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.
If you think the NY Times is conservative, neo-, paleo, or otherwise, than you are probably should be reading the Daily Kos, not FR.
Yup, but somehow after they bombed the power grid, there was no plasma left. Maybe Syria has it?
:)
Of course they existed. The U.N. inspection teams put their hands on them, tagged and inventoried them, and took samples. Warehouses full of the stuff.
This, after Hussein had used some of them against the Kurds.
Further, right before the last election, the IAEA leaked [distorted] stuff to the U.S. media to slam the President right before the 2004 elections. No one remembers the claim we didn't safeguard these various elements of a nuclear program, when we invaded?
Saddam himself was a WMD too.
Laugh all you want. Let somebody else figure out what happened, while you laugh.
Don't forget the weaponized chem-attack attempt in Jordan in '04, by folks recruited and trained in Iraq when Saddam was in power. Al-Zarqawi oversaw the prep and secured funding for the operation, and he was operating freely in Iraq after he was driven from Afghanistan when the US toppled the Taliban.
LOL, as I said keep believing. Somebody has to I suppose...Now this presentation. I take it this was after Powell himself said in 2001
but before 2004 when he conceded
that Iraq may not have possessed any stocks of weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.
You know what I think? I think Colin wasn't a 'true believer' after all. Good he left the group then. Can't have any doubters casting facts onto the belief system can we now? Especially one that's built on such fragile underpinnings...
Whatever you're smoking, kindly refrain from blowing it in this direction.
Yeah, too bad you weren't Secty. of State at the time. The entire world would be a peace by now.
My thoughts exactly...."Why isn't Bush worried about setting the WMD questions straight?" Answer: He already knows where they are and they are in OUR hands, are with someone that can be trusted, or have been destroyed....
Then how do you explain the pervasive view that Saddam had such weapons and such programs which was current before the Iraq War? There is still a question of what WMD material he had, and at what point he got rid of it, and how.
Seems to be a fair number of folks here that think the NY Times is the authority on WMD's.
Nah, you'll feel right at home. Give it a try.
And to hear he and Tariq Aziz on those tapes alone was justification for his removal, and our conquering that country.
Are you talking about the show '24' or real life? Sometimes I can't tell the difference.
p.s. I hope you watch '24' otherwise I just wasted a witty post!
You evidently don't know what you're talking about.
"Shouldn't this be in the humor section?
Just when I thought it couldn't get any funnier, I noticed the story is from Pat Robertson's 700 Club web site.
I'll tell you where they moved the WMD's: Tehran, Damascus, Beirut and....oh yeah, Caracas.
LMAO"
I am going to say IBTZ.
Leave comedy to comedians.
I'm not basing it on the NYT. Huge undeclared stockpiles were found in 1994. Some portion was confirmed as destroyed, but most just disappeared. This refers to pre-1991-produced supplies, and doesn't even get into what happened since.
As for the other part, do you know what MDX and RDX are, and what differentiates them from conventional explosives?
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