Posted on 11/19/2005 6:21:28 PM PST by digital-olive
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005 12:15 p.m. EST New Documents Reveal Saddam Hid WMD, Was Tied to Al Qaida
Recently discovered Iraqi documents now being translated by U.S. intelligence analysts indicate that Saddam Hussein's government made extensive plans to hide Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 - and had deep ties to al Qaida before the 9/11 attacks.
The explosive evidence was discovered among "millions of pages of documents" unearthed by the Iraq Survey Group weapons search team, reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes.
In the magazine's Nov. 21 issue, Hayes reveals that the document cache now being examined contains "a thick stew of reports and findings from a variety of [Iraqi] intelligence agencies and military units."
Though the Pentagon has so far declined to make the bombshell papers public, Hayes managed to obtain a list of titles on the reports.
Topics headlined in the still embargoed Iraqi documents include:
• Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001)
• Formulas and information about Iraq's Chemical Weapons Agents
• Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map)
• Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs
• Ricin research and improvement
• Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam
• Memo from the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997)
• Iraq Ministry of Defense Calls for Investigation into why documents related to WMD were found by UN inspection team
• Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment
• Correspondence from [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to [the Military Industrial Commission] regarding information gathered by foreign intelligence satellites on WMD (Dec. 2002) • Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals
(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Now THIS is what needs to be declassified. Well... that and the satellite photos i know exist showing weapons being unloaded in the Bakarra valley in Syria and then incinerated as the US troops were invading Iraq.
(yes... they do exist, i've seen them)
And this was not made public because . . . ?
"And this was not made public because . . . ?"
Because it would bolster Bush's argument. Come on, haven't you been listening the past 2 years. Good news for Bush ... not to be reported. Bad news for Bush ... sing it from the mountain tops.
Thanks for the post.
probably because they want to be sure that all of the documents are authentic so they cannot be falsely accused of misleading again.
Sunday Telegraph
Saddam's WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief
By Con Coughlin
January 25, 2004
David Kay, the former head of the coalition's hunt for Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction, yesterday claimed that part of Saddam Hussein's secret
weapons programme was hidden in Syria.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned
as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that
unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war
to overthrow Saddam.
"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we
know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of
material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's
WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria
Interesting reading, eventho it's Newsmax
Has this been verified by DebkaFile?
If so it's hugh.
Because it's NewsMax.
Good grief, man, I'm not talking about the concept that the WMDs went to Syria, I'm talking about the satellite photos you claim you've seen. Why haven't THEY been made public?
This is series.
No, no, no . . . I'm talking about MaDeuce's sat photos!!!
Why haven't THEY been made public. Is everybody watching a football game and posting at the same time or something? Geez
Somebody else mentioned this this wee. Millions of pages in Arabic need declassifying and translated. 27,000 boxes in Qatar.
Beebers going off all over MSM newsrooms.
It seems to me to be obvious and provable that the 9-11 hijackers were involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11. The only remaining question is, is there any rational reason why those guys would have gone to anybody OTHER than Saddam Hussein for anthrax? I mean, I can't think of any. The guy who's the best in the world at that sort of stuff lives in your own back yard and you're gonna go somewhere else??
good point!
Welcome to FR!!!!!
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10111
Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Washington Times | October 2, 2003
On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since.
As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.
All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless of the circumstances.
The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we sponsored.
Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.
The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals: Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war—Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.
The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war — the technological documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks.
Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 — when Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.
Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection, since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq—ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).
It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad — even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a good price.
Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing.
Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to worry about after all.
It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible."
The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its danger. On the contrary, it increases it.
I thought I'd read this earlier, but I read so many things in a wee(k)'s time, sometimes it all blurs together. Would you happen to remember the source of the first article?
this was an article in the vanguard claiming that there was a un report showing that iraq had moved wmds out of the country before,during,and after the war... however there were no sources listed on the article ( I believe?).
thanks
If this existed (I can't believe that it does), why the hell would this not be released? Any credible evidence of WMD's being moved to Syria would give complete cover to the Bush administration. there is no way they would not release proof of WMD's if it really existed.
do you have access to these sat photos?
I call total and complete BS.
Has anything been officially released for anyone to believe regarding this issue from a proper source yet?
No, so when it is I will be thrilled to take this seriously. Until then, this is like the portable lab trucks in Iraq.
I'd like to hear good stuff to, but verified.
And exactly how could they prove that it really is WMD's without actually going into Syria? The press would do their usual "without indisputable proof, we'll go with the completely implausible innocent explanation".
We had to go into Iraq when we did to eliminate the threat, in spite of the reality that all the evidence of the WMD's would be destroyed, and what wasn't destroyed would be ignored by the MSM.
I know this article is un supported, however I hope that is is true and look forward to seeing evidence supporting it soon.
People get too hung up on the fact that there wasn't an active WMD program. There was certainly intelligence (albeit incorrect) indicating that Iraq had WMD's. As Iraq wouldn't allow inspections, the US had to make a decision based on the intelligence it had. I find it very ironic that the same people screaming that the Bush administration should have acted on the pre 9/11 intelligence are now screaming that Bush shouldn't have acted on the pre Iraq war intelligence. You really can't have it both ways (unless you are a Democrat)!
If these exist, they are classified and you're posting about them...well, something seems amiss.
Well, that depends on how you define "active". My own belief is that Iraq had some WMD's, which the Russians helped them dispose of. I remember right before we went in that Putin said we wouldn't find any WMD's. He made it as such a statement of fact that I figured at the time that the Russians had succeeded in getting rid of the evidence.
Most of their "active WMD program" was in the form of having the capability to ramp up production as soon as they got sanctions lifted and a clean bill of health from the UN inspection team. Lifting of sanctions was the path that the UN was unalterable going down short of the US deposing Saddam.
Iraq was a real threat to our security.
Have a look through this old FR thread, there are some pictures showing truck movement:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1259230/posts?q=1&&page=101
Also some prewar pics here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030205-1.html#39
I'm looking for the satellite images of the convoys heading to Syria, hope I still have the links....
OPSEC
could be the reason.
I know this sounds lame, but I can't remember where I saw them. It was one of those very quick stories that the media told once, then dropped it when someone realized it was good news for Bush.
Where in Syria they may have went:
http://www.2la.org/syria/wmd.html
This Hayes fellow was on Rush's show this week talking about this. He said the amount of info is staggering and is being translated still. Once it's all translated it then must be declassified.
I got out of my truck at that point so I missed the rest of Mr. Hayes phone call.
I disagree - I don't think Iraq was a threat to the US when we invaded. However, that is besides the point. Iraq was obligated to allow weapons inspectors free access as a term of the first wars cease fire.
The US had reason to believe they were a threat and no way to verify that they weren't. As Iraq was in violation of the cease fire, the US had justification to resume the original conflict.
I agree with you in the fact that I also think Iraq would have resumed their WMD program once the UN sanctions were disregarded, became unenforceable, or otherwise removed. However, as stated previously, they were not a significant threat at the time of the invasion.
No it wouldn't necessarily be out there. Especially if the way the information was gained was highly classified. KNOWING that we have this information could, possibly, tip off the enemy that a part of their secrecy has been broken and prompt them to change methods.
It's SOP in the Intel world.
I'm not saying it IS, but I am saying it is a good possibility. Only time will tell in the long run.
Now, I am much more skeptical of this type of claim. I also think that if the Bush administration had this proof, they would have found a way to get it out there.
A quick point of clarification - I still think the US was justified in going to war with Iraq - see prior posts for reasoning.
I love what Newsmax has to say, most of the time anyway. I just don't always trust them. They tend to do alot of vague reporting and don't list many sources, if any at all.
I'm not sure if we're really in disagreement or not. The status before we went in was that Saddam was not going to do anything on a short-time basis to delay sanctions from getting lifted, and they weren't going to be lifted until some time after the date we chose to get rid of Saddam so I'll certainly go along with saying that Saddam wasn't necessarilly a threat on the day we attacked. If you disagree that the sanctions would have eventually been lifted, well, that's where we'll disagree.
If his regime was left in place with no sanctions (and along with that no UN review of his weapons), he would have resumed his WMD programs and his war against the US, fought by way of supplying weapons and funding to terrorist groups.
Back before we attacked, if you accept that the inevitable future is that Saddam will acquire WMD's and use them against our interests, the time to alter that future is while it can still be altered (and before he actually GETS the weapons, ala North Korea). In 2002 and before, there was already discussion of lifting sanctions. We chose the correct time to attack. Any delay would have put us at greater risk, since the momentum was toward lifting sanctions, and the farther down that path we went, the more difficult it would have been to prevent it.
I can well understand your skepticism.
I think we had to go to War against Iraq. Not, however, for any real or alleged WMD's.
He had violated the cease fire agreement that he had with us by refusing to be fully forthcoming in his dealings with the weapons inspectors and for the fact that he had, long before the invasion, begun to fire at our planes.
This alone was reason enough for us to go kick his arse back into the stone age. That is the only argument I have ever made for us going back into Iraq. Those things are public knowledge and proveable.
The ONLY thing I think we did wrong here was this.
There was NO Congressional Declaration of War, and there by god should have been.
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