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Assad's fall could solve Iraqi weapons mystery
If Syria's regime falls, the U.S. will be in a better position to answer one of the lingering questions from the long Iraq War: Did Storied Baghdad...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... ship weapons of mass destruction components to Syria before the 2003 American-led invasion? An opposition leader tells The Washington Times that a new, secular democracy in Syria would allow outside inspectors to survey and ensure destruction of what is believed to be one of the largest stockpiles of chemical weapons in the Middle East. Western and Israeli intelligence suspect that Bashir al-Assad's regime in Syria also owns weaponized nerve agents. Spy satellites tracked a large number of truck convoys moving from Iraq to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 invasion, raising suspicions that some carried weapons of mass destruction. The invading Americans never found stocks of such weapons in Iraq, despite two years of searching by the Iraq Survey Group, the joint Pentagon-CIA organization formed to hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"[The Iraq Survey Group] was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that [weapons of mass destruction were] evacuated to Syria before the war," he said. "Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined," Mr. Duelfer said. "There was evidence of a discussion of possible ... collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and [the Iraq Survey Group] received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that [weapons of mass destruction were] involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation." Posted by: 2012-01-23 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=337638 |