Attention DU people: Obama DNI choice believes Syrians have Saddam’s WMD's

[Ballygrl]

Since people from the DU read here I was hoping it's OK that I post this story here. Years ago I remember reading a story that Israeli Intelligence reported shipments of "something" being transported from Iraq to Syria, this was when we were *****footing around at the UN. Whenever someone brings up no WMD's found in Iraq I bring up Israeli Intelligence, and of course I bring up what Clinton and other Democrats said about Iraq and WMD's before 9/11.

Well looky here, seems an Obama appointee believes WMD's were shipped to Syria

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/05/obama-dni-choice-believes-syrians-have-saddams-wmd/

Obama DNI choice believes Syrians have Saddam’s WMD?

posted at 12:35 pm on June 5, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Well, maybe he did at one point, so expect this to become a big deal in James Clapper’s confirmation hearings to replace Dennis Blair as the Director of National Intelligence.  Washington Times reporter Eli Lake did a little research on Barack Obama’s choice for the thankless position (Clapper would be the fourth DNI in five years) and discovered a nugget that comes straight out of the so-called neocon argument for war against Saddam Hussein:

President Obama’s choice to be the next director of national intelligence supported the view that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq sent weapons and documents to Syria in the weeks before the 2003 U.S. invasion.

A senior U.S. intelligence official said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and current undersecretary of defense for intelligence, will be the next DNI. A formal announcemente is expected as early as Saturday. …

Gen. Clapper headed the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency between September 2001 to June 2006. The NGA is responsible for creating maps and terrestrial imagery and also assesses what is called “measurement and signature intelligence,” or MASINT, the intelligence function of analyzing such things as radar signals and the composition of air particles, soil samples and other physical characteristics of the earth.

On Iraq, Gen. Clapper said in an interview with The Washington Times in 2004 that “I think probably in the few months running up prior to the onset of combat that … there was probably an intensive effort to disperse into private homes, move documentation and materials out of the country. I think there are any number of things that they would have done.”

The comments came amid the debate over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, which some U.S. officials had said were moved out of Iraq prior to the invasion of Iraq with the assistance of Russian military intelligence forces.

From this description, it seems as though Clapper parsed his words carefully.  He never mentions WMD, at least not in the portion quoted by Lake.  However, there was no real reason to cart anything else out of Iraq just prior to the invasion.  Saddam Hussein certainly had plenty of conventional weapons, and no one had suggested that Saddam needed to disarm himself of those.  In fact, it would make no sense at all for Saddam to have moved conventional weapons out of Iraq just as the US poised to invade.

Clapper has some other problems as well.  Leadership in Congressional intel committees wanted a civilian in the post, and someone more closely tied to Obama himself.  The obvious choice would have been Leon Panetta, the CIA Director, but Panetta just won a big turf war with the departing Blair, which would have made that move a demotion in practical terms.  Likewise, Clapper has spent the last couple of years arguing that the Pentagon should have final authority over its intel budgets, not the DNI, which makes the position even weaker.

If anything, Clapper’s nomination to the post highlights both the lack of competence at the White House and the structural problems created by the reorganization of the intel communities five years ago.  Why would Obama choose someone who has spent the last couple of years attempting to make the position weaker?  And why are we still looking to find the next unlucky candidate to get all the blame and little authority, rather than undoing the 9/11 Commission “reform” and fixing the very obvious problems in organization, lines of authority, and turf battles in the American intelligence community?  Blair’s resignation gives us an opportunity to fix those problems, but Obama seems intent on making them even worse.

[dandi]

I've always believed Saddam shipped them to Syria or the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. I just can't see a major league asshole like him willfully giving up all his toys. I think the Bush administration refrained from pushing that line because they had no irrefutable proof and didn't want to be seen as making excuses, and it really wasn't that large an issue for anyone but the Loony Left anyway. There was plenty of casus belli besides WMDs as set forth by the IWR, not the least of which were Iraq's multiple violations of the armistice from the first Gulf War.

On edit: Looks like The Hive has been stirred:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8501341

Xavyman (13 posts)      Sun Jun-06-10 10:03 PM
Original message
Obama nominates, praises man who said Iraq had hidden WMD in Syria
 Edited on Sun Jun-06-10 10:14 PM by Xavyman
Meet our new director of national intelligence:

"Washington (CNN) -- Calling him one of America's "most experienced and most respected intelligence professionals," President Barack Obama has nominated Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper to be the new director of national intelligence." June 5, 2010

Digby provides a flashback:


The official, a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ''unquestionably'' had been moved out of Iraq.



http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/very-serious-koo...

More here: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003296.html

donco6  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jun-06-10 10:07 PM
Response to Original message
1. Sigh. 
 What to say?

BrklynLiberal  (1000+ posts)        Sun Jun-06-10 10:12 PM
Response to Reply #1
3. sadly..that is my reaction as well..

gateley  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jun-06-10 10:17 PM
Response to Original message
6. Sincere question - where does Obama get the suggestions for his nominees/appointees?
 There have been few that have have been met with a  from DUers.

This guy is really ODD looking, too -- kind of scary.

LakeSamish706  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jun-06-10 10:17 PM
Response to Original message
7. I call bullshit to this guys observations! How the hell does he know that this was WMD's
 being sent out the country? Another attempt to legitimize the Bush Administrations attack on Iraq is what I see.

 
 

 
 

[Ballygrl]

I totally trusted Israeli Intelligence when they said it.

[thundley4]

I totally trusted Israeli Intelligence when they said it.

And the exact opposite is true of most members of the DUmp.

[Vagabond]

This is what strikes me though.  If they were under Hezbollah control, those idiots would use them.  Assad is a snake, but he is ultimately a snake that wants to live, so my guess is Syria.  This is also what the former Iraqi fighter command commander believed is what happened.  He said that Saddam used the cover of sending aid to help flooding in the area.

[chitownchica]

I love to see the DUmmies disappointed.   Good times 

[crockspot]

Hotair story shared.

[Ballygrl]

Here's an article from a few years ago that never got much play:

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/

Iraq's WMD Secreted in Syria, Sada Says
By IRA STOLL, Staff Reporter of the 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."

Democrats have made the absence of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq a theme in their criticism of the Bush administration's decision to go to war in 2003. And President Bush himself has conceded much of the point; in a televised prime-time address to Americans last month, he said, "It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong."

<SNIP>

Mr. Sada is an unusual figure for an Iraqi general as he is a Christian and was not a member of the Baath Party. He now directs the Iraq operations of the Christian humanitarian organization, World Compassion.

[AllosaursRus]

Anyone with half a brain, which eliminates DUmmies right away, knows Suddenly Insane moved his most valuable stuff out of the country to Syria. Pissed me off when "W" pussied out and didn't stand up for that fact. If he had of, perhaps Syria would have fessed up and much of it turned over to the idiots at the UN!

The one single thing that always irked me about "W" was his inability to stand up to his critics and meet them head on!

[BEG]

LakeSamish706  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jun-06-10 10:17 PM
Response to Original message
7. I call bullshit to this guys observations! How the hell does he know that this was WMD's
 being sent out the country? Another attempt to legitimize the Bush Administrations attack on Iraq is what I see.

How do you know he didn't?  I'm fairly certain that he would know more about it than any of the idiots at DU ever could. 

[Ballygrl]

Anyone with half a brain, which eliminates DUmmies right away, knows Suddenly Insane moved his most valuable stuff out of the country to Syria. Pissed me off when "W" pussied out and didn't stand up for that fact. If he had of, perhaps Syria would have fessed up and much of it turned over to the idiots at the UN!

The one single thing that always irked me about "W" was his inability to stand up to his critics and meet them head on!

That's the main reason I stopped giving to the RNC, I called them constantly and asked them to please fight back, I got so tired of Bush acting like a gentleman, I said to the RNC that the Democrats are fighting in the gutter and there are times where Republicans need to get dirty, it just went over there head!

[TheSarge]

I totally trusted Israeli Intelligence when they said it.

GEN Tommy Franks said in his autobiography that our preadator drones tracked more than one large convoy moving between the border crossing from Iraq to Syria just before we invaded in 2003.

[AllosaursRus]

GEN Tommy Franks said in his autobiography that our preadator drones tracked more than one large convoy moving between the border crossing from Iraq to Syria just before we invaded in 2003.

The only people who don't think that's where they went, hate America and the fact if it weren't for us, the world would be a far more dangerous place!