The Rockefeller-Syria Connection

Long-time readers are intimately aware of my well-documented view that Saddam Hussein shipped his WMD stockpiles to his brother Ba'athists in Syria for safekeeping several months prior to the March 2003 invasion that toppled his regime. The underlying strategy was self-evident: go limp before U.S. forces, discard uniforms and blend into the civilian population, and then, with al Qaeda's help, launch the post-war "insurgency" with the aim of inflicting enough casualties on Coalition troops, in combination with the apparent absence of the WMD that were the leading, if far from only, justification for the war, that American left-wing elites would turn against the mission, force a Vietnam-style retreat, and allow Saddam to return triumphantly to power with his arsenal in hand.

Frontpage magazine's interview with former UNSCOM inspector (1996-1998) Bill Tierney provides redundant evidence of that gambit. What brought me up short was a connection made by Sister Toldjah over at Blogs for Bush that had me slapping my forehead in "I coulda had a V-8" fashion for not thinking of it myself:

While certainly it's possible that Saddam started preparations sometime in the summer of 2002, it's also very possible that the seed was planted in his head that the US aimed to finally disarm Iraq by a top official in Syria, who was told by none other than US Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in January 2002 that he (Senator Rockefeller) believed that the President was preparing to invade Iraq. By Rockefeller's own admission:

SENATOR ROCKEFELLER: No. The – I mean, this question is asked a thousand times and I’ll be happy to answer it a thousand times. I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.

Jay Rockefeller, for any who don't know, is not just a "big-mouthed Democrat U.S. Senator"; he is the vice-f'ing-chairman of the Senate f'ing Intelligence Committee. Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the "heads of state" of Saudia Arabia, Jordan, and SYRIA gave his "view" a bit more credence because of that sensitive position? As though - oh, how should I put this - he was LEAKING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ABOUT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION's STRATEGIC INTENTIONS VIS-A-VIE IRAQ?

And since Syria has been a long-time resident of the State Department's list of terrorism sponsors, and its troops have actively crossed over into Iraq to fight with the "insurgents" against Coalition forces, that makes them a hostile power.

You'll have to forgive me if I cough and gag uncontrollably at the (far from surprising) fact that this isn't being treated as the blockbuster scandal it is. Any historically literate American would be hard-pressed to find any other time since the nation's founding when sitting legislators thought nothing of traveling abroad to rat out our foreign policy intentions to enemy regimes for no better or more noble reason than domestic political advantage. Once again, one doesn't want to toss around words like "traitor" indiscriminantly, but it's difficult for me to come up with a whole heckuva lot of alternative designations.

I think Rockefeller should be summarily expelled from the Senate at minimum. Even tossing his worthless ass off the Intelligence Committee - which has precedent from when Vermont's Pat Leahy was also a sieve during the Reagan years - would be a step in the right direction.

But couldn't Republicans at least not make the numbers on the committee even (3-3)? Or perhaps bar Democrats from it altogether? Having Rockefeller co-chair it you might as well just invite an al Qaeda representative to join it and be done with it.