Georges Sada’s book, Saddam’s Secrets, is out.
Michelle Malkin links to a New York Sun article.
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein’s air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, “Saddam’s Secrets,” released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Mr. Sada said. “I am confident they were taken over.”
Mr. Sada’s comments come just more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”
Rick Moran has lots of analysis, and concludes with this:
While the information is certainly intriguing, it hardly qualifies as “smoking gun” evidence that Syria has the missing WMD.
That said, if the government were aware of Syrian collusion with Iraq to hide their stockpiles of WMD, why wouldn’t they announce it?
First of all, it would be very difficult to prove without revealing “sources and methods” that the CIA would rather remain a secret.
The second reason would be diplomatic. If we accused the Syrians and offered proof, then we would have to do something about it. This would complicate our efforts to effect regime change in Syria that right now are at a very delicate point. The UN is beginning to put more and more pressure on Baby Assad as the investigation into the assassination of Lebanese nationalist Rafiq Hariri continues to implicate high level Syrian intelligence and political figures. Eventually it is thought that the elites in the military and the government will see Assad as the dead weight that he is and get rid of him. After that, all bets are off and the US government may in fact start inquiring about what was transferred from Iraq to Syria prior to the war.
Next week, General Sada will meet with members of the Senate Armed Services committee. It should be interesting to see what might come out of that meeting although, don’t hold your breath for any bombshells. The last thing the White House wants at this point – even though it would permanently blunt some criticism about the war – is to make Syrian complicity in hiding Iraq WMD an issue.
Mac’s Mind thinks Senator Rockefeller is in trouble, going back to a November, 2005 interview he gave on FNS.
SEN. ROCKEFELLER: No. The — I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I’ll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq — that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.
John over at Powerline thinks a bit more evidence is needed.
Lorie Byrd, though, thinks it’s a whole lot more likely than the alternative: “For those leftie trolls who “LOL” at reports that point to Syria as the recipient of Saddam’s WMD, how is that scenario any less believable than the idea that Bush lied about WMD and invaded a country knowing that none would be found? Or, for that matter, how is it any more believable than the crazy conspiracy theories that Diebold elected Bush or that Karl Rove is coordinating with Osama? ”
Sister Toldjah reminds us that this lines up with what UNSCOM inspector Bill Tierney speculated.
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