Proliferating Thoughts

Google news is carrying what may be best described as an amusing story today. The billing is impressive but unfortunately the substance is rather less so. The headline and key passage;

Another Former High-Ranking Iraqi Official Confirms WMD Went to Syria

RM: Why do you think Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are in Syria? Why didn’t he use them or simply destroy them before the war?

IT: I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation.

Clearly this story is part of the continuing effort in some sectors to paint Syria in the darkest colors possible while maintaining that the 2002/03 WMD justification for the invasion of Iraq was valid.

The problem is that this particular effort is simply ridiculous. The headline could easily lead a casual reader to the conclusion that the “official” was directly involved with the shipping of WMD to Syria, or at least the decisions supporting that movement.

Alas no, the blurb at the start of the interview tells us most of what we need to know.

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti says he was southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator. Units under his command dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He was known as the “Butcher of Basra” due to his campaigns and defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991.

So essentially we are to accept that someone who defected prior to the first Gulf War is in a position to confirm shipments of WMD to Syria, not just a decision or intent to ship them, but actually confirm that items were placed on vehicles of some sort and transported across the border to Syria. However, we should not belabor this point as Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti has “discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew.” This might also be described as hearsay. Apparently his information, and that of his contacts was not as convincing for the International Survey Group as it was for his interviewer and the “article’s” original author, Mr. Ryan Mauro.

Digging a little further I am surprised that Google News even bothered to pick this up, but realistically it is probably the result of a machine search. I like to think, naively perhaps, that no intelligent editor would run with this story.  However by far the worst thing about this item, and frankly it has to make you think a little harder about all such things that come up on sites like Google News, is that it actually dates back to early 2006. The interview was reposted by the Mr. Mauro on his website in June 2008 and then to the International Analyst Network webpage today which appears to be the reason that it was picked up. Essentially a bit of self-promotion by Mr. Mauro has resulted in this item rising from a well-deserved place in the news graveyard.

We can only hope that no-one else decides to give new legs to what might be best described as a zombie news-story.