s banned materials, equipment and vehicles were shipped by convoy to Syria between January 10 and March 10, 2003.

The transfer was supervised by Saddam’s son Uday at the Iraqi end.

The former Syrian defense minister’s son Fares Tlas took charge of the convoys as they crossed the border.

As we reported at the time, Tlas directed most of the trucks to the El Jazeera desert in northern Syria for interment at secret sites in the al Jazeera-Qaratshuk region enclosed by the Iraqi-Syrian-Turkish border triangle southeast of Syrian al-Qamishli. Smaller quantities were buried somewhere in the vast area between the Syrian towns of Az Zawr and Al Qamishli. A third small batch was concealed somewhere in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley.

Our most reliable intelligence sources, some of whom took part in working sessions with Duelfer’s predecessor as ICG leader, David Kay, in Washington, Iraq, and other places, report that he was given not only the dates of the transfer, but descriptions of the vehicles in the convoy. One senior source claimed that Dr Kay knew exactly what was in the tankers that crossed from Iraq into Syria on those dates because after the war he had access to maps and coordinates marked with the hiding places, satellite photos of the convoys and information on their contents as recorded on the instruments of spy planes.

On the basis of all this information, Dr. Kay is known to have conferred with military and intelligence heads in various Middle East countries. Our sources have no information on whether Dr.Duelfer had access to the same data as Dr. Kay. All they know is that every inquiry conducted up until today stops at the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Duelfer could not say “definitively” whether Iraq had transferred WMD out of the country before the 2003 war. Kay also left the question open. At the time, he said there was no way of settling the question without cooperation from Syria.

Another question wide open is why Washington has never taken action to insert Iraqi Survey Team experts or US special forces into northern Syria to inspect the sites marked as WMD hiding places. Possible reasons are reluctance to go to war with another Arab state after Iraq, fear of heavy US casualties or even a suspicion that banned materials may have decayed too far for identification.

That question ties in with another which is far less controversial.

Since well before March 2003, Syria has been home to the Iraq Baath’s rear logistic and financial infrastructure, hosting also al Qaeda and al Qaeda bases for dispatching fighters, weapons and explosives committed to fight and blow up Americans in Iraq. Yet never was any US military or even covert action ordered on Syrian soil, but for an isolated incident when a busload of Hizballah terrorists was bombed.

The only new piece of information reaching us on this subject is that Syrian military intelligence officers in Lebanon have begun liquidating agents who operated the secret corridor of anti-US fighting men and arms into Iraq. Syrian military intelligence runs this corridor. At some time it was a two-lane channel, also carrying senior Iraqi Baath officials back and forth between Iraq and Syria.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, one of the agents given the chop most recently was Ismail Khatib, from Lebanese Majdal Anjar, an important border town under Syrian army control. He was singled out last month as one of the members of an al Qaeda Palestinian ring rounded up by the Lebanese authorities for plotting a series of bomb blasts against foreign embassies in Beirut. He was later reported to have died of a heart attack in a Beirut hospital on September 27 or 28.

His family who collected the body claimed he died of torture, sparking riots in his home town.

The information our sources have garnered on this episode are as follows.

Ismail Khatib did not belong to the al Qaeda Palestinian ring, but to a salfit sect headed by the Lebanese Sheikh Ibrahim Amema. Before the war, the sect members were deployed in Fallujah and Baghdad as the hub through which Syrian military intelligence activated its smuggling networks between Syria and Iraq. Hatim was one of the heads of the network. He recently returned home from Iraq to take up a new post as recruiter of fighting strength for the anti-American insurgency in Iraq.

His fellow townsmen in Majdal Anjar were incensed over his death, setting up roadblocks on the Beirut-Damascus highway, burning the local police station and threatening to seal the Lebanese-Syrian border. They carried placards bitterly accusing the Syrians of exploiting the town for the Iraq war and then murdering their helpers for the sake of a deal with the Americans.

It is clear to them that Syria is covering its tracks to conceal the volume of its clandestine cross-border trade with the Saddam regime, including very possibly the convoys carrying Saddam Hussein’s vanished weapons of mass destruction.

[Michael.SF.]

OK.

Then why is the Bush Admin. silent on these points?

I do believe that we are winning the WOT and that Iraq is in much better shape then is being portrayed. However, we are in grave danger of losing the war on the home front due in a large part to a lack of a presentation of the facts to the American people.

And please do not blame the media, as they slant all news the way they want it slanted. A clear, concise, summary with loads of evidence, properly presented to America cannot be kept quiet.

Sorry, but President Bush is getting beat on a presentation of the facts to us, while the Democrats are controllinbg the perception of the events surrounding this and other topics.

[Michael.SF.]

Thanks, that has been pointed out to me previously.

[AFPhys]

AH: Here we are: a DEBKA synopsis of their reports of convoy traffic moving WMDs out of Iraq while the UN dithered:
------

http://www.debka-net-weekly.com/issue.pl?username=&inumber=131#507

The heavy traffic detected by General Clapper’s satellites was reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on three different dates.

DNW 97, February 14, 2003, a little over a month before the war began, disclosed: “In the last two weeks, our military sources discovered that Iraq staged a major removal of its forbidden weapons systems, sending them overland by truck to Lebanon via Syria.”

DNW 106, April 25, 2003, 10 days after the capture of Baghdad, reported: “Though on the run, he (Saddam) retains control of sufficient stocks of unconventional weapons, intelligence, assets and money to wage war on the United States from bases and hideouts outside Iraq, where some of his WMD systems are also tucked away.”

Those systems, of course, had been hidden in Syria.

DNW 107, May 2, the day after President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq at an end, pointed to Syria as “having secretly disposed of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction” by hiding them in three places – two in the Lebanese Beqaa and one in Syria. The first site is located in a valley stretching between the Jabal Akroum Mountains and the Lebanese town of al Qabayyat and the Syrian border; the second at a point lying between the Lebanese towns of al Labway and Hirmil between the Orontes River and the Lebanese-Syrian border.

The third site is Syria’s underground military industrial facilities near Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.

[GretchenM]

It will be deinied to the end.

Right there next to the Holocaust.

[CedarDave]

Probably my biggest criticism of the administration is their failure to proclaim the high ground when they have it, as in the examples you cite. Connecting the dots with what happened to the WMDs that were there is a no brainer IMO. Yet silence. Even if the evidence is not 100 percent conclusive, it would be to their advantage to plant doubts in the mind of the public to counter the constant clamor by the press and the left there were no WMDs and Bush lied.

[SE Mom]

WMD ping

[Para-Ord.45]

" no wmds no wmds la-la -la i`m not listening "

[ol' hoghead]

According to Aboutislam.com, Muharram was from March 4 til April 2, 2003. Muharram 10 would be March 10.

[diverteach]

I'd bet my next paycheck that these are the "Surpises" that Iran and Hezbollah keep refering to.

[ol' hoghead]

make that March 14

[John Lenin]

I notice all the RAT trolls are showing up on this thread.

[mjaneangels@aolcom]

Place marker to read a little later.

[pyx]

Fifty trucks is a long convoy, tough to miss on satelite images.

The translation says the trucks totaling fifty (50) arrived in groups. There could have been 12 groups of four trucks. Tractor trailers as you show in your picture were not specified. They could have been straight trucks (5 ton) arriving in groups and again smaller groups of straight trucks would not be as noticable. Or there may have been combinations of straight trucks and tractor trailers including even covered rolloff flatbeds trailers. Various combinations and permutations are possible and the translation does not specify.

Whose to say that we don't have satellite images, even if there was one huge 50 tractor trailer long convoy ? If such satellite images did exist, they would THANKFULLY be classified so that even the New York Slimes and other LEFTIST organs couldn't leak them to their allies who want to destroy America.

[Michael.SF.]

All valid points.

Regarding your tagline, read that in context with my post #63. The Left is beating us on the War of Words on this issue and we are not doing enough to get the information out to those who need to hear it.

[Michael.SF.]

Excellent point.

That cocky POS in Iran would not make the claims he has if he did not have something under his robe.

[John Lenin]

I believe we knew all along the weapons went to Syria but timing is everything because we announce we know where they went it's up to the US to take action. tick-tock

[Michael.SF.]

Might help if Bush, Rice, Rove, Snow, anyone in the Administration would push the point.

Amen to that.

[Michael.SF.]

I believe we knew all along the weapons went to Syria but timing is everything because we announce we know where they went it's up to the US to take action. tick-tock

You make a good point. Also something to consider:

W has been taking so much heat on this MWD thing, that the next time we take action on it the proof will be 100% infallable.

He may be laying low until that 100% proof is known to all, but that is a hugely risky course of action. I would still be more comfortable if he came out and provided much more info to everyone on what we do know about the MWD's.

Of course, then the left will start whining about how he did not do enough about it.

[tutstar]

ping...

[Jackknife]

I'd bet my next paycheck that these are the "Surpises" that Iran and Hezbollah keep refering to.

My thoughts exactly.

[okie01]

Thanks, that has been pointed out to me previously.

As I discovered when I read forward.

Sorry for "piling on"...

[Michael.SF.]

no problem, I have done it as well!

[FairOpinion]

Thanks for the post.

Additional/corroborating info:

A senior Syrian journalist reports Iraq’s WMD located in three Syrian sites. (with map)

Somewhere I have also seen the sketches done by the journalist.

[FairOpinion]

And more:



http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=482


Now, our intelligence sources can disclose exclusively that the relocation of Iraq’s WMD systems took place between January 10 and March 10 and was completed just 10 days before the US-led offensive was launched against Iraq. The banned arsenal, hauled in giant tankers from Iraq to Syria and from there to the Bekaa Valley under Syrian special forces and military intelligence escort, was discharged into pits 6-8 meters across and 25-35 meters deep dug by Syrian army engineers. They were sealed and planted over with new seedlings. Nonetheless, their location is known and detectable with the right instruments. Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

[justa-hairyape]

So, HAVE they had any explanation from Russia?

Not yet. However we can probably guess at what that drunkard Putins response would be. Something like...

Do you think you are smarter then us ?

[justa-hairyape]

Our sources have learned that Syria was paid about $35 million to make Saddam Hussein’s forbidden weapons disappear.

They were worth far more then that if they had simply been added to Syria's active arsenal. Saddam sent Military Jets to Iran prior to Gulf War 1.

[Khepri]

50 trucks is a hell of a long line of trucks. It would have been pretty hard for us to miss during pre-war surveillance.

Um, we didn't miss it, neither did the Israelis...both of us saw it via satellite...Israel approached us with it, and that kinda confirmed what we saw IIRC...(Loftus)

[Khepri]

..and eradicate any evidence of its existence," he said.

Does anyone else remember the 101st (IIRC) opening fire on a line of limo headed out of Baghdad toward Syria just as we were approaching the Airport area?

Anyone have a list of links to that story?

It was about the same time MSM started screaming about the museum being emptied out...

[Khepri]

I think the U.S. knows where they went, but, unless they want to start a fight with Syria, they aren't going to go after them.

IIRC about a third of it went to the Bekaa valley in Lebanon.

Hopefully there are Israeli commando units on the ground there now searching along with our own units...

It was interesting to see Israeli soldiers in what appeared to be chem suits of some sort on FOX today....

[wildcatf4f3]

bttt

[ikez78]

Do not forget that the former head of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Agency, James Clapper told the New York Times and House of Reps that he's nearly certain WMD were moved to Syria and has the satellite photos. Getting ahold of him would be a good step

http://www.house.gov/transportation/pbed/hearing/04-06-00/clapper.html

[A.Hun]

Thanks for the ping eye, and thanks for the work jveritas!

Common sense tells us this is reasonable and that all will be revealed eventually!

[cchandler]

"Sam, I am a bit skeptical on this one. A convoy of fifty trucks just before the invasion?"

That's what I thought at first as well, but noone ever said Saddam wasn't a slick spin-meister. If he got away with the transfer of so much stock, it's only because an act of God occurred to provide him exactly the coverage he needed to justify such a remotely-observable convoy. So Saddam got the weapons out to a friendly Islamic government, and he got international credit for his humanitarian efforts in the face of American aggression.

[ChildOfThe60s]

BTTT

[justshutupandtakeit]

bump for later comment

[FlashBack]

Thanks to you all for the excellent work that your doing...I believe they had the results of a poll recently on the news (Fox) that most people DO belive that Saddam had this stuff and that result suprised me actually...maybe the "sheeple" are coming around.
If there would be some major coverage of these docs it would give "our side" a much needed boost...which is why it's not being covered I suppose.

[ravingnutter]

One reason that was given a long time ago, in relation to the Saddam/al Qaeda link that could apply:

"The administration does not want the victims of Sept. 11 interfering with its foreign policy," says Peter M. Leitner, director of the Washington Center for Peace and Justice (WCPJ). Leitner says the Bush administration may be concerned that if other victims of the Sept. 11 attacks also filed lawsuits and won civil-damage awards it would reduce Iraqi resources that the administration wants to use to rebuild the country. Leitner and others say this explains Bush's reticence at this time to report the convincing evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda that has been collected by U.S. investigators and private organizations seeking damages. "The [Bush] administration is intentionally changing the topic," claims Leitner, and sidestepping the issue that "Iraq has been in a proxy war against the U.S. for years and has used al-Qaeda in that war against the United States."

Source

[funkywbr]

Too little too late.