Your desperate need to cling to one man out of around 55 (and several more that weren’t even in the pack of cards) as the one man who single-handedly (like Superman perhaps ?) carried out the WMD transfer while everyone else apparently remained oblivious is a testament to your unbelievable ability to shut out uncomfortable facts.

You’ve lost it. In your effort to argue whether Syria has Saddam’s wmds, which is a legit argument, you have entered a tangent for which you are absurdly wrong.

You’re the one who’s lost it. This is no tangent because you are making the absurd claim that this man was responsible for all the WMD transfer and program and no one else apparently knew anything.

You’re denying that Saddam Hussein knows more than Al Duri ? That his personal secretary ( one of the aces on the pack of the cards) and reportedly the guy who carried out all his orders to other ministers and was like I said, even higher ranked by the US army as an Ace knows it ?

IN any case, the point is not whether Al Douri knows more about this than any other individual. Even if thats correct, you are claiming that the fact that we have Saddam and all of Iraqs other senior officials (except his sons, who’re dead) and their top scientists is irrelevant to determining whether WMDs were moved to Syria. No, all the evidence is magically hidden with the one guy whom we haven’t found. And this guy magically managed to spirit away all his aides, all his documents and everything. And for what purpose would WMDs be moved just when they were needed?

And you still haven’t explained how the unbelievably incompetent Saddam regime that could not organzie a decent defense, was able to accomplish this great logistic miracle without a trace. [ And Why ?]

‘Hide’ does not equate to ‘publicly deny’, which is another tangent of your argument, which is undercutting you.

Deep, Deep Sigh. Clearly you are not interested in discussion if you’re indulging in such absurd wordplay. I could leave you to your bizarre worldplay and delusions, but let me point out the obviuous.

I said that it was absurd that the US government would hide (i.e. not publically reveal) any evidence that WMDs had moved to Syria out of concern over Syrian support for the insurgents (pointing out too that the US had not hesitated to confront Syria over Hariri).

Brian came back with the master piece

““hide” is very different from refusing to ‘publicly speculate’.”

I pointed out they had explicitly all but denied it, so they had publically commented on it, its not as if they refuesed to publically speculate.

Now you come back with the following masterpiece

“Hide’ does not equate to ‘publicly deny’,”

Well, yes it does. If you publically deny involvement of A with B (and you have reason to assume that A was involved with B), then you are hiding the involvement.

But forget all these stupid strawmen. I repeat — if the US had good solid evidence of movement of WMDs to Syria, they would not have basically denied it (see direct quote above) in the Duelfer report. That is my statement and we can debate that.

You’ve lost it. In your effort to argue whether Syria has Saddam’s wmds, which is a legit argument, you have entered a tangent for which you are absurdly wrong.

He is the politcal equivalent to Dick Cheney and Don rumsfeld, rolled into one.

“So they did publically deny it essentially.”

‘Hide’ does not equate to ‘publicly deny’, which is another tangent of your argument, which is undercutting you.

“Its mindblowing to imagine that the government would hide any possible movement of WMDs to Syria to avoid offending Syria.”

but everything else they do does blow your mind. “hide” is very different from refusing to ‘publicly speculate’.

They have established an aliance with Iran, based on the premise that the US might try military action:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4273471.stm

Just as we surround Iraq on the East and West, a US Syrian conflict would mean Iraq is surrounded to the East and West, by Syria and Iran.

Crediblity? Is that going to bring the UN in? Is that going to end the conflict in Iraq sooner? A big ‘no’ to both. Accusing Syria, or even presenting what we already know could only complicate the establishment of Iraq. If Iraq goes down the crapper, the wmd’s (potentially) going to Syria would be just a pickle on a giant sh*t sandwich.

Not great enough to keep Bush from being reelected by 20% more people than voted for him in 2000.

IZZAT IBRAHIM AL-DOURI-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izzat_Ibrahim_al-Douri-

Do we have confirmation that he is dead?

Given his close ties to Saddam-
“At the time of the invasion, Al-Douri, along with President Saddam Hussein and Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, were the three surviving plotters who brought the Ba’ath Party to power in a coup in 1968.”

His history with chemical weapons-”It is alleged that he played a key role in the chemical shelling of rebellious Kurdish villagers near the city of Halabja in 1988 that resulted in the deaths of 5,000 civilians.”

And he has been active, yet unaccounted for-”Following the fall of Baghdad, al-Douri went into hiding. US officials claimed that he was involved in the subsequent Iraqi insurgency against U.S. forces, directing and funding guerrilla attacks as well as brokering an alliance between Ba’athist insurgents and militant Islamists.”

“It was announced by Iraq’s defense ministry on September 5, 2004, that he had been captured in the town of Tikrit. However, later medical tests showed that the man in custody was a relative of al-Douri, not Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri himself.

Several Ba’athist web sites claimed that al-Douri had died on November 11, 2005, and Al Arabiya and the BBC reported these claims without specifying the sources. Other users of these web sites subsequently posted denials.”

No body. Extremely close ties to Saddam. Most likely candidate to oversee a chemical/biological research.

(I’m not stating this as reality, just a possiblity.)

I believe thye are still sorting thru the documnetary evidence. If there was a program, it was in serious violation of sanctions, and would at best be kept on a need to know basis.

Chem bio does not require the skill that nuclear wmd’s would, nor would they require a large chain of command, creating the paperwork. We did let ‘doctor germ’ go, but her dossier was made in the 90′s, and our intel since the expulsion of the UN in 98 has been non-existent. Most of the generals in the filed believed that they had it, as evidenced by the 20-30k new chem bio suits we found on our way to baghdad. French and german govts also believed they were there.

‘Senior’ people needed to know? Just the opposite-it had to be kept small as possible. No documents (yet)? Once again secrecy was necessary. Why did we keep getting tales from the inspecction team of having to wait outside facilites or being denied access. Why were their rooms bugged, if there was nothing to hide?

In a big hypothetical-IF there were wmds, they were smuggled out of the country with the ‘workers’ going with their projects. Syria is the only country that would allow it.

Exactly, which is why I said he didn’t kick them out in 2003 in response to a comment mentioning that Saddam had kicked them out without mentioning the date. Normally I wouldn’t bother to bring this up, but there has been the meme spread that Saddam kicked the inspectors out or did not let them in just prior to the war, which is not true.