WMD conjecture after the 2003 invasion of Iraq

WMD theories in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq war concerns the failure by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) to locate stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction following the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The United States officially ended the search for Iraqi WMDs on January 12, 2005. Great controversy was generated when illicit weapons were not found. Given the force with which the American and British governments emphasized the WMD rationale, some observers believe Saddam Hussein miscalculated by deceiving coalition forces while others remain convinced that such weapons continue to exist. A number of alternative, speculative theories have been put forward to explain their disappearance.

Still hidden

Some experts, such as former Pentagon investigator Dave Gaubatz, allege that not all of the potential sites that may have WMD's have been searched. On February 12, 2006, he appeared on Fox News Channel and claimed he and fellow military investigators identified four underground bunkers with five foot thick concrete walls in southern Iraq believed to hold WMD. Iraqi informants had brought these sites to the attention of Gaubatz and his colleagues. Gaubatz claims that, for various reasons, these sites have never been inspected by the Iraq Survey Group or the CIA, and made a plea the sites be inspected. Gaubatz also reiterated his claims in a telephone interview with The New York Sun and later FrontPage Magazine.

Stockpiles transported to another country

Syria

Former senior Iraqi general, Georges Sada, has said that in late 2002, Saddam ordered that all the stockpiles of WMD were to be moved to Syria. On January 25, 2006, the former number 2 officer in the Iraqi Air Force appeared on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes saying he had used them against Kurds and Marsh Arabs. He also stated that up till the summer of 2002 they were in Iraq, and when Saddam realized the Americans were coming and the inspectors would arrive on November 1st, he took the occasion of Syria's broken dam and announced he would make an "air bridge".

They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.

The Iraq Survey Group was told that Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards from the Syrian border and replaced them with his intelligence agents who then supervised the movement of banned materials between Syria and Iraq, according to two unnamed defense sources that spoke with The Washington Times. They reported heavy traffic in large trucks on the border before the United States invasion.

On April 27 2004 Fox News reported that operatives confessed to planning a chemical attack against Jordan under the orders of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Jordanian officials said the plotters entered Jordan from Syria with trucks filled with 20 tons of toxic chemicals. The attack planned to kill some 80,000 civilians. The chemicals, reported as 'Iraqi nerve gas' by Hal Lindsey's TBN International Intelligence Briefing, were said to have been part of a much larger cache buried in Syria.

In February 2006, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a former Iraqi general who defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991, gave an interview to Ryan Mauro, author of Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq and founder of WorldThreats. In the interview, al-Tikriti, who was once known as the "Butcher of Basra", told Mauro:

I know Saddam's weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn't going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists. He also has wanted since he took power to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, whom he has a personal grudge against. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.

Al-Tikriti's interview has been featured prominently on conservative web sites such as FrontPageMag and WorldNetDaily, but hasn't received main stream press attention. Writing for Dragonfire, columnist Alex Koppelman found reason to doubt both Sada's and al-Tikriti's statements.

A similar claim was made by Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, a former Israeli officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from July 2002 to June 2005. In April 2004, he was quoted as saying that "perhaps they transferred them to another country, such as Syria." According to the New York Sun, General Yaalon told the paper more firmly in December 2005 that "[Saddam] transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria." The Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated in a December 23, 2002 appearance on Israeli TV that "Chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria."

In January 2004, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who defected to Western Europe, said in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he knows the three sites where Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction are kept inside Syria. According to Nayuf's source, described as a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence he had known for two years, Iraq's WMD are in tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria, in the village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, where there is a big Syrian air force camp, and in the city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of Homs city. Nayouf also wrote that the transfer of Iraqi WMD to Syria was organized by the commanders of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Republican Guard, including General Shalish, with the help of Assif Shoakat, Bashar Assad's cousin. Shoakat is the CEO of Bhaha, an import/export company owned by the Assad family. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice responded to this accusation by saying "I don't think we are at the point that we can make a judgment on this issue. There hasn't been any hard evidence that such a thing happened. But obviously we're going to follow up every lead, and it would be a serious problem if that, in fact, did happen."

Lebanon

American Internet newspaper World Tribune reported in August 2003 that Iraq's WMD may have been moved to Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley. According to the story, United States intelligence identified "a stream of tractor-trailer trucks" moving from Iraq through Syria to Lebaon in the weeks before invasion. WorldNetDaily followed up the same story in May 2004 adding affirmatively "much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley."

Former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw has also alleged that the Russians played an extensive role in transporting materials into both Syria and Lebanon, and claims he found that trucks were transporting materials to Syria and returning empty. Also, containers with warnings painted on them were moved to a Beirut hospitals basement. Russia and China were also alleged to have helped arm and then move WMD equipment.

Iraqi miscalculation

Saddam lied to retain power

On 14 December Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces. Time Online Edition reports that in his first interrogation he was asked whether Iraq had any WMDs. According to an official, his reply was: "'No, of course not, the U.S. dreamed them up itself to have a reason to go to war with us.' The interrogator continued along this line, said the official, asking: 'if you had no weapons of mass destruction then why not let the U.N. inspectors into your facilities?' Saddam’s reply: 'We didn’t want them to go into the presidential areas and intrude on our privacy.'" Later interviews with Saddam's military leaders indicated that Saddam didn't want it demonstrated through inspections that he didn't possess WMDs in certain places in order to pose a threat against those who might attempt a coup.

Saddam was misled

According to The Guardian in late 2003, British officials in Whitehall began privately circulating a theory that Saddam Hussein "may have been hoodwinked into believing that Iraq really did possess weapons of mass destruction." And as most of the informers for British intelligence were high level informers close to Saddam, the British were also fooled. The hypothesis "is open to the interpretation that the government is searching for an excuse, however implausible, for failure to discover any WMD in Iraq." Commenting on the findings of the Butler intelligence review six months later, USA Today reported that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service had "shockingly few reliable human sources inside Saddam's regime."

See also

• Operation Sarindar

External links

• For Diehards, Search for Iraq's W.M.D. Isn't Over Scott Shane New York Times