Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (230771)	4/26/2005 3:42:30 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577029

Syrian Role in Hiding Iraq Weapons Doubted in Report April 26 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. investigators have found no evidence Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction such as chemical arms to Syria before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to a final assessment from the inspection effort. The Iraq Survey Group said based on ``evidence available,'' its inspection team determined ``it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place.'' The inspectors cautioned that security risks in Iraq had curtailed their probe, and given the ``the insular and compartmented nature'' of Saddam Hussein's regime, further inquiry was warranted. The 92-page supplement to a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency unit, released yesterday, said senior Iraqi policy and intelligence officials denied any knowledge of arms transfers to Syria before March 2003. The findings cast doubt on a possible explanation for the absence of weapons whose presumed existence was used by President George W. Bush and his top officials to justify the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Hussein. Charles Duelfer, special adviser to the director of central intelligence and head of the survey group, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in October that Iraq didn't have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, based on preliminary findings. Unofficial Transfers While no evidence was found of any movement of weapons to Syria, the Iraq Survey Group, or ISG, was unable to rule out unofficial transfers, according to the final report. ``It is worth noting that even if ISG had been able to fully examine all the leads it possessed, it is unlikely that conclusive information would have been found,'' the report said. Michael Ledeen, a former adviser to Secretary of State Al Haig and a consultant to the National Security Council during the Reagan administration, said it's unlikely the inspectors' interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists yielded the truth. ``They're afraid of getting prosecuted for making WMDs, if they made any,'' said Ledeen, now a scholar at Washington's American Enterprise Institute. ``They've seen what's happened to other regimes, the Nazis for example.'' ``Residual risks'' from Hussein's weapons program remain, including scientists and materials, the report said. Given the hiatus in weapons research, neither pose immediate threats to the U.S. or Iraq, the report said. Regime Scientists ``So far there is very little evidence that either foreign jihadists operating in Iraq or Iraqi insurgent groups are attracting experts from the former regime's WMD programs,'' the report said. That could change, the report suggests. There are limited job opportunities in Iraq right now, even in universities where ``the largely secular WMD experts may be uncomfortable with the emerging religious direction of Iraqi academic life,'' the inspectors wrote. The pool of former regime scientists with dangerous expertise has shrunk since the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the report said. While the report finds no evidence Syria or Iran have recruited WMD scientists, it does say the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq may have smuggled an Iraqi rocket scientist into Iran at the request of its government. The Iraq Survey Group said it continues to discover small amounts of decayed chemical weapons that Hussein mislaid or partially destroyed before 1991, and calls these remainders insignificant because ``there are not enough extant weapons to cause mass casualties.'' bloomberg.com