PM Sharon & IDF Chief Yaalon’s 2002 statements on
Saddam’s WMDs confirmed
An American official has just confirmed what has been long suspected – that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) were dispersed to
1. Ryan Munro, ‘U.S. official: Iraqis told me WMDs sent to Syria: Former head of prisons says incarcerated ex-Saddam forces disclosed move,’ World Net Daily, July 30, 2008
A former American overseer of Iraqi prisons says several dozen inmates who were members of Saddam Hussein’s military and intelligence forces boasted of helping transport weapons of mass destruction to Syria and Lebanon in the three months prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Don Bordenkircher – who served two years as national director of prison and jail operations in Iraq– told WND that about 40 prisoners he spoke with “boasted of being involved in the transport of WMD warheads to Syria
A smaller number of prisoners, he said, claimed “they knew the locations of the missile hulls buried in Iraq
Some of the inmates, Bordenkircher said, “wanted to trade their information for a release from prison and were amenable to showing the locations.”
The prisoners were members of the Iraqi military or civilians assigned to the Iraqi military, often stationed at munitions facilities, according to Bordenkircher. He said he was told the WMDs were shipped by truck into
Other Iraqi military personnel, including former top Saddam associates, have made the same claim.
In early 2006, Saddam’s No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, told the New York Sun Iraq’s WMDs were moved into Syria
WND also reported in 2006 a former general and friend of Saddam who defected alleged WMDs were hidden in Syria Baghdad or Damascus was taken over.
Saddam knew the U.S.
Among other claims, WND also reported a former U.S. federal agent and counter-terrorism specialist deployed to Iraq before the war said he waged a three-year, unsuccessful battle to get officials to search four sites where he believed the former Saddam regime buried weapons of mass destruction.
Bordenkircher said four of the Iraqi prisoners who separately offered to speak to the “right” people about Saddam’s alleged transport of WMD later became involved with U.S.
Some prisoners said the drivers, upon return from transporting the WMDs out of Iraq Iraq
Four of the prisoners – civilians attached to the Iraqi military – said they worked at the al-Muthana Chemical Industries site. They said the cargo included nitrogen mustard gas warheads for Tariq I and II missiles.
Bordenkircher said the stories of the military personnel and the civilians matched and did not contradict one another.
Bordenkircher also said prisoners confirmed al-Qaida had a presence in Iraq before Operation Iraqi Freedom began, specifically in Mosul and Kirkuk
Iraqis under the command of Uday Hussein, one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, supported the al-Qaida elements in the country with training and providing safe harbor, they said.
Bordenkircher also was a senior adviser to South Vietnam ‘s correctional system during the war in Southeast Asia, from 1967-72. His task was to improve conditions for 80,000 civilian prisoners. The U.S. Department of Justice asked him to play a similar role in Iraq , sending him first to Baghdad ‘s infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad
Bordenkircher previously served as
2.
A week before the US Congressional elections The New York Times published a front-page story which all but admitted that Iraq
The documents in question contained Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that could be useful to rogue states like Iran
In response to the Times story an international security Web site run by Ray Robinson published a translation of a story that ran on the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah’s Web site on September 25. Citing European intelligence sources, the Al-Seyyassah report claims that in late 2004 Syria began developing a nuclear program near its border with Turkey Syria
The Kuwaiti report maintains that the Syrian nuclear program relies “on equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday and Qusai … transfer[red] to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003.” The report also asserts that the Syrian nuclear program is supported by the Iranians who are running the program, together with Iraqi nuclear scientists and Muslim nuclear specialists from Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union .
The program “was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program after it was wholly transferred to Syria
This report echoes warnings expressed by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq that suspicious convoys of trucks were traveling from Iraq to Syria Iraq had moved its unconventional arsenals to Syria
ACCORDING TO the US Senate’s Prewar Intelligence Review Phase II, which studied the prewar intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, in 2002, the US had learned from the Iraqi foreign minister that while Iraq had not yet acquired a nuclear arsenal, “Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons. The Senate report concluded that Saddam was told by his own weapons specialists that Iraq
In the weeks and months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US , President George W. Bush repeatedly stated that America
In his State of the Union Address in 2002, Bush placed Iraq in the same category of threat to US national security as Iran and North Korea
The post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq – an insurgency largely facilitated and sponsored by Iran – has caused the US Iraq
And yet, for all the difficulties, pain and frustration the post-Saddam insurgency has caused the US , the toppling of Saddam’s regime successfully prevented Iraq
IN THE summer of 2003, assessing future trends on the basis of the US-led invasion of
But as the months and years have progressed it has become clear that far from being a warning to other would-be nuclear armed dictatorships, the US-led invasion of Iraq Pyongyang
The ascent of the most dangerous regimes in the world to the status of nuclear powers reached a new climax last month. First was North Korea Iran
For their part, most of the nations of the world have looked on with indifference to these developments. South Korean Foreign Minister and incoming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appears far more concerned with the Japanese debate over whether North Korea ‘s nuclear test should or should not cause Japan to develop its own nuclear arsenal than with the fact that Pyongyang
Ban’s apparent moral and strategic dementia is of a piece with the international community’s apathy. Europe has responded to Iran ‘s sprint toward nuclear arms by offering its usual mix of toothless sanctions, emotional appeals and diplomatic pageantry, all aimed at marking time until Iran
AS FOR the US, Iran , North Korea and al-Qaida have all been quick to interpret the Democratic victory in last Tuesday’s Congressional elections as a sign that the US has chosen to turn its back on the threat they pose to America North Korea by ratcheting up US engagement with Pyongyang
Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism of Iraq Iraq was a deviation from a norm of US
Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria , Egypt , Morocco , Saudi Arabia , Tunisia China , Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build nuclear reactors in Egypt
It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq
Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain said, “There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and that is a nuclear-armed Iran
The
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