Syrian comments and WMD

I heard a Syrian government spokesman interviewed yesterday on NPR. I confess little knowledge on Syrian involvement in terrorism, but his comments were pretty much what one would expect him to say: "we do not sponsor or tolerate terrorism; we have repeatedly told the U.S. that we are open to dialogue with them [when did dialogue become a verb?] on this topic; if they find any proof of terrorist activity among our people or in our borders and will come show us that proof instead of taking the case to the media, we will immediately take swift, severe action against the guilty parties. "

But here was the kicker: "This sounds very much like the U.S. run-up to invading Iraq, in which assertions were made without any proof, and which turned out to be patently false" (my paraphrase of his comments). I wonder for how many decades "WMD in Iraq" will be held up as the paradigm of American intelligence/posturing/rationalizing/willful blindness/etc. (Please don't dredge back up the arguments of whether we should have entered Iraq or not--that is not the point of this post. I'm simply wondering how long the non-WMD will be the lens through which America is viewed.)

And a quick question which I could find out with a little time but I'm hoping someone who knows will just answer for me: are today's Syrians the descendants of the ancient Assyrians?