Free Republic

TOKYO -- North Korea provided about 45 tons of "yellowcake" uranium to Syria in September 2007 for production of fuel for an undeclared nuclear reactor, diplomatic and military sources knowledgeable on North Korean issues said Saturday. But the shipment was followed shortly by an Israeli air strike targeting the reactor and the uranium involved is believed to have been transferred to Iran around last summer, according to a Western diplomatic source.

It’s Springtime in BaghdadNadia Mahadeed, Arab News War Correspondent BAGHDAD, 28 April 2003 — The blooming flowers and tall palm trees in the thousands of nurseries along the roads of Baghdad are competing for the attention of residents and visitors, away from the sights of destruction. They are indications of the new life that is about to begin for the Baghdadis and Iraqis in general. Abu Adnan, who runs a nursery in Al-Azamiyah in northern Baghdad, talks about his love for the profession his father and grandfather have practiced before him. “We don’t only sell flowers but we are also...

U.S. troops and U.S.-trained Iraqi forces uncovered about 5,000 chemical weapons in Iraq between 2004 and 2011 and soldiers were injured by these weapons in six instances. However, the weapons had not been manufactured during an active, ongoing chemical weapons program, which the Bush administration cited as justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Details of the discovery of these weapons were published by the New York Times on October 14, in a lengthy, 9,000-word report written by former Marine Corps officer and veteran journalist C.J. Chivers.Despite injuries to our troops, the U.S. government withheld information about the discovery of the...

The US-led coalition carried out the first air strikes on Islamic State (ISIS) chemical weapons sites, the Pentagon said Thursday, acting on crucial information from a captured senior insurgent. The successful multiple bombings came as a result of intelligence from Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Dawud, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said, confirming the name of the ISIS group operative said to be a chemical weapons expert for the terrorists. His capture by US special forces in February - Dawud was transferred Thursday into Iraqi custody after interrogation - appears to be a major boon in the fight...

While the media is busy focusing on the troubling story of the two American soldiers detained at Guantanamo Bay for alleged espionage, both of whom had Syrian connections, another Syria story has passed them by. The names of Ahmad al Halabi, an American of Syrian descent, and Captain James Yee, a convert to Islam who spent four years in Damascus before returning to active service, are now well known. But the name of Nizar Nayouf, a Syrian journalist and human rights activist that was detained last week by French police in Paris, will most probably stay anonymous.   Nayouf?s only...

Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who recently defected from Syria to Western Europe and is known for bravely challenging the Syrian regime, said in a letter Monday, January 5, to Dutch newspaper “Di Telegraaf,” that he knows the three sites where Iraq’s WMD are kept. The storage places are: 1. Tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria. These tunnels are an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long-range missiles are stored in these tunnels. 2. The village of...

Footage of Masyaf shows missile shaped items; IAEA urges Syria to let inspectors visit reactor that IAF destroyed in 2007. A compound in western Syria with buildings and hundreds of missile-shaped items has been identified as functionally related to a nuclear reactor Israel destroyed northeast of Damascus in 2007. Satellite footage of the site in Masyaf was obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and shows a compound built in a ravine and surrounded by what appears to be a line of trenches. While there are no security measures visible in the commercial satellite imagery, ISIS said...

In the last few months, Lebanese terror group Hezbollah appears to have received over a hundred M600 ballistic missiles from Syria. Now, after many people scoured Google Earth satellite photos of Syria and Lebanon, looking for the weapons, something particularly interesting was found in northern Syria, outside the town of Masyaf. Google Earth users noted five compounds, that appear to be closed to all but authorized personnel. Inside these compounds there appeared to be entrances to bunkers dug into adjacent hills. In 2003, Syrian sources reported that Iraqi chemical weapons were sent to Syria, and some were storied in bunkers...

BASRA, Iraq, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- More than 50 bullet holes in the wall of the empty swimming pool at "Chemical Ali's" house here indicate just how violent the former Saddam Hussein operative could be.Border police who have taken over the house don't go out to the pool much, said Col. Ali Hussein Jabar, commander of about 30 men working there. Bad things happened there, Jabar said. The relatively modest two-story house is built on an artificial hill surrounded by concrete. It looks out over flat, desolate desert sands inhabited only by sheep herders and oil pipeline guards for as...

An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the September 6 IAF strike on a Syrian facility will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Channel 2 stated Monday. Furthermore, according to a report leaked to the TV channel, Syria has arrested 10 intelligence officials following the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh.

The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile has been completed, Barack Obama has said. The US President welcomed the development, but said Washington would seek to ensure Damascus fulfils all its commitments. "Today we mark an important achievement in our ongoing effort to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction by eliminating Syria's declared chemical weapons stockpile," he said. He added that the destruction, carried out aboard a US Navy ship on the Mediterranean Sea, sent "a clear message that the use of these abhorrent weapons has consequences and will not be tolerated by the international community".

A quick update on the largely forgotten half of President Obama’s shambolic Syria policy. You’ll recall, of course, the blown chemical weapons “red line” and the subsequent, humiliating Putin/Assad plan that accidentally became US policy due after John Kerry blundered into it. Kerry has since admitted that the entire proposition has collapsed, forcing the White House to publicly disagree with its own Secretary of State. Nevertheless, a loyal band of administration lackeys triumphantly cheered news of Syria’s alleged disarmament when it broke over the summer, after several missed deadlines. ‘No Drama Obama’ had done it again, they crowed, achieving...

Pentagon: Ship Leaves for Italy to Destroy Syrian Chemical Weapons By: Sam LaGrone Published: June 25, 2014 12:48 PM Updated: June 25, 2014 12:52 PM The U.S. ship that was quickly put into service to neutralize Syrian chemical weapons has departed Rota, Spain to take on the arms at an Italian port, Pentagon officials announced on Wednesday. MV Cape Ray (T-AKR-9679) will take on the chemical weapons at Gioia Tauro and neutralize the weapons taken from the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as part of a deal — negotiated by the United Nations — that prevented U.S. retaliatory strikes...

A Canadian company has purchased 550 tons of Iraqi uranium concentrate worth $90 milllion. Sakatoon-based uranium producer Cameco Corp., the world's largest producer of uranium, won the contract last year. But although the Iraqi cabinet only approved the sale on Tuesday, the last remains of the country's uranium concentrate or "yellow cake" had already been secretly transported to a Canadian port in July 2008 with US support. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP on Tuesday that since the country has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it no longer needs this material accrued by former dictator Saddam Hussein, and the...

RUSH: The Republican presidential candidates are being hit with, "Well, knowing what you know now, would you go back into Iraq?" And they've mostly accepted the premise that Iraq was a big boondoggle, a huge mistake, Bush lied, we shouldn't have done it, and they're answering on that basis. Well, on Fox News Sunday, which I didn't see, during the group panel discussion, Chris Wallace speaking with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Wallace said, "The politics of Iraq have gotten a lot of attention the last couple of weeks with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, bunch of others, and these...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

Iraq uncovers al-Qaeda 'chemical weapons plot' The authorities in Iraq say they have uncovered an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons, as well as to smuggle them to Europe and North America. Defence ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said five men had been arrested after military intelligence monitored their activities for three months. Three workshops for manufacturing the chemical agents, including sarin and mustard gas, were uncovered, he added. Remote-controlled toy planes were also seized at the workshops. Mr Askari said they were to have been used to release the chemical agents over the target from a "safe" distance of 1.5km...

It's easy for people--with the possible exception of Jeb Bush--to say that they would not have supported the invasion of Iraq knowing what we know now about WMD there. But Chris Matthews took things a foolish step further on this evening's Hardball, actually claiming that "there was no intelligence they had a weapon. Never was." Really? So Hillary, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy et al. were collective fabricators when they issued dire warnings, based on the intelligence they had seen, about Saddam's WMD? View the video here.

In this article on Capitol Hill Blue, there are the following lines:"The report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings." Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said. "He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured...

Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter, has blown a big hole in the case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying to avoid blame for outing a CIA agent. Miller was a key witness in Libby’s trial, but in her new book she has repudiated her testimony. Libby was “railroaded in his conviction” by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, she said in an interview on Fox News yesterday. In her book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey, she writes that Fitzgerald cajoled her into testifying in 2007 that Libby had told her Valerie Plame, the wife of a critic...