WMD conjecture after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
The official findings by the CIA in 2004 were that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein "did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them.
After much criticism against the war over the years that followed, every figure that previously supported the claims of WMDs in Iraq, with the exception of U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, acknowledged that they had been wrong.
"[8] Hans Blix from the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission said in his early 2004 book, Disarming Iraq, that Saddam had successfully been deterred from keeping WMD stockpiles by outside pressure.
It is "perfectly obvious", wrote Pacepa, that the Russian GRU agency helped Saddam Hussein to destroy, hide, or transfer his chemical weapons prior to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Anticipating the arrival of weapon inspectors on November 1, Sada said Saddam took advantage of the June 4 Zeyzoun Dam disaster in Syria by forming an "air bridge", loading them onto cargo aircraft and flying them out of the country.
[13]In January 2004, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who moved to Western Europe, said in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he knows the three sites where Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are kept inside Syria.
"[14] A similar claim was made by Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, a former Israeli officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from July 2002 to June 2005.
"[17] The Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly also reported Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as having said in a December, 2002 appearance on Israel's Channel 2, "... chemical and biological weapons which Saddam is endeavoring to conceal have been moved from Iraq to Syria.
"[18] In February 2006, Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, a former Iraqi general who defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991, gave an interview to Ryan Mauro, in which he stated: I know Saddam's weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980s that dealt with the event that either capitals were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation.
Salon magazine editor Alex Koppelman doubts both Sada's and al-Tikriti's story, arguing that Syria's decision to side with the coalition against Iraq in 1990 would have nullified any previous military deals.
James R. Clapper, who headed the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in 2003, has said U.S. intelligence tracked a large number of vehicles, mostly civilian trucks, moving from Iraq into Syria.
Charles Duelfer, head of inspectorate at time of publication, summarized the group's conclusion: "Based on the evidence available at present, ISG judged that it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place.
"[25][26][27] In April 2004, Jordanian officials announced that they had thwarted a planned chemical attack on Jordan's intelligence headquarters by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists that could have killed 20,000 people.
[28][29] Acting under the orders of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, self-professed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, officials said the plotters entered Jordan from Syria with trucks filled with 20 tons of explosives.
[31] In February 2006, a Jordanian military court sentenced nine men, including Iraq's al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to death for plotting the attack.
[32] American Internet newspaper World Tribune reported in August 2003 that Iraq's WMD may have been moved to Lebanon's heavily fortified Bekaa Valley.
"[36] Former Russian Foreign Intelligence director Evgeny Primakov rejected the story, telling Kommersant that "all of Shaw's sensational revelations are complete nonsense.
In a story on Dave Gaubatz, Melanie Phillips quoted Loftus as saying "Saddam had the last laugh and donated his secret stockpile to benefit Iran's nuclear weapons programme.
Writing for the South Asia Analysis Group, he cites unnamed Pakistani sources claiming Khan agreed to aid Iraqi intelligence officials "who sought his help" in having some prohibited material airlifted from Syria to Pakistan to prevent it "falling into the hands of the UN inspectors."
"[45][46] Former Pentagon investigator Dave Gaubatz alleges he found hidden WMD sites in 2003,[47] but that his reports were ignored and then destroyed as part of a cover-up by the CIA, Department of Defense, and Bush administration.
This idea was dismissed by Wired,[49] and Salon, who pointed out that it required President Bush, military leaders, and Senate Democrats to have all colluded in a massive conspiracy theory.
[50] The final report of the Iraq Survey Group, by Charles A. Duelfer, special adviser on Iraqi weapons to the C.I.A., concluded that any stockpiles had been destroyed long before the war and that transfers to Syria were "unlikely.
