Interesting article on Iraqi WMD:
First, Prince John covers his bases, just in case:
"It appears, as we peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and -- we may yet find them, Chris," Kerry said. "Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, you find some weapons. You may."
Next, there are some interesting dots to connect:
Perhaps Kerry was hedging because the night before Jordanian television had broadcast the confessions of the surviving suspects in an al-Qaida plot to attack the U.S. embassy in Amman and the headquarters of the Jordanian intelligence service with 20 tons of explosives and deadly chemicals.
"Shown in a casual interview setting, detainees Azmi al-Jayousi and Hussein Sharif Hussein provided calm descriptions of a plot they say was hatched in Iraq and forged in Syria and Iraq," wrote the Chicago Tribune's Evan Osnos.
...
The same day that Jordanian conspirators were making their confessions, Israel's military chief told an Israeli newspaper there is "no doubt" that Iraq possessed both chemical weapons and the means to deliver them. In the first two days of the war, the United States -- acting on tips from Israeli intelligence -- destroyed the aircraft Saddam had prepared to carry chemical munitions, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said. The munitions themselves were buried, or transferred to other countries.
"We very clearly saw that something crossed into Syria," he said.
"We have six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official told Kenneth Timmerman of Insight magazine.
A Syrian intelligence officer, in letters smuggled to an anti-regime activist in Paris, identified three sites in Syria where Iraqi WMD are being stored, Timmerman said. The sites were the same as those identified earlier by a Syrian journalist who defected to Europe.
Recall the earlier article in Insight Magazine on findings since last year's war which we linked to here. There was also an earlier Insight article on WMD being moved to Syria.
The WorldTribune and Debka have both reported that Iraqi WMD stockpiles were moved to Syria. Bill Gertz of the Washington Times has mentioned it as an unconfirmed but persistent rumor, and several administration officials, including Rumsfeld, have specifically mentioned Syria as a possible hiding place.
Finally there is the article by Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking Eastern Bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the west and someone who has worked with Libya and other Middle Eastern countries to develop WMD. Pacepa claims there was a plan from day one called "Sarindar" for "ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them."
First, Prince John covers his bases, just in case:
"It appears, as we peel away the weapons of mass destruction issue, and -- we may yet find them, Chris," Kerry said. "Look, I want to make it clear: Who knows if a month from now, you find some weapons. You may."
Next, there are some interesting dots to connect:
Perhaps Kerry was hedging because the night before Jordanian television had broadcast the confessions of the surviving suspects in an al-Qaida plot to attack the U.S. embassy in Amman and the headquarters of the Jordanian intelligence service with 20 tons of explosives and deadly chemicals.
"Shown in a casual interview setting, detainees Azmi al-Jayousi and Hussein Sharif Hussein provided calm descriptions of a plot they say was hatched in Iraq and forged in Syria and Iraq," wrote the Chicago Tribune's Evan Osnos.
...
The same day that Jordanian conspirators were making their confessions, Israel's military chief told an Israeli newspaper there is "no doubt" that Iraq possessed both chemical weapons and the means to deliver them. In the first two days of the war, the United States -- acting on tips from Israeli intelligence -- destroyed the aircraft Saddam had prepared to carry chemical munitions, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said. The munitions themselves were buried, or transferred to other countries.
"We very clearly saw that something crossed into Syria," he said.
"We have six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official told Kenneth Timmerman of Insight magazine.
A Syrian intelligence officer, in letters smuggled to an anti-regime activist in Paris, identified three sites in Syria where Iraqi WMD are being stored, Timmerman said. The sites were the same as those identified earlier by a Syrian journalist who defected to Europe.
Recall the earlier article in Insight Magazine on findings since last year's war which we linked to here. There was also an earlier Insight article on WMD being moved to Syria.
The WorldTribune and Debka have both reported that Iraqi WMD stockpiles were moved to Syria. Bill Gertz of the Washington Times has mentioned it as an unconfirmed but persistent rumor, and several administration officials, including Rumsfeld, have specifically mentioned Syria as a possible hiding place.
Finally there is the article by Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking Eastern Bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the west and someone who has worked with Libya and other Middle Eastern countries to develop WMD. Pacepa claims there was a plan from day one called "Sarindar" for "ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them."