The last two days have seen two stories appear in two newspapers about the same report; The Iraq Survey Group’s Final Report on the search for WMD’s in Iraq. One would think that given both the Washington Post and Washington Times were looking at the same document, both publications would report the same conclusions. After all, that’s the whole purpose of a final report; we’ve spent a couple of hundred million dollars and Congress and the American people want to know what the experts have found.

Turns out, the experts can’t make up their minds.

Here’s the meat from the Washington Post story dated 4/26:

U.S. investigators hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have found no evidence that such material was moved to Syria for safekeeping before the war, according to a final report of the investigation released yesterday.

Although Syria helped Iraq evade U.N.-imposed sanctions by shipping military and other products across its borders, the investigators “found no senior policy, program, or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD.” Because of the insular nature of Saddam Hussein’s government, however, the investigators were “unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.”

That’s a fair assessment if you read the gist of the report published here.

But today, the Washington Times came to a significantly different conclusion:

The CIA’s chief weapons inspector said he cannot rule out the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were secretly shipped to Syria before the March 2003 invasion, citing “sufficiently credible” evidence that WMDs may have been moved there.

Inspector Charles Duelfer, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), made the findings in an addendum to his final report filed last year. He said the search for WMD in Iraq—the main reason President Bush went to war to oust Saddam Hussein—has been exhausted without finding such weapons. Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s.

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. “ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war,” Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA’s Web site Monday night.

So which is it? Did Syria collaborate with Saddam to spirit WMD’s across the border in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq? Or didn’t they?

Back in February, I did a post on a story that appeared in the Daily Telegraph detailing the outrageous behavior of UN weapons inspectors who got drunk in their hotel rooms while huge convoys of trucks were moved right under their noses from Iraq to the Syrian border:

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday.

In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions.

Then there was the Russian connection to the large scale movement of trucks to Syria prior to the invasion:

“The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units,” Mr. Shaw said. “Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units.”

“Most of Saddam’s most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said.”

The evidence gathered by the Duelfer group would seem to point to the total absence of WMD in Iraq prior to the invasion. But all of these comings and goings between Iraq and Syria prior to the war would also seem to indicate the Saddam was shipping something to Damascus that he didn’t want to fall into enemy hands.

Somehow, I have the feeling it wasn’t baby formula.

These two stories bring to mind the old political joke told by every President since at least Herbert Hoover about the Chief Executive wishing for a one armed economist because all of his advisors were saying “on the one hand…and on the other hand…”

Perhaps if events play out in Syria where democracy were to triumph, we may someday unravel the mystery of what the heck was being shipped to that country in the weeks prior to the war. Until then, we’re stuck wishing for a one armed WMD expert.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

UPDATE:

Right Voices believes that even if no WMD was found, going to war with Iraq was still worth it:

Yet, I still strongly believe in our having invaded Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein and his murderous regime from power. The report also stated that the missing equipment was never located and it could have easily been given to terrorists and/or insurgents to produce chemical and biological agents.

Spot on. The link between Hizballah in Lebanon and Syria is well established as the terrorist group’s armed militia acted as enforcer for Bashir Assad’s bully boys. Now that Syria is ostensibly out of Lebanon, it remains to be seen what Hizballah will do. Will they maintain close relations with Syria? Not if they want to accomplish anything in the political arena in Lebanon. It will be political death to be seen as a toady for Assad. My guess would be that Hizballah will lean more heavily on their sponsors in Tehran – which does not bode well for Israel or us for that matter.

Captain Ed nails CNN for ignoring Duelfer’s conclusions, concentrating instead on his statement that no official communication between Saddam and Syria could be found that pointed to a WMD transfer. Yeah…like this is something they’re gonna write down? On paper?

Had Duelfer and the ISG meant to conclusively state that no WMD transfers of any kind had occurred, it would not have been left as a footnote or an addendum. That usage indicates an explanation for an unfulfilled mandate of the mission, not a positive conclusion, as a close read of the language used indicates.

I try not to believe that there’s deliberate spinning of the facts in a case like this where the MSM pulls things out of context to make a political point. But with the facts staring you in the face as it does with the difference between the Post story yesterday and the Times today, what else are we to believe?