Where Did Syria's Stockpiles of WMD Come From?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by JP5, Mar 23, 2013.

  1. JP5

    JP5 Former Moderator Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2004
    Messages:
    45,584
    Likes Received:
    278
    Trophy Points:
    0
    WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? And why is there no mainstream press interested in doing their jobs and investigating this? Here's a reporter who asked this very question just last July. Saddam's Air Vice Marshal was interviewed by this reporter back then and said he was "sure" these wmd's were moved to Syria. Many of us asked what was in those trucks Saddam moved into Syria just before he was invaded in 2003? Obviously our press was not interested.... is not interested. All they were interested in doing was vilifying Pres. Bush. And now the question comes up again. BUT what will the press and/or this administration do about finding out?

    "There is a degree of panic, and rightly so, over whether the Syrian tyrant Basher al Assad will use chemical weapons against either his own people or foreign attackers. His regime has this week threatened to do the latter, thus finally confirming what was long suspected but never openly admitted, that Syria possesses chemical weapons. It is believed to have mustard gas as well as nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and VX. The fear is either that the Assad regime uses them or that they fall into the hands of Hezbollah, al Qaeda or other Islamic terrorist groups.

    Either prospect is utterly nightmarish. Even Russia says it has told Syria it is unacceptable to threaten to use them.

    In the last few days, this has been much discussed. What has not been raised, however, is the question of how Syria managed to develop such a chemical weapons stockpile in the first place.

    No-one in the western media seems remotely curious about how Syria has managed to arm itself to the teeth with them beneath the radar of international scrutiny.

    Dr Danny Shoham, at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is an expert in chemical and biological warfare. In a Middle East Quarterly article in 2002, Guile, Gas and Germs: Syria's Ultimate Weapons, he set out the extraordinary history of Syria’s chemical weapons programme.

    In 2003 the US, Britain and others went to war in Iraq to make the world safe from Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Ever since, however, we have been told that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the proof of that is that none was ever found – surely one of the most profoundly illogical and imbecilic formulations ever to have fallen from human lips.

    At the time, however, there were a number of reports that enormous truck movements across the border from Iraq into Syria suggested that some of these WMD had been moved there.
    Saddam’s Air Vice-Marshal Georges Sada, whom I interviewed, said he was absolutely certain that WMD had been moved from Iraq to Syria. All of this was however brushed aside for, as the bien pensant world has never stopped intoning with positively religious fervour, ‘we were taken to war in Iraq on a lie’.




    But now we know that Syria possesses an arsenal of chemical weapons. So could any of this have come from Saddam’s Iraq, just as it was transferred from Egypt two decades previously?

    In October 2003, the US intelligence community publicly pointed for the first time to transfers of WMD from Iraq to Syria. The Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, James Clapper, said it linked the disappearance of Iraqi WMD with the huge number of Iraqi trucks entering Syria before and during the US invasion; based on satellite imagery, it assessed that these trucks contained missiles and WMD components. Shipments to Syria were supervised by Saddam’s most loyal intelligence agents. Once the shipments were made, these agents would leave and the regular border guards resumed their posts.

    Moreover, captured Iraqi documents record that the Russian ‘spetsnaz’ moved many of Saddam’s weapons and related goods, including chemicals used to make chemical weapons plus missile components and MIG jet parts, out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the 2003 invasion.

    In 2004 Nizar Najoef, a Syrian journalist who defected from Syria to Europe, claimed he had received information from contacts in Syrian intelligence that:

    Tunnels dug under al Baida near Hama in northern Syria were an integral part of an underground factory, built by the North Koreans, for producing Syrian Scud missiles. Iraqi chemical weapons and long range missiles were stored there;

    Vital parts of Iraq’s WMD were stored in the village of Tal Snan, north of Salamija where there was a big Syrian air force camp;

    Iraqi WMD was also stored in the city of Sjinsjar on Syria’s border with Lebanon.
    Shoham concluded:

    ‘Apparently, then, the prevailing perception of the “failure” to find Iraq’s CBW arsenal ought to be rethought...Strategically, Iraq’s enduring arsenal may affect Syria’s CBW capabilities, provided that the transfer did in fact take place...’

    Might some of Basher al Assad’s chemical (and possibly biological) arsenal have Saddam Hussein’s name on it?



    In a more recent paper published in 2006 in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence , An Antithesis on the Fate of Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons, Dr Shoham wrote that the two official reports – Duelfer and Carnegie in 2004 – that supposedly exonerated Saddam of still having WMD by the outbreak of war ignored much information that indicated the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons from Iraq into Syria. Although the most knowledgeable and experienced individuals tracking Iraq’s WMD were members of UNSCOM, they were largely excluded by the US intelligence community. Ill-trained soldiers would go to a site, find something suspicious, return 48 hours later and find it had disappeared.



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2178883/Syrias-chemical-weapons-arsenal.html#ixzz2OPcAMlng
     
  2. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    good for them
     
  3. Bondo

    Bondo Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2010
    Messages:
    2,768
    Likes Received:
    251
    Trophy Points:
    83
    Ayuh,.... From Iraq of course,....

    We watched 'em moved there in '02, 'n '03....
     
  4. Questerr

    Questerr Banned

    Joined:
    Feb 6, 2007
    Messages:
    63,174
    Likes Received:
    4,995
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Egypt and Syria unified in the 1970's and Egypt has had the knowledge of manufacturing chemical weapons well before that point. Syria was also a big ally of the USSR.

    Why couldn't Syria have made their own chemical weapons?
     
  5. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I think it's alight, provided that they use them on the French.
     
  6. Doug_yvr

    Doug_yvr Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2008
    Messages:
    19,096
    Likes Received:
    1,827
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Who says that Syria has WMD and what is the evidence? And I mean real evidence this time, not the pictures of milk trucks Powell displayed at the UN.

    As for the claims in the OP it's not even qualified to be hearsay.
     
  7. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Milk is a WMD. It's bad for you, but the government will tell you it's good for you. Humans are the only species to drink milk after after childhood (infant). Only calves drink milk, it is full of hormones to make them large, and processed it is full of chemicals.
     
  8. savage-republican

    savage-republican Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2006
    Messages:
    2,134
    Likes Received:
    35
    Trophy Points:
    48
    I guess the pictures of those in Syria attacked with chemical weapons is not enough for you?
     
  9. GraspingforPeace

    GraspingforPeace Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Dec 5, 2008
    Messages:
    14,162
    Likes Received:
    1,403
    Trophy Points:
    113
    "When asked during his interview with Fox News if there was any chance that there were nuclear weapons or on their way to nuclear weapons when USA invaded, he said "Not in Iraq". Sada made a guest appearance on The Daily Show on March 21, 2006 to promote Saddam's Secrets. His (Sada's) claims, though, tend to contradict the findings of the Duelfer Report, which "judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place," though analysts were unable to rule out the possibility."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Sada

    I'm gonna go with believing the Iraq Survey Group over a guy trying to sell a book.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duelfer_Report#Duelfer_Report

    Blatantly misrepresenting the support for the idea, fantastic article, huh? One guy is NOT the intelligence community. Especially when he said that he was "providing a personal assessment" and the "spokesman for General Clapper's agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general's statement."

    "His researchers allegedly found a document ordering the concealment of nuclear weapons equipment in storage facilities under the Euphrates River a few weeks before the invasion."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermath_of_the_2003_invasion_of_Iraq

    Funny, I can't find one legitimate news agency that reported this. But I did find this story at "saveisraelcampaign.com" and "www.f***france.com" :applause:

    Oh, great, an inaccessible (unless you pay) paper by "Dany Shoham is a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel."

    This article has just been torn apart. F*** the Daily Mail.
     
  10. Doug_yvr

    Doug_yvr Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2008
    Messages:
    19,096
    Likes Received:
    1,827
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Post the evidence that a) Syrians were attacked with chemical weapons and b) those weapons came from Iraq.
     
  11. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Guys, I think it's alight.
     
  12. JP5

    JP5 Former Moderator Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2004
    Messages:
    45,584
    Likes Received:
    278
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Really? Hearsay, that's all?

    --Saddam's Air Vice Marshall?

    --Dr Danny Shoham, an expert in chemical and biological warfare from the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel?

    --the US intelligence community who publicly pointed to transfers of WMD from Iraq to Syria?

    --James Clapper, The Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said it linked the disappearance of Iraqi WMD with the huge number of Iraqi trucks entering Syria before and during the US invasion; based on satellite imagery and assessed that these trucks contained missiles and WMD components? This is the same James Clapper, BTW, that Obama chose for his principal adviser on intelligence. You don't think Obama would choose a man who had LIED do you???

    --the captured Russian documents?

    --the Syrian Journalist who had to defect because he had reported he had
    received information from contacts in Syrian intelligence that the weapons had in fact been moved there and hidden?

    NAH......let's just continue now to keep our heads in the sand and deny ALL of it.


     
  13. For Topical Use Only

    For Topical Use Only Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 21, 2011
    Messages:
    8,308
    Likes Received:
    2,290
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Have these entirely reliable sources found photos of Assad pulling babies from incubators yet?
     
  14. JP5

    JP5 Former Moderator Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2004
    Messages:
    45,584
    Likes Received:
    278
    Trophy Points:
    0
    For all of you who seem to believe strongly that all of what the Bush administration and many others "in the know" believed back then couldn't possibly have been any more than lies.......what are you thinking right now about THIS administration regarding S.O.S. John Kerry's charges that Iraq is allowing Iranian arms and fighters to cross into Syria from Iraq and has warned them to stop? Iraq's PM Maliki says the multiple daily flights are simply "humanitarian" supplies. I am assuming that you believe THIS administration, right?
     
  15. Doug_yvr

    Doug_yvr Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2008
    Messages:
    19,096
    Likes Received:
    1,827
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Right, when have they ever been wrong.


    A coincidence is not evidence. The fact Obama chose him is immaterial.

    I thought they were captured Iraqi documents.

    It's hilarious that those phantom WMD are the gift that keeps giving for the pro-war crowd. No doubt they'll continue their road show to Iran and North Korea just in time to justify some type of action.
     
  16. Doug_yvr

    Doug_yvr Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2008
    Messages:
    19,096
    Likes Received:
    1,827
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Not yet. They're still studying the Nigerian Yellow Cake.
     
  17. JP5

    JP5 Former Moderator Past Donor

    Joined:
    Mar 17, 2004
    Messages:
    45,584
    Likes Received:
    278
    Trophy Points:
    0
    No, actually I'm not pro-war. After all our military lives lost, we have nothing of value from going in to Iraq. Now there's a worse guy at the head; a (*)(*)(*)(*)e who has ties to Iran's (*)(*)(*)(*)e's. And they kicked us out totally in 2011, so I would say now.....Adios Amigos; you are own your own. As far as I'm concerned now....Israel can take care of ALL of them. And the best thing we can do here is to put our oil industry in low gear.....more exploration and going after immediately what we know about already. That way WE will be the new Saudi Arabia fairly soon..... and won't have to give two hoots what they do to each other over there. My whole life we've been involved in the Middle East and their inability to get along with each other. Unless it effects us or our good ally Israel, I'm done.
     
  18. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Let them have the chemical weapons, someone needs to keep them properly stored.
     
  19. monty1

    monty1 New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2013
    Messages:
    1,033
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Where did the US get their WMD's from? From Iraq!

    No wait, Iraq got them from the US. So how about if we say that the US found some but couldn't show them around because they had US labels on them? Work for you Americans?
     
  20. SFJEFF

    SFJEFF New Member

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2010
    Messages:
    30,682
    Likes Received:
    256
    Trophy Points:
    0
    I am no chemist but it is my understanding that mustard gas is simple to make, as are a fair number of other chemical weapons.

    Considering that one of the main reasons that Saddam told people he had chemical weapons was to keep geopolitical rivals such as Syria at bay it seems more logical to me that Syria- paranoid as Syria is- developed its own chemical weapons.
     
  21. monty1

    monty1 New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 4, 2013
    Messages:
    1,033
    Likes Received:
    4
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Get with the conspiracy theory, this could sort of work a bit for the Bush2 defenders.
     
  22. Burz

    Burz New Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    2,991
    Likes Received:
    8
    Trophy Points:
    0
    good for them
     
  23. RtWngaFraud

    RtWngaFraud Banned

    Joined:
    Feb 16, 2011
    Messages:
    20,420
    Likes Received:
    106
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Except Bush was touting "mushroom clouds" as an inevitability if we didn't hurry up and bomb Iraq (instead of mustard gas).
     
  24. pimptight

    pimptight Banned

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2012
    Messages:
    5,513
    Likes Received:
    23
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Because we didn't invade Iraq for Anthrax and mustard gas(Amonia and bleach).


    Where was the Iraqi Nuclear program?
     
  25. sablegsd

    sablegsd Banned

    Joined:
    Jun 24, 2010
    Messages:
    572
    Likes Received:
    17
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Yep. But since the media has become a craven tool of the commiecratic party, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
     

Share This Page