Retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the successful U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, said Thursday that he saw persuasive evidence that Saddam Hussein had transferred his weapons of mass destruction to Syria.
"We saw all kinds of suspicious activity which, all of us could have speculated, meant for certain that weapons were being moved into Syria," the top military man told WWRL Radio's Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter.
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Gen. Franks added that while he "never saw anything that was absolutely convincing, the possibility remains" that Saddam's WMDs were removed.
Franks was responding to claims by his second in command, retired Gen. Michael DeLong, who told Malzberg last year:
"Two days before the war, on March 17 [2003], we saw through multiple intelligence channels - both human intelligence and technical intelligence - large caravans of people and things, including some of the top 55 [most wanted] Iraqis, going to Syria."
Asked about repeated claims by Democrats that President Bush "lied" about Iraq's WMD's, Franks told Malzberg:
"There was no one misleading anybody, except that Saddam Hussein took credit with his Arab brothers for having weapons of mass destruction."
The ex-CENTCOM commander was referring to his own conversations with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, each of whom told him that Saddam had apprised them of his WMD capacity and was crazy enough to use it.
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