There’ve been stories floating just under the surface of the media sea (and occasionally coming up for air) for quite some time, alleging that during the run-up to the war, Iraq shipped most of its arsenal of banned weaponry to Syria.

Saddam certainly had enough time. We spent months telling him, “Attack coming, pal! It’s on the way, any day now! Here it comes!” It wouldn’t have taken genius brainpower to dispose of the evidence; dumb criminals do it every day.

Today, the Washington Times reports on the Iraqi shell game that may have enabled these shipments to take place: Saddam agents on Syria border helped move banned materials.

Saddam Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries, U.S. investigators have discovered.

The recent discovery by the Bush administration’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) is fueling speculation, but is not proof, that the Iraqi dictator moved prohibited weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into Syria before the March 2003 invasion by a U.S.-led coalition.

Two defense sources told The Washington Times that the ISG has interviewed Iraqis who told of Saddam’s system of dispatching his trusted Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) to the border, where they would send border inspectors away.

The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by U.N. sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

“If you leave it to border guards, then the border guards could stop the trucks and extract their 10 percent, just like the mob would do,” said a Pentagon official who asked not to be named. “Saddam’s family was controlling the black market, and it was a good opportunity for them to make money.”