Saddam Hid The Weapons

Ira Stoll, of the New York Sun, reported today on charges made by Saddam Hussein's number two Iraq Air Force official, General Georges Sada. Sada has a new book out this week, "Saddam's Secrets," which states that Saddam transferred his weapons of mass destruction to (surprise!) Syria during the lead-up to the Iraq War.

"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."

I've been talking about this since before we invaded Iraq. I was frustrated up to here (hand way above head) when President Bush practically told Saddam, "I'm giving you a whole month to cover up your tracks, before we come in after you." What did anyone expect Saddam to do while we had our military cooling its heels in Kuwait? Take inventory of his WMDs and leave the list prominently on his desk for us to find?

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."

Said Mr. Bush, "We did not find those weapons."

That's the other frustrating thing that President Bush did. If I can figure out that Saddam would hide his weapons, most likely by sending them to Syria (and maybe on to Lebanon), then why didn't President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld, or Secretary Powell, or anybody else say that they believed Saddam could have shipped them to a friendly nation for safekeeping? Why did they say they thought the intelligence turned out to be wrong? That just gave the Democrats a big, giant club to beat the President with, when the Democrats should have been the ones to be clubbed.

The discovery of the weapons in Syria could alter the American political debate on the Iraq war. And even the accusations that they are there could step up international pressure on the government in Damascus. That government, led by Bashar Assad, is already facing a U.N. investigation over its alleged role in the assassination of a former prime minister of Lebanon.

Let's hope Sada's allegations pan out. It's really the only thing that makes sense of all the facts we have:

1. Saddam used WMDs on his own people
2. We warned Saddam we were coming
3. When we invaded, we didn't find WMDs

The next test of President Bush's good sense will be to see if he tries to inspect Syria for WMDs. He should, whether he goes through the UN (bad idea, but likely to be encouraged by Secretary Rice) or through our own or friendly nation's (Israel? Britain?) intelligence service (better idea). The last thing I need is more frustration with the President.

And the last thing the world needs is another crackpot, like Assad, with WMDs.