REVEALED: What Israel Bombed in Syria

Somewhere near the U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Doha, Qatar are storage facilities holding miles of documents once owned by the government of Saddam Hussein. A total of 600 translators a day work equal eight hour shift to go through these documents, about 95% of which remains unread.

As John Loftus writes in today's Frontpage magazine, some VERY interesting information has been found so far.

• Saddam's WMD's: roughly one quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990's. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid to late 1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003, but were stolen from under the Americans’ noses and sent to Syria. Syria is one of eight countries in the world that never signed a treaty banning WMD, and now is the storehouse for much of what remains of Saddam's WMD Empire. This was the target of the recent Israeli air strike.

• In the last year of his regime, Saddam was in fact still trying to expand his chemical weapons capability. In January 2002, his advisors discussed research into a precursor for Sarin nerve gas. In September 2002, for example, only seven months before the war, Saddam's Military Industrial Commission approved the illegal production of the precursor chemicals used to make Tabun nerve gas. Four days later, another office discussed plans to import a banned compound, phosphorus pentasulfate. The UN had required Iraq to prove that it had destroyed all of its stocks of this chemical, which is a precursor for VX nerve gas. Instead, they were importing more of it. In October 2002, Saddam's Director of Planning ordered more than forty tons of various chemicals which, when mixed together, would make Zyclon B – the poison gas used by the Nazis to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Saddam's scientists appear never to have met a poison gas they did not like.

• French arms manufacturers... had been selling to Saddam right up to the opening of the war. They later explained that France had sold the Roland [anti-missile weapon] to Syria, and that Syria was not covered by the embargo. The French claimed to be shocked that Syria had sold the Roland to their fellow Ba'athists in Baghdad. It should be noted that, for more than a year prior to the French sale the Israeli press had been publicly exposing Syria as an arms front for Saddam.

• Translating shelf miles of documents, however, may take decades. In the meantime, enough of Saddam's secret files have been translated to illustrate one clear trend over time: through the time of Hans Blix and the run-up to the invasion, Saddam had absolutely no intention of destroying his WMD.

• The Israelis independently corroborates [the reports] naming of Deir al Zour [Syria] as the burial place for Saddam’s WMD, Debkafile also explained why the same Deir al Zour location was chosen by the Syrians four years later for the site of their nuclear facility. It was a matter of necessity, not choice. The Israelis claim that the large black nuclear processing building had to be constructed close to Saddam’s WMD storage area because the Syrians planned to take Saddam’s highly enriched uranium out of the storage site and irradiate the Iraqi HEU with North Korean plutonium. The result would be a factory to produce enough toxic fuel for thousands of extremely poisonous “dirty bombs.” which could be loaded onto warheads and launched at Israel. Had the irradiation plant been completed, Deir al Zour might have became a name as infamous as Auschwitz.

• It is still too early for a conclusive assessment, and many more documents will need to be analyzed, but it appears that Saddam may have been Al Qaeda's long-term secret partner in launching successful terrorist attacks against the western countries. Saddam's secret files contain direct references to aiding anthrax attacks in the United States, planning the "Blessed July" bombings in London, coordinating the assault on the National Guard Headquarters in Saudi Arabia, and committing numerous attacks against Israel. Uf it is true, as a cursory initial reading of these files suggest, that Saddam was the secret partner of Usama Bin Laden, then the history of terrorism will have to be rewritten. Whether the answers gain a wide audience or not, they will soon enough be known. For we live in an age of documents. There are no more secrets, only deferred disclosures.

I have just picked out a few of the tidbits of the article in the summary Loftus, a Democrat says that he is now convinced the war was justified:

...it gives me no pleasure to concede that Bush and Blair were right. As a lawyer, I must conclude from this new documentary evidence and my own interviews that the leaders of the Coalition were completely ignorant of the underground Iraqi WMD facilities, but, in hindsight, I must concede that the discovery of Saddam’s secret nuclear program now provides sufficient legal justification for the use of force. Bush and Blair may have blundered into Iraq based on false evidence and exaggerated analysis, but looking back with the benefit of Saddam’s files; it turns out that they may have done the right thing for the wrong reason. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.

There are so many more disclosures in this article Shattering Conventional Wisdom About Saddam's WMD's, I recommend you read the entire piece.