https://spectator.org/60689_new-york-times-rediscovers-weapons-mass-destruction-iraq/
"Indeed, senior officials in the U.S. and other governments, with no less access to critical information than the ISG, reached a very different conclusion about Iraq’s proscribed weapons: they were moved to Syria, on the eve of the war. Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper headed the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). In October 2003, Clapper met a group of journalists, telling them that “satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ‘unquestionably’ had been moved out of Iraq,” the New York Times reported then.
Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s Defense Minister, was Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Force during OIF. Gen. Ya’alon subsequently said much the same as Gen. Clapper: on the war’s eve, Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria. No one went to Syria to find it.” That view was echoed by Iraqi general Georges Sada, former Deputy Chief of Saddam’s Air Force.
But the White House responded with thunderous silence, as senior figures expressed these views. The late Joseph Shattan, an author, journalist, and speechwriter, including for the Bush White House, was one of those unique individuals who genuinely spoke truth to power—and did so with rare good humor. Some four years ago, Shattan published “The Man Who Elected Barack Obama,” in this magazine, holding Karl Rove responsible for the Bush administration’s crucial failure to respond to the Democratic assault on OIF. On Thursday, the Daily Beast echoed his complaint: Rove judged the issue a political loser and thought it best forgotten—without understanding that such a fundamental matter could never be forgotten, as Shattan wrote.
Last Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Islamic State appears to have used mustard gas in July against Kurdish fighters in Syria. (Defense One subsequently published a similar report.) In June, the Islamic State overran Muthanna, 35 miles northwest of Baghdad, where Saddam’s regime manufactured chemical agents and filled chemical munitions. The Obama administration dismissed the significance of Muthanna’s capture. However, the area, repeatedly bombed, is littered with partially destroyed, rusty, leaking munitions. Potentially, many dangerous chemical shells are now in the hands of the Islamic State."
And at least twice more since then.
