Jack Kelly Sunday

This time, he's writing about Syria. While the whole column isn't about WMD, he begins with it.

I decided, after doing a little research on what's in today's P-G, to take a somewhat different approach. Let's contrast and compare what he's saying about WMD in Syria NOW with what he's said in the past.

Should be fun, no?

Today:

An explosion ripped through a military base near Aleppo in northern Syria July 23, killing 15 Syrian soldiers and dozens of Iranian engineers. Summer temperatures of up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit caused an ammunition dump to "cook off," the Syrian government said.

Since the explosion occurred at 4:30 in the morning, some were skeptical of the government's explanation.

Jane's Defence Weekly is reporting in its Sept. 29 issue that the blast occurred while the Syrians and Iranians were attempting to put a chemical warhead on a Scud C missile. Most of the injuries were caused by the dispersion of nerve and mustard gas.

I'm wondering why he doesn't say whether these chemical weapons were the same weapons that he'd written previously were shipped into Syria before the war.

Take a look. He wrote on February 5, 2006:

Special Republican Guard brigades loaded yellow barrels with the skull and crossbones sign on each barrel onto two airliners from which the seats had been removed, [former Iraqi Air Force General] Georges Sada said. There were 56 flights in all.

After pointing out some skepticism as to Sada's story, he went on to list some other sources telling similar stories of Saddam's WMD being moved into Syria before the war, even ending the piece with:

Those who have bet their political futures that Saddam had no WMD may be starting to sweat.

And then on November 6, 2005 he wrote:

The Iraq Survey Group found no large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq. This could be because no such weapons actually existed.

Or it could be because they were moved to another country between the time Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq and when the war actually began.
"We've had six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official told reporter Kenneth Timmerman.

And then on May 2, 2004:

...Israel's military chief told an Israeli newspaper there is "no doubt" that Iraq possessed both chemical weapons and the means to deliver them. In the first two days of the war, the United States -- acting on tips from Israeli intelligence -- destroyed the aircraft Saddam had prepared to carry chemical munitions, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said. The munitions themselves were buried, or transferred to other countries.

"We very clearly saw that something crossed into Syria," he said.

"We have six or seven credible reports of Iraqi weapons being moved into Syria before the war," a senior administration official told Kenneth Timmerman of Insight magazine.

A Syrian intelligence officer, in letters smuggled to an anti-regime activist in Paris, identified three sites in Syria where Iraqi WMD are being stored, Timmerman said. The sites were the same as those identified earlier by a Syrian journalist who defected to Europe.

Note the overlap from the previous article. The bit of information from Kenneth Timmerman was used both times.

And then on February 1, 2004:

But Kay also said there was ample evidence of ongoing WMD programs in Iraq, and programs to build missiles with longer ranges than permitted by U.N. resolutions. There were indications, he said, that some weapons of mass destruction may have been moved to Syria. These statements received little attention from journalists.

And finally this on December 21, 2003:

The recently retired director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. James Clapper, told Agence France Presse in October there was evidence from satellite imagery that Saddam moved WMD into Syria just before the onset of hostilities.

So with all that "evidence" that Saddam's WMD were moved to Syria, why isn't J-Kel connecting the dots and saying they were once Saddam's?

Or if there is evidence they're not, why not say that? Wouldn't that be an even scarier scenario: The stuff the Iranians and Syrians were trying to load onto scud missles was from some other additional source than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

I wonder why no connection.