Why has this taken so long? Why didn’t the CIA report this before?
The fact that it's packed full of civil service protected Carterites and Cliontonistas just might have something to do with that.
Likely because to do so would have been to endanger operatives and/or compromise strategy. A sane America would have accepted the pre-war intelligence that there were trucks laden with who-knows-what headed to Syria, but the braying by Old Hippie America and its acolytes was so loud, and so constant, as to obfuscate anything but their wailing, amplified by the complicit mainstream media.
Seldom, if ever, in wartime has an Administration had to deal with such a traitorous segement of society, such a traitorous press and a such a traitorous Congress baying, "The President's a liar! There are no weapons! Waaaaaaah!"
Under the cold light of history, it may well be remembered that America's resolve in the 21st Century War on Terror was weakened to allow nothing more than a nostalgia trip for a bunch of long-in-the-tooth 20th Century hippies looking for one last "revolution" before they finally kicked the bucket.
As it was in the '60s and '70s, so it is today: These people are idiots, and if the pro-socialist press wasn't enabling them, they would have long ago been laughed out of existence.
Not thinking the 'worst' of them, the issue could be they had constant surveillance of where they were and they didn't want to tip off whomever had them to panic and hide them. They may have made the decision that as long as they were able to track them, they were not a threat. This may be why that 20 tons of nerve gas was so quickly captured several years ago.. they never did say where that originated from.
Surely you jest...yeah, I know, don't call you Surely...given the Dem activists in that organization. These folks said it a long time ago:
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.'"
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."
"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."
"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).
"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."
"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."
See also: What Charles Duelfer Missed
“Why has this taken so long? Why didn’t the CIA report this before?”
Because no one has presented IRREFUTABLE evidence, yet..
No matter how much of Saddam’s blustering and historical evidence we provide, the “Bush Lied” meme.