(IBD) Syria's Chemical Weapons Came From Saddam Hussein's Iraq

[Daniel John Sobieski]

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the  security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam  Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq.

King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the  verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling  into the hands of al-Qaida.

"One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a  political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall  into unfriendly hands," he said.

The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad  may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein's Iraq into Syria  before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If so, this may be the reason not much was found in the way of WMD by  victorious U.S. forces in 2003.

In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi  Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a  comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets."

It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass  destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein's  WMD threat.

As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to  cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded  the planes with chemical weapons materials.

There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam  collapse.

There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada's comments came 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."

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq  and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John  Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology  security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and  intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.

Read More At IBD:  http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/071912-618875-syria-chemic...