Blogoland

An almost completely worthless article, hyped by Power Line, entitled: "Saddam's WMD Moved to Syria, An Israeli Says"

Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says.

The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was incorrect.

The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon told The New York Sun over dinner in New York on Tuesday night. "No one went to Syria to find it."

Ohhh-kaaaaay. Still, one can't help but wondering how in the world this guy knows what he knows. Do Ira Stoll and the Sun not think it's worth asking the Lt. General how he came to know where the WMD are? How they were "spirited" out of Iraq? If the good general won't say, the very least The Sun owes its readers is to put down the salad fork and offer an explanation of why he won't. And if he knows they were removed, wouldn't it follow he knows where they were taken? Did the Sun learn whether this knowledgeable general apprised Bush, or say, David Kay while he was wandering around Iraq coming up with a lot of nothing? Wouldn't that have been worth telling their readers?

Look, it is entirely plausible that Saddam did what this article alleges. But the article is so bereft of context and actual reportage that if this were printed in The WaPo or the NYT, it would be laughed off the page.