Posted on 02/22/2006 11:40:16 AM PST by pissant
WASHINGTON - Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration has come under heavy criticism for its inability to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Now some experts are saying that those WMDs did exist, but that they are not in Iraq anymore.
The 2006 Intelligence Summit, a three-day event held this weekend outside Washington, D.C., featured a who's-who of counter-terrorism and national security experts. One of them, Bill Tierney, worked as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq.
On Saturday, he provided translations of tapes featuring Hussein and other high-ranking Iraqi officials discussing Iraq’s secret WMD program.
In one of the tapes, Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, said that a biological weapons attack would be the easiest to arrange, and that "anyone could do it. They wouldn't finger us." In another tape, recorded in 2000, an aide tells Hussein that a factory had been built to produce plasma. Plasma is used in making nuclear weapons.
The tapes were recorded during the mid-1990s and later, showing, Tierney says, that despite the damage inflicted on his regime by Operation Desert Storm and U.N. sanctions, Hussein continued to pursue an illicit WMD program, with a little help from his friends.
“Saddam and Tariq Aziz are on tape talking about France and Russia helping them. C'mon, it's time to stop being the world's sucker,” Tierney remarked.
According to experts at the summit, Russia not only helped Iraq build its wmd capabilities, it even helped Saddam dispose of them. Jack Shaw, a former top Pentagon official who tracked Iraq's weapons programs, revealed for the first time his view that Russian Special Forces Units helped move Iraq's wmds to Syria and Lebanon, prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Shaw said, “The short answer to the question of where the WMDs Saddam bought from the Russians went, was that they went to Syria and Lebanon, along with the most powerful explosives in Saddam's arsenal.”
They were moved by Russian Spetsnaz units, out of uniform, which were specifically sent to Iraq to move the weaponry and eradicate any evidence of its existence.
Yossef Bodansky agrees. Bodansky is the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism, and author of The Secret History of the Iraq War.
“The major case where the Russians were involved was the evacuation of the forces--the entire Iraqi arsenal,” said Bodansky, “not just WMD, but also artillery pieces, tanks, troops, etc., that were arrayed for the defense of Baghdad, once Saddam Hussein realized that the game was all over.”
Bodansky says that the Bush administration knows that Hussein's WMDs are in Syria but doesn't want to open another front in the war on terror. Still, why not use this information to answer Howard Dean and other critics, who insist that Hussein had no WMDs?
Retired General Thomas McInerney, a Fox News military analyst, says that one reason could be that the administration wants Russia's help in the war on terror.
McInerney said, “Why would you put your quote ‘allies’ in an awkward position in the war on terror? I think that's probably why this has not been pursued.”
From a political point of view, it is probably a mistake. From a diplomatic point of view and going forward, it probably is not.
One expert told CBN News that thousands of more hours of Hussein's secret tapes may still be unaccounted for. And with them, perhaps, the answer to what really happened to Iraq's elusive WMDs.
Yep. They're going to start enriching uranium. Brazil poised to join the world's nuclear elite
And you're welcome. When things get under my skin, I tend to keep scratching. ;)
Thanks for that link, cgk.
I can imagine some agreement to that type. We won't publicly humiliate Russia as saddam's bed buddy, if they help us in the broader WOT.
Who knows. Most are probably in pretty crappy condition by now.
Exactly, if played right
Right, and nobody was ever killed by weaponized anthrax here in America, and in a few more years we'll probably be told that 9/11 didn't really happen either.
You mean "re-committed."
Thats for certain. A typical conversation that I've had:
Liberal: Bush lied about WMDs. No WMDs have been found.
Response: Dozens of 55 gallon drums of precursor material were found in camoflauged bunkers near military installations during the initial invasion of Iraq.
Liberal: Those were pesticides. No ready-to-use WMDs have been found.
Response: The Poles found a dozen cartridges with Mustard gas. An IED exploded last year had Sarin.
Liberal: Those were old weapons and they weren't a significant threat. No new ready-to-use WMDs were found that could kill a lot of people.
Response: There was enough Sarin for 8 million lethal doses in that single canister.
Liberal: But we haven't found a lot of such devices. No large stockpiles of new, lethal, well-labelled ,ready-to-use WMDs were found.
Response: Several hundred tons of partially-enriched uranium was removed from Iraq recently.
Liberal: Ready-to-use weapons grade?
Response: Enrichment equipment and plans have been found buried in the yards of important Iraqii scientists.
Liberal: See? Not ready to use. Bush lied.
"The NYT did everything they could to get us into the Iraq war. Ethically bankrupt."
That is a left wing myth. They were dead set against it from the outset. Just because they had one pro-war reporter (Judith Miller) and one pro-israel editorialist (Tom Friedman) does not make a pro war paper. They screeched about it like the gay little maggots they are.
And we never landed on the moon.
I'd like to see it on cbS, NBc, Cnn, aBC...might give me a reason to watch.
Bush bump -- the WMD will eventually be found!
Unfortunately, the Administration seems more than willing to pour gasoline on the MoveOn crowd's fire by agreeing, in part, rather telling these truths...
Yes!
Only hiring Laurie Dhue will ever get me to watch CNN again.
Yep. And the trail is still smoking.
No they don't. They just are not going to trumpet anything until all the ducks are in a row. Cheney recently siad that he still believes Iraq had WMD. Bush has said that "some" intelligence regarding WMD was mistaken (which it was).
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