Posted on 03/12/2006 10:29:27 PM PST by smoothsailing
Tapes reveal WMD plans by Saddam
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published March 13, 2006
Audiotapes of Saddam Hussein and his aides underscore the Bush administration's argument that Baghdad was determined to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction once the international community had tired of inspections and left the Iraqi dictator alone.
In addition to the captured tapes, U.S. officials are analyzing thousands of pages of newly translated Iraqi documents that tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s.
The documents also speak of burying prohibited missiles, according to a government official familiar with the declassification process.
But it is not clear whether Baghdad did what the documents indicate, said the U.S. official, who asked not to be named.
"The factories are present," an Iraqi aide tells Saddam on one of the tapes, made by the dictator in the mid-1990s while U.N. weapons inspectors were searching for Baghdad's remaining stocks of weapons of mass destruction.
"The factories remain, in the mind they remain. Our spirit is with us, based solely on the time period," the aide says, according to the documents. "And [inspectors] take note of the time period, they can't account for our will."
The quote is from roughly 12 hours of taped conversations that unexpectedly landed in the lap of Bill Tierney, a former Army warrant officer and Arabic speaker who was translating for the FBI tapes unearthed in Iraq after the invasion.
Mr. Tierney made a copy, which he provided to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee in turn gave a copy to intelligence analysts who authenticated the voice as that of Saddam.
Mr. Tierney said that the quote from the Saddam aide, and scores of others, show Saddam was rebuilding his once-ample weapons stocks.
"The tapes show...
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Even good old CNN reported the "discovery" on the eve of war..
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/02/18/sprj.irq.un.iraq/
Apparently, the translating is really slow because so many of the government translators are Muslims (including many who celebrated the 9-11 attacks) who skim through large amounts of material and tag it 'inconsequential' (or something similar) so it never gets to any higher level translators. I read some book, whose name I don't recall a the moment, about how our government has already been seriously infiltrated by radical muslims, including our intelligence agencies and their translation units.
You're right there. I actually read the section of the big WMD report where it addresses Anthrax. Basically, they interviewed the scientists who said they worked on WMD, including making weaponized anthrax. The scientists described where they made it, how they made it, how much they made, and what equipment they used. We sent people to the labs the scientists identified. We found the lab, we found the equipment. Because it had been scrubbed with a corrosive liquid, we didn't find any anthrax spores. The conclusion in the report from that information is that there is no evidence Saddam worked on weaponized anthrax! That's not my conclusion, from what i read. The fact that we haven't found 2 suitcases (the amount they said they made) of anthrax in a country the size of Texas doesn't reassure me that it didn't exist...
I hope (but don't expect) that whoever is in charge of the documents and tapes (if anyone really is) had the good sense to have them thoroughly inventoried, preferably scanned into computer files, by teams of NON-MUSLIM, NON-DEMOCRAT officials before any of the 'translators' even got near them. The chances of infiltration and of key documents being 'disappeared' into the Orwellian memory-hole are much too high........
>>>"Audiotapes of Saddam Hussein and his aides underscore the Bush administration's argument that Baghdad was determined to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction once the international community had tired of inspections and left the Iraqi dictator alone. In addition to the captured tapes, U.S. officials are analyzing thousands of pages of newly translated Iraqi documents that tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s."<<<
Joe Wilson?
I want to understand how the left manages to recruit such high numbers into their hatefest. I've never seen such negativity draw so many others. Speaking of Hitler.... My guess is that they're targeting young, impressionable, uneducated types. But we're talking about George W. Bush here, a man of decency and honor, especially compared to his predecessor. For instance, how could almost half the voters in the 2004 election have voted for Kerry?
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