This morning's key headlines from
GenerationalDynamics.com
- Mali militants may be responsible for 'accidental' shooting of Mauritania's president
- A Nato invasion of Syria becomes increasingly plausible
- Syria's chemical weapons revive the debate of Iraq's WMDs
Mali militants may be responsible for 'accidental' shooting of Mauritania's president
Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (Reuters)
Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is recovering from a
gunshot wound in a Paris hospital on Sunday where he was flown after
he was "accidentally" shot by a Mauritanian army unit that
misidentified his automobile convoy. However, unnamed security
sources say that the attacker was an unknown gunman who "directly
targeted" Aziz. Aziz is considered an ally of France in the war
against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and has been targeted
by AQIM in the past. His support is considered essential in the
looming fight to recover northern Mali from al-Qaeda linked
terrorists. AFP
A Nato invasion of Syria becomes increasingly plausible
Turkey's armored vehicles deployed to the Syrian border early this month (AA)
With American, British and Turkish troops and military equipment
massing on the borders of Syria, the possibility of a joint military
action in Syria by all three Nato members appears to be increasingly
plausible. 150 American troops are in Jordan to help train the
Jordanians learn how to defend against a chemical weapons attack from
Syria, if one occurs. On the Syrian border farther north, British
military officers are assessing how to defend Jordan from rockets that
are constantly falling from across the border. On Turkey's border
with Syria, Turkish forces have been exchanging fire with Syrians, and
officials have threatened more robust action if the shelling from
Syria into Turkey doesn't stop. Gulf News / AP
Syria's chemical weapons revive the debate of Iraq's WMDs
A major ideological battle is starting to erupt over the question of
whether Syria's chemical weapons were sent from Iraq by Saddam Hussein
just prior to the American ground invasion in 2003. It's known that
Iraq had WMDs in the 1980s and 1990s, and most intelligence services
around the world believed that Saddam continued to do so in 2003. It
was fear and anxiety of Saddam's WMDs that triggered the 2003 ground
invasion. (See
"The Iraq war may be related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." from
2008.) But the ground invasion failed to find any WMDs, leading to an
ideological argument over whether the intelligence reports should have
been believed. (This is an ironic discussion, since if it hadn't been
for the ground invasions, we presumably still wouldn't know whether
Saddam was developing more WMDs, and we, Iran and Israel would be
totally panicked about the possibility.)
So the question of what happened to Saddam's WMDs has never been
answered. One theory is that Saddam sent them to Syria, placing them
under the control of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. James
Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence in the Obama
administration, wrote in October 2003 that he believed, based on
classified satellite imagery, that Saddam had sent the WMDs to Syria,
and perhaps to other countries as well. These may be part of
the chemical weapons stockpiles that al-Assad has today. It's known
that al-Assad is developing other WMDs, particularly after the Israeli
Air Force destroyed Syria's nuclear facility in September 2007.
So the whole situation is full of ironies. The only reason we know
for sure that Saddam didn't have WMDs is because of the 2003 ground
invasion. But now we don't know what happened to the WMDs that he
previously had, or whether he transferred them to Syria. NY Times (2003) and Daily Beast (July 2012)
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