Little Syria – not Russia, China or the USA – is said by many to have the world’s biggest supply of chemical weapons. Where did they come from? Saddam?
We may know some day, but that’s not our immediate problem as Syria descends into chaos. A huge WMD stockpile could fall into the hands of terrorists.
Meanwhile, Assad’s minions said today that those weapons would not be used internally, but warned they would be unleashed if there was external aggression toward Syria.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague declared the Syrian weapons threat “unacceptable“. It’s that and more. DebkaFile has this report of what we’re dealing with:
The chemical stockpile is kept at the al-Safira base northwest of Damascus in the care of the president’s personal guard unit which takes orders from Bashar Assad and no one else. If the heads of that guard saw the regime suddenly collapse – as it was expected to do last Wednesday when assassins murdered the men closest to the president – the American official says, “It is impossible to predict how they will act or what use they will make of the weapons systems under their guard.”
“They may decide to sneak out of Syria to Lebanon and take with them the entire arsenal as insurance for their safety and future,” he suggested.
According to our military sources, the arsenal which could be spirited across to Lebanon contains a lot more than chemical weapons. It also includes Scud C and Scud D surface missles capable of delivering chemical warheads and also the Russian-made advanced Pantsyr-S1 (NATO codenamed SA-22 Greyhound) anti-air missiles, which have been guarding the chemical stocks.
Fortunately, as of now, at least according to the same Debka report (yes, yes, I’m aware of their erratic track record but still…), Assad has not decided to ship his supply to Hizbullah and Hassan Nasrallah has not even decided to receive them. He might not want to incur the wrath of the Turks, the Joradians, the Israelis and the Americans all at once.
It would be interesting to see some forensics done on the Syrian chemical weapons. Where did they come from? Are the weapons ex-Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, locally produced or did they come from Saddam? Supposedly, Sarin has a relatively short shelf life. To enhance the shelf life of Sarin, it is typically stored as component chemicals and not as a mixed ready-to-use chemical weapon. Also, the Iraqis preferred to mix Sarin with mustard gas. I have no idea why they did that. Did the mustard gas enhance the shelf life of the Sarin or did the Iraqis do this merely to enhance lethality? Also, there is the question concerning who the Syrian chemical weapons were intended for. Saddam like to use his chemical weapons against the Iranians and his own people. Presumably the Syrian government also intended to use their chemical weapons against their own people but it seems they have too many chemical weapons merely to slaughter disgruntled civilians. Did the Syrians plan on using their chemical weapons against the Israelis? That’s an ugly scenario that hopefully will never happen, e.g. The Syrians hand the Hezbollah several tons of Sarin. The Hezbollah murders several thousand Israeli citizens with Katyusha rockets armed with Sarin warheads. The Israelis then respond by nuking most of Syria. Come to think of it: That’s an obvious end-game for Assad to play as he is about to be expelled from power.
The idea that a good part, if not all, of Saddam’s CW stock was moved to Syria before the invasion in 2003 is one that simply hasn’t gotten any traction in the main-stream media, this despite the fact that a number of sources reported on it, including no less than the Deputy CENTCOM commander at the time (Lt Gen DeLong, USMC). There were a number of examples of precursor chemicals that were found in Iraq, and those were primarily representative of France & Germany, which helps explain their severe foot-dragging & interference with us prior to the invasion (led by Chirac & Shroeder then). But the chemicals themselves were unaccounted for, so the press and the Left (but I repeat myself) have hounded the public for years with the idea that there never was a WMD program in Iraq. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Dismiss, though, the idea that the Syrian stockpile can be exclusively Iraqi. The Syrians long ago opted to crank up their CW (& BW?) stockpiles in response to the Israeli nuclear threat (as has often been said, CW is the poor man’s nuclear deterent). If Iraqi chemical munitions or stores are actually in the Syrian inventory now, it would be a good attempt at hiding something in plain sight. Analysts would have to investigate a possible distinction between the two. Expect a lot of obstacles thrown up by the Left & their brokers, not wanting to dilute their dogma of Bushitler having no reason to invade Iraq (other than the other obvious reasons), despite Saddam convincing a number (all of them, as far as I know — were there any dissenting voices or opinions on that subject beforehand?) that he had a viable weapons program.
[As for a nuclear program, there doesn't seem to be anyone investigating possible links with the Libyan nuclear program, with Saddam cautiously out-sourcing it with an aly of time.]
I wrote the above without yet viewing Eggplant’s entry, but we seem to agree.
The last few words, though, should read “an ally of that time”.
Interesting choice: Assad with WMDs or the jihadis take them over. I say let them decide without our input.