Are the Syrian Chemical Weapons The Same Ones We Were Looking For In Iraq Years Ago?

I recall that when then President Bush was looking for WMDs in Iraq,there were satellite photos of semi trucks transporting "something" out of Iraq and into Syria. Some claimed that this is what actually happened to the WMDs that would have justified our actions there, while others maintained that Iraq never had the ability to manufacture chemical weapons (then what did he use to gas all those Kurds?) and our intel was faulty due to Iraqi scientists and engineers telling Saddam they were indeed able to, out of fear of reprisals from Saddam if they told him they could not.
If Iraq couldn't manufacture these weapons it seems hardly likely to me that Syria could, but of course that's just my own conjecture. So just out of curiosity I did a google search and found this Claims that Assad sending chemical weapons BACK to Iraq.
Is this a shell game where the same stockpile of WMDs just get shuffled back and forth?

Those claims stem from a report some trucks crossed into Iraq without being checked....that's pretty thin....but could be
But then ...the US is wired into all of Iraq

reply to post by Neocrusader
We are (supposedly) out of Iraq now and the new Iraqi government is pro Assad. Iraq would be an ideal place to hide these weapons now,would it not? Especially if you already have the storage facilities in place.
Also, it was more than just a claim, I saw the sat photos.

I had the same thought. Here is my post on a thread here called "Boots on the ground (Syria)".

This is somewhat off topic, I know, but it makes sense to me now when I think of how Saddam hid his WMDs in Syria when we invaded Iraq and we didn't do anything to stop it. The USA knew about the WMDs in Iraq because we gave them to Saddam. We knew about and allowed Syria to hide them in order to set them up at some future date under the same pretext as Iraq. There will be boots on the ground in Syria as sure as there were boots on the ground in Iraq.

reply to post by abe froman

I have to agree that it's at least possible, maybe even likely. As far as producing the weapons, I didn't think that chemical weapons were that tricky. Anyway, the Russians supply arms to Syria, so why not chemical arms as well?

The frustrating part for me, is that all of the shouting about red lines and limited strikes, and all the rest of it will have no effect. We can't even look at Iran's nuclear program, and we know where that is.

Staying out of it would have saved us a lot of time and energy, but our politicians said we had a moral obligation to do something. Of course now, not doing anything is being trumpeted as a great victory.

If we had wanted to do something militarily, why not sit back and decide which group in Syria we preferred to have control over those WMDs, then support the other side?

Are the Syrian Chemical Weapons The Same Ones We Were Looking For In Iraq Years Ago?

I wasn't looking for them....were you? Were you in the military at that time on a mission to find those weapons? if so, are you talking to some of your fellow troops who are on ATS?

I recall that when then President Bush was looking for WMDs....

Huh? Now I'm confused, are you Bush's brother or sumpin?

i vaguely recall an iraq air force defector being paraded on fox news or some other outlet , claiming that saddams supposed wmds being moved to syria , but i dont remember how they were moved there . but as another poster pointed out , they were provided by the U.S. so technically they would be washingtons wmds.

abe froman
reply to post by Neocrusader

 

We are (supposedly) out of Iraq now and the new Iraqi government is pro Assad. Iraq would be an ideal place to hide these weapons now,would it not? Especially if you already have the storage facilities in place.
Also, it was more than just a claim, I saw the sat photos.

edit on 15-9-2013 by abe froman because: (no reason given)

as i've said time and time again, they have eyes in the sky. think satellites, and now drones.
nothing moves that can transport these things that is not being tracked.
and as i've said before, satellites back during the beginning of the iraq war were good enough to see a man on the ground.

now if your going to use wmd's have been moved excuse your gonna watch every site that is known and any and all traffic is going to be scrutinized. from start to finish of it's trip. they just aren't gonna ignore any thing that rolls up to these places and not watch them.

now some say that satellites only fly over so often, and can only see for so long. i say to that we know of how many satellites. and who to say that those we know of, what is on them or that we don't know. and then there are some satellites that we don't know of or at least we're not suppose to know.

then you have our sources on the ground. there are countless numbers of informants on the ground there. and it doesn't take a whole lotta money to get more everyday.

i'm not saying that some might get through. but there is no way the amount that they say are being moved and nobody knows where they are is bs.

just like they knew saddam had no wmd's in iraq, they know exactly what is going on in syria.

reply to post by abe froman


Syria having chemical weapons has been an "open" "secret" for decades. Syria has had them long before 2002/2003.

Bush Jokes About WMDs At White House Press Corps Dinner'


Bush says Iraq had no WMDs


How did Saddam get those chemical weapons to gas those Kurds?



Rumsfeld 'helped Iraq get chemical weapons'

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped Saddam Hussein build up his arsenal of deadly chemical and biological weapons, it was revealed last night.

As an envoy from President Reagan 19 years ago, he had a secret meeting with the Iraqi dictator and arranged enormous military assistance for his war with Iran.

History lesson: When the United States looked the other way on chemical weapons

In 1988, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ordered chemical weapons attacks against Kurdish resistance forces, but the relationship with Iraq at the time was deemed too important to rupture over the matter. The United States did not even impose sanctions.

ok i posted this in another thread, syria has had there own weapon capabilities, as far back as the mid seventy's or early eighties and they were better than iraq at making them, iraq did have more though.

here is a link to a pdf. it is areport written by one of syrias own back in 1997. syria even hinted back in the 90's they had chemical weapons.

M. Zuhair Diab is a Syrian-born international security analyst living in London. From 1981 to 1985, he was a diplomat with the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Although the Syrian government has never admitted possessing CW agents for offensive military use, a number of official statements have implied the existence of CW or production facilities. In a 1990 speech, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad said: Israel is still superior technologically; and it is capable of inflicting on the Arabs human disasters in case of war. But the Arabs can, with what they have, inflict the same disasters on it. If the word “disasters” in the Assad statement is given a broad interpretation, one can infer that it means hitting civilian and strategic targets with CW

Finally, President Assad, after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on May 1, 1997, replied to a journalist’s question about Israeli allegations that Syria was manufacturing CW by saying: Those who have nuclear weapons do not have the right to criticize others regarding any weapon which they possess. If they want disarmament, we should start with nuclear ones. We, the Arabs, are ready to get rid of other weapons. This oblique statement could be read as a confirmation that Syria possesses CW.

According to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, Syria “has had a chemical warfare program since the mid- 1980s.” 8 In 1988, a U.S. analyst described Syria’s CW capability as more advanced than that of Iraq, while noting that the latter had a larger stockpile

hope you didn't miss this.

U.S. analyst described Syria’s CW capability as more advanced than that of Iraq, while noting that the latter had a larger stockpil

these came from this report date 1997.

SYRIA’S CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS: ASSESSING CAPABILITIES AND MOTIVATIONS

there is much more, these qoutes came just from the first page and a half.

reply to post by hounddoghowlie

I had no idea the rabbit hole was this deep. Maybe those U.N. inspectors should be in the United States as well. I wonder how the US government would react to that.

when i think about all the stuff that the alphabet agencies know or do. and what the heads of governments say and push.

i think of what Joe Pesci/ David Ferrie character said to Kevin Costner/ Jim Garrison when they were talking about why the CIA killed Kenndy was killed on JFK.

"Everybody keeps flipping sides.
it's fun 'n' games man fun 'n' games."

reply to post by abe froman


The rumor mill turns and turns. I thought the US government provided Iraq with VX Nerve agent to kill Iranians (with blessings) and Kurds (without)?

Then the US Army destroyed Iraqi stockpiles of said weapons "left over" in the desert by blowing them up?

Isn't that what contributed to the Gulf War Syndrome so many vets reported?

Okay, so now... again.. there are WMD in the desert.

You guys do see the trend? WMD in Iraq. WMD in Libya. Requirements for submission to inspections of Chemical weapons (and any other actionable intel the recon teams may uncover). A UN mandate to pounce if Syria does not "fully comply".

Sounds like Syria is fully in the gunsights of the whole world now. Next reports will be Syria hiding WMD and refusing inspectors access and then...

Mandated invasion. Just give us our we fly zone already.

reply to post by intrptr

I think gulf war syndrome had more to do with all the weird pills they were giving us over there to supposedly guard against chemical attacks. Everybody was getting different pills too it was pretty weird. Thinking back on it, how can pills protect against those attacks any way?

abe froman
reply to post by intrptr

 

I think gulf war syndrome had more to do with all the weird pills they were giving us over there to supposedly guard against chemical attacks. Everybody was getting different pills too it was pretty weird. Thinking back on it, how can pills protect against those attacks any way?

You got me. The only thing I know about it was from "Jarhead". How accurate was that?

Atropine in auto ejectors is reserved for use in an actual chemical attack. The idea being that you are going to die, might as well be high. Atropine is a powerful hallucinogen found in certain mushrooms that shamans use to see.

The different pills might be testing as the American Army had no proven treatment at the time. By the way there is no proven treatment for most nerve agents. You either get exposed too much and die, or too little and survive.

The excuse that the pills were responsible for all Gulf War Syndrome cases is misleading. Many were exposed to the burning oil fields, Depleted Uranium and the blown up nerve agent stockpiles, too.

War is toxic, The first Gulf War was hell.

reply to post by abe froman


Well we are not fully out of Iraq
All the storage facilities had the crap blown out of em ( I know I was on the jobs )
And without seeming like an a hole - could you please provide a link to these photos youve seen and your qualifications in vehicle/munitions/wis/chem ordinance and sat imagery assessment

As I said - these trucks were not checked ...........therefore it's a wild speculation that they are transporting chem weapons ........unless you have special air phot X-ray eyes ......if you do u2u me .....could really do with those skills in my workplace

I know a guy who was on one of the search teams that went into Iraq before the invasion.

The weapons and manufacturing capabilities were there but the Iraqis had enough advanced warning that they cleared the "smoking guns" out before we got there. We found a lot of WMD's but anything less than a big shiny green warhead with a nuclear symbol on the side wasn't enough to satisfy the typical ignorant American.

When your Blackhawk lands at a cleaned out "milk factory" with fresh truck tire tracks outside and a sweaty guy in a lab coat greets you at the door with a bottle of milk in his hand as proof that nothing fishy is going on... it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it was all a dog and pony show.

You can thank bureaucratic red tape for the lack of evidence.