Saddam stashing his WMDs in Al Qaim makes a lot sense. Trying to think like a psychopathic tyrant: Saddam's biggest worry with WMDs would have been their falling into the hands of potential enemies, e.g. the Iranian, Kuwatis, Jordanians, Turks, etc. Also having physical access to them up to the very last minute in his war with the US would have given Saddam many tactical options. My guess is he had most (all?) of his WMDs stashed on flat bad trucks and hidden in the large buildings in Al Qaim that were used for super phosphate manufacture, uranium processing, hiding Scud launchers, etc. There is a good quality road between Baghdad and Al Qaim that would have enabled rapid transport of the WMDs back to Baghdad if he needed to actually use those weapons. Likewise, it would been a short hop across the border to Syria if he needed to get rid of the weapons quickly. Of course, once he gave those weapons to the Syrians, they would be gone forever.

The flaw with this theory is the possibility of the weapons being found by UN weapon inspectors during the diplomatic phase or through satellite observation. If he was moving these weapons about, our satellites or intelligence people on the ground would have seen them. If he did stash the WMDs in Al Qaim, odds are they have been moved to Syria. One wonders what Syria is going to do with all of this stuff? Gasing Kurds isn't exactly their style. Also if the Syrians got fresh with Israelis, then the Israelis would simply nuke Damscus. If these WMDs are in Syria then they're probably useless white elephants. Why did the Syrians accept these useless weapons if this is true?

Gary