Syria 'n stuff

Ben Johnson at FrontPage Magazine- June 18, 2004:

.... Jordan has been the recipient of Iraqi WMDs in the past. Most recently, Jordan seized 20 tons of chemical weapons while foiling an al-Qaeda plot to kill 80,000 people. The stockpile they uncovered contained 70 different kinds of chemical agents, including Sarin and VX gas. (Remember, last month Iraqi insurgents lobbed two chemical weapons at U.S. troops armed with Sarin and mustard gas.)

On April 17, Jordanian King Abdallah claimed these poisons came from Syria – but experts say Syria only has the capacity to produce small amounts of these weapons, not the 20 tons al-Qaeda possessed.

Significantly, David Kay and others have said Syria acted as a depository for Saddam’s WMDs. Former Justice Department official John Loftus has made a compelling case that even  more WMDs are presently buried in Syria. And these are merely the latest in a long line of WMD discoveries, inside Iraq and out.

You may be forgiven if this is news to you: The mainstream media have chosen to ignore or downplay the significance of the UN’s vindication of President Bush’s policies....

 Apparently, one must live in Australia to get the truth. The Sunday Times’ headline? “UN uncovers banned weapons.”

 

The New York Sun ~ January 26, 2006:

 

The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."

Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."

[....]

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.

"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."

Mr. Sada said that the Iraqi official responsible for transferring the weapons was a cousin of Saddam Hussein named Ali Hussein al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali." The Syrian official responsible for receiving them was a cousin of Bashar Assad who is known variously as General Abu Ali, Abu Himma, or Zulhimawe.

Short of discovering the weapons in Syria, those seeking to validate Mr. Sada's claim independently will face difficulty. His book contains a foreword by a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, David Eberly, who was a prisoner of war in Iraq during the first Gulf War and who vouches for Mr. Sada, who once held him captive, as "an honest and honorable man."

In his visit to the Sun yesterday, Mr. Sada was accompanied by Terry Law, the president of a Tulsa, Oklahoma based Christian humanitarian organization called World Compassion. Mr. Law said he has known Mr. Sada since 2002, lived in his house in Iraq and had Mr. Sada as a guest in his home in America. "Do I believe this man? Yes," Mr. Law said. "It's been solid down the line and everything checked out."

Said Mr. Law, "This is not a publicity hound. This is a man who wants peace putting his family on the line."

Mr. Sada acknowledged that the disclosures about transfers of weapons of mass destruction are "a very delicate issue." He said he was afraid for his family. "I am sure the terrorists will not like it. The Saddamists will not like it," he said.

He thanked the American troops. "They liberated the country and the nation. It is a liberation force. They did a great job," he said. "We have been freed."

 

Now fast forward to today. This AP report appeared at the Wall Street Journal just half an hour ago:

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian regime threatened Monday to use its chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, in its first ever acknowledgment that it possesses weapons of mass destruction....

 

 

Meanwhile, it's Ramadan. How can we tell?

BAGHDAD - A string of bomb attacks across Iraq killed at least 50 people on Monday and wounded 144 more, police and hospital sources said, in one of the bloodiest days in the past weeks....

 

The Telegraph (UK) reports much higher numbers over two days, including: 21 attacks in 13 towns and cities, more than 100 dead and 172 reported wounded.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

The people who populate today's American Left are the spiritual offspring of the American Commies of the 1930s and 40s -- a group that never, never, never admitted to being wrong about anything. Five minutes after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, America's Commies were busy anathematizing Hitler -- the very man they had venerated as a staunch Soviet ally five minutes before. Never once after that did a single member of the CPUSA ever say, "We were wrong about Hitler." They simply pretended their support for the guy had never happened -- and went on from there. The Lefties in control of today's major media are just as insouciant, just as carefree, about the truth as were their Commie forebears. So they will do what the Left always does: pivot on a dime and tell us that WMD that could have originated in Iraq are now showing up in Syria -- while completely ignoring the fact that just a few years ago they were telling us that "Bush lied, people died." These people never miss a chance to show us how twisted they really are.

[Yael]

Mannie, you're so right. Have you noticed recently how the endlessly repeated "Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich" have somehow morphed into the issue of whether or not to extend "Tax Cuts for the Middle Class"?? The middle class got tax cuts in the Bush years? Who knew??

[Elan]

Who knew, indeed. Perhaps the middle class should be thanking Obama for bringing them the good news.

[Yael]

Yes, we really should be thanking him :)

[Mannie Sherberg]

The "tax cuts for the middle class" mantra is just one more in an endless series of examples of Leftist disregard -- contempt, really -- for the truth. The tactic is a clever one -- and over the years it's given the Left a considerable boost politically. The idea is not so much to tell one Big Lie as to tell a multitude of small lies, middle-sized lies, humongous lies -- all kinds of lies on every imaginable subject. As conservatives long ago discovered, the cumulative effect of this torrent of lies is overwhelming: catching up with one lie and nailing it is hard enough; catching up with an infinitude of lies is impossible. Sure, some of these lies are eventually exposed -- but never all of them. That's why so many Americans walk around -- without realizing it -- with heads stuffed full of falsehoods which, because they've heard them repeated so often, they accept as the gospel truth. It takes a pretty high degree of shamelessness to build political success on misleading the people -- but then shamelessness is the chief ingredient in the DNA of the Left.