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Jan
28
WMDs
January 28, 2006 |
Back a couple of years ago the rumour was that the WMDs in Iraq had been removed to Syria. These rumours and claims were never followed up in an MSM which was far too interested in proving that the war was based on lies and was all about oil.
Now Ira Stoll writing in the New York Sun has an interview with ex-Iraqi Airforce second in comand, Georges Sada who has written a book in which he states,
Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.
“I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots,” Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.
The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including “yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel.” The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.
The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
the new york sun
The truth here is hard to pin down. We are not given the names of the pilots and so the infomation is hearsay. However, it is hearsay which has come up before. I would assume that even the CIA might be capable of obtaining the names of the pilots and then back tracking to see if any of Sada’s story can be taken seriously.
It is a necessary effort. Barrels of chemical or biological weapons floating around the Middle East are not something which can be ignored. If there is even a slight possibility that these actually do exist they need to be tracked down and made safe.
What will be interesting will be to see what, if anything, the more rabid of the American left will do with this. Will they simply ignore the story or will their doubtful narrative be so seriously shaken that they will have to go after Mr. Sada. Hard to tell from here.
Meanwhile, on the right this story needs to be followed up, skeptically and carefully. Powerline gets it about right:
This is one issue on which hearsay and character witnesses won’t cut it. We need what Othello referred to as “the ocular proof.” Let’s hope that Sada’s scheduled meetings next week with Senators Sessions and Inhofe of the Senate Armed Services Committee result in further investigation of Sada’s claims.
powerline
The meetings with the Senators may well tell the tale.
Comments
3 Comments so far
The guy is selling a book. By all means his claims should be investigated, but my BS meter is already redlining.
Mine too Matt; but these rumours predate the book. It seems very clear that the Saddam regime was shipping money in truckloads to Syria, why not the WMDs.
The evidence on WMDs seems to be very much of the form, “The Dog which didn’t bark”. We know that Saddam has had WMDs in the form of chemical weapons af various sort. We know that after extensive and intensive searches none of these showed up in Iraq. We know that every intelligence service in the world thought he had those weapons.
The current explaination is that the weapons may have existed but were destroyed and then Saddam, or at least his regime, ran a disinformation campaign to fool the West into thinking he did have those weapons so that the West would not invade. This requires a leap of faith that only the most hardened anti-warrior of left or hardest right is capable of.
While I certainly don’t accept Sada’s claim in itself, it is a great deal more plausible that the “now he has them, then he got rid of them and only pretended to have them so, what, he could be invaded?
Actually that disinformation scheme is classic and cost effective. Why wouldn’t a strapped totalitarian not play the card? It reminds me of my time in 1991 teaching in Poland in a town with row upon row of Warsaw Pact tanks. When we got familiar to the locals they had to tell us not to worry as there was never fuel to actually run them no matter how mightly they looked.