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Oct 18th, 2004 08:08 PM
Preechr Even with that, I can follow your point that if Syria is actually seeking to reconcile itself at least somewhat with the West... as is assumed by it's (even if sorta fake-ish) overtures to Israel... it might be in it's best interest to tell someone about the massive stockpiles of WMDs Saddam stowed within it's borders...

We'll see...
Oct 18th, 2004 07:00 PM
Preechr Duelfer: 'A lot of material left Iraq and went to Syria'
Jul 23rd, 2004 07:23 PM
KevinTheOmnivore Syria--

I would be very critical of any information provided by Ariel Sharon in terms of Iraqi WMD "stockpiles" being moved throughout Syria and across borders. Don't get me wrong, there are several very real reasons for both Israel and America to distrust Syria. The occupation of Lebanon stands as just one example.

However, Sharon wants to get rid of Syria as aproblem for his nation, and I think he'd love the USA to do it for him, in keeping with the war on terror, and all.

David Kay said that the movement has been undetermined, and to immediately jump to the conclusion that this movement consists of "stockpiles" of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons would be jumping to conclusions, and would be sort of like "a train that seemed "to always be going in the same direction.""

Furthermore, I don't think it's fair to Syria (if I may be so bold) to make these acusations and not act on them. At this point, the IAEA has been scolding Syria for not coming clean on their own weapons capabilities. I don't know that Syria would be stupid enough to take on said WMD, were they to even exist.

Ammar Abdulhamid had a good piece on Syria with the Brookings Institute:

http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed...id20040713.htm

Each misstep and misstatement Damascus has made in the past few years, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, are being logged and documented by its enemies worldwide, especially in the US, so that a case can be built up for the regime's outright removal one day.

I think Syria is in a lot of hot water, and they certainly deserve the scrutiny. However, they have kept talks open with the Western powers, and IMO seem to be more responsive than countries such as Iran, for example. Syria justifies is terrible regime, as well as its stubborn approach to diplomacy, as "sticking to national imperatives." With that said, does a country, isolationist in mindset, go out of its way to accomodate "stockpiles" of WMD, especially when the eyes of the world are already rested on them....?
Jul 16th, 2004 09:40 PM
Preechr Oh, and "right-wing" isn't necessarily the exact same thing as "partisan."
Jul 16th, 2004 09:37 PM
Preechr It's funny... Reading through some stuff tonight, it seems to have been unclear to those making the BIG decisions... all the way up to at least a year ago... that the low grade uranium known to be in Iraq was nothing to be worried about.

That's scary.
Jul 16th, 2004 08:36 PM
Sethomas 500 tons of weapons grade uranium

Jul 16th, 2004 08:12 PM
Ant10708 When did aljazeera become a right wing source?

But its so weird how none of this is never reported atleast not in the US.

I have to start watching arab TV
Jul 16th, 2004 07:25 PM
Preechr Sorry to use such a partisan source:
_____________________________________________ ___ __ _
Syrian assistance

Kay also expanded on remarks he made earlier to Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, on the possibility that Iraq had sent some of its weapons to Syria before the war.

"There's ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war," he said. "There's satellite photography, there are reports on the ground, of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved."

"There's very little you can do in Iraq to determine what was moved. The real answers to that are in Syria, and the Syrian government has shown absolutely no interest in helping us resolve this issue," he said.
_____________________________________________ ___ __ _


Here's some more:

_____________________________________________ ___ __ _

Iraqi Weapons in Syria
Post April 26, 2004
By Kenneth R. Timmerman

On Dec. 24, 2002, nearly three months before fighting in Iraq began, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Saddam Hussein's regime of transferring key materials for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs to Syria in convoys of 18-wheel trucks to hide them from U.N. weapons inspectors. "There is information we are verifying, but we are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria," Sharon told Channel Two television in Israel.

Before talking about this on Israeli television, Sharon gave detailed information to the Bush White House on what Israel knew and what it suspected. Insight has learned, however, that once the information was handed over to the U.S. intelligence community, officials at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) swept it aside as lacking credibility.

In May 2003, just as major combat operations in Iraq were winding down, new reports surfaced in Israel, this time alleging that convoys of Iraqi water tankers carrying WMD components crossed the border into Syria repeatedly between Jan. 10 and March 10. The tankers reportedly were met by Syrian special forces and escorted to the heroin poppy fields of a Syrian-controlled area in Lebanon's Bekáa Valley, where their contents were dumped into specially prepared pits and buried. Again, INR discounted the reports, U.S. officials tell Insight.

Reports of Iraqi WMD winding up in Syria were not just coming from the Israelis. In October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, revealed that vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to Saddam's forbidden WMD programs had been shipped to Syria before the war. It was no surprise that the United States and its allies had not found stockpiles of forbidden weapons in Iraq, Clapper told a breakfast briefing given to reporters in Washington. "Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.

"We have had six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official tells Insight. "In every case, the U.S. intelligence community sought to discount or discredit those reports."

This January, after he returned to Washington from Iraq, where for six months he had served as the CIA's top gun with the Iraq Survey Group hunting for Saddam's banned weapons, David Kay said he had uncovered evidence that weapons material had been moved to Syria shortly before the war. "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he told the Sunday Telegraph in London. "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 program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."

Another piece of this puzzle was provided by a Syrian intelligence officer in letters smuggled to an antiregime activist living in Paris named Nizar Nayouf. In one letter the source identified three locations in Syria where WMD materials had been buried under an agreement between the Syrian and Iraqi leadership. Two of the sites were specially dug underground bunkers and tunnels. The third site was a factory operated by the Syrian air force in the village of Tal Sinan, located between the cities of Hama and Salimiyyah. In a follow-up letter dated Jan. 7, Nayouf's source provided more details on these locations, along with a map, and alleged that some of the weapons had been moved out of Iraq in ambulances.

So are Saddam's WMD stockpiles in Syria? When Insight asked the CIA if it was investigating these and other reports, a spokesman acknowledged there was "some evidence that way" and that the United States was "looking at all types of possibilities," but vigorously discouraged further inquiries. Administration officials tell Insight that the refusal to report on Syria's complicity with Saddam's regime stems from a "pro-Syria bias in the State Department and some elements of the intelligence community, whose threshold for evidence on Syria is suspiciously high."

Shoshana Bryen regularly escorts groups of retired U.S. military flag officers (admirals and generals) to Israel for meetings with senior Israeli political and military leaders, as well as intelligence officials. "We went to Israel just before the war and just after," she tells Insight. "Both times, Israeli intelligence officials told us, yes, WMD were definitely in Iraq, and that they had been sent to Syria." The Bush administration was trying to downplay these reports, she believes, "because if Iraqi weapons are in Syria, we're going to have to do something about it, and they don't want another war."
_____________________________________________ ___ __ _


Now, admittedly, that's from a "right-wing source," but I doubt you expect me to bring you articles from www.michaelmoore.com that are at all informative in this matter...

See if you can sit through this one. It's dated, and the bit about the 500 tons of "weapons-grade" uranium found has been recently noted to have actually been unsuitable for WMD as well as well-known of by the regulators, but the rest is interesting.
Jul 16th, 2004 01:21 PM
KevinTheOmnivore
"and much more was shipped to Syria prior to the invasi

Preechr:

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