"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

DUELFER, SADDAM, SYRIA AND WMD

WASHINGTON TIMES (hat-tip NRO's THE CORNER):

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. "ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war," Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA's Web site Monday night. He cited some evidence of a transfer. "Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined," he said. "There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation."

But Mr. Duelfer said he was unable to complete that aspect of the probe because "the declining security situation limited and finally halted this investigation. The results remain inconclusive, but further investigation may be undertaken when circumstances on the ground improve."

Arguing against a WMD transfer to Syria, Mr. Duelfer said, was the fact that all senior Iraqi detainees involved in Saddam's weapons programs and security "uniformly denied any knowledge of residual WMD that could have been secreted to Syria."

"Nevertheless," the inspector said, "given the insular and compartmented nature of the regime, ISG analysts believed there was enough evidence to merit further investigation."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My goodness. Hanging on to the "The WMD might be in Syria" bit.

What pathetic lengths people will go to to avoid admitting error or holding their leadership accountable.

Truly sickening.

Reliapundit said...

i think it says a great deal about you, mccoy, that you trust saddam and assad more than duelfer.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Saddam, Assad and I are such great friends. I trust them ever so much... except I don't recall referencing either Saddam or Assad.

While "Coulter-esque" dichotomies like that might be popular on FOX News, most people move beyond that sort of reasoning once they get out of primary school.

The fact that such illogic still permeates American politics doesn't say much.

Anonymous said...

Sure easy to move all those weapons when we have 30 satellites looking over every piece of land in Iraq.

Please....this has been the most retarded argument EVER. They didn't have them when we attacked and what they had was from the first gulf war (all but decayed and unusable). All the evidence says so. It would be so refreshing if just once your baffoun President would just admit he made a mistake. He's such a pansy.

Anonymous said...

what d'ya mean? saddam hid it all in the bekaa valley and in Iran...those nuclear sites are a coverup for saddam's WMD warehouses!