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 ...
I understand why the media and his political enemies want to ignore anything that supports the War. What I can understand is why the White House ignores it, and refuses to talk about evidence of WMD etc.
Pretext? You sound more like Howard Dean than George W. Bush (the screen name you chose). You want to know why this story is relevant? Headlines like "Poll: Bush approval rating hits new low" and others just like it.
The media and the left have successfully (but wrongly) characterized the President as a liar. Don't you think it's time we set things straight? Yes, this is the last term possible for this President, but we'd like another Republican in 2008, and we also have a pack of senators and representatives to elect this year. We MUST counteract the "liar" label!
If only we could get the 52% of us that voted for George Bush and Our Country to boycott Hollywood's movies! that might wakeup Looney Clooney.
These are the people who say it's entirely likely the WMD were moved to Syria:
Last month Moshe Yaalon, who was Israel's top general at the time, said Iraq transported WMD to Syria six weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
Last March, John A. Shaw, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said Russian Spetsnaz units moved WMD to Syria and Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
"While in Iraq I received information from several sources naming the exact Russian units, what they took and where they took both WMD materials and conventional explosives," Mr. Shaw told NewsMax reporter Charles Smith.
Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong was deputy commander of Central Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom. In September 2004, he told WABC radio that "I do know for a fact that some of those weapons went into Syria, Lebanon and Iran."
In January 2004, David Kay, the first head of the Iraq Survey Group which conducted the search for Saddam's WMD, told a British newspaper there was evidence unspecified materials had been moved to Syria from Iraq shortly before the war.
"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 program," Mr. Kay told the Sunday Telegraph.
Also that month, Nizar Nayuf, a Syrian journalist who defected to an undisclosed European country, told a Dutch newspaper he knew of three sites where Iraq's WMD was being kept. They were the town of al Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria; the Syrian air force base near the village of Tal Snan, and the city of Sjinsar on the border with Lebanon.
In an addendum to his final report last April, Charles Duelfer, who succeeded David Kay as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said he couldn't rule out a transfer of WMD from Iraq to Syria.
"There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation," Mr. Duelfer said.
In a briefing for reporters in October 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper Jr., who was head of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency when the Iraq war began, said satellite imagery showed a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria just before the American invasion.
"I think the people below Saddam Hussein and his sons' level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," Lt. Gen. Clapper said.
You haven't heard much about these reports, because they contradict the meme that Saddam either had no WMD, or destroyed it well before the Iraq war began.
The captured files of the Iraqi intelligence service, still mostly untranslated, could shed light on what did happen to Saddam's WMD.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06036/649858.stm
And remember how Saddam moved his 747's to his arch enemy Iran during the Gulf War?
Why are you picking on me? :-)
The Times is a collection of liars. Now they'll try to re-write the events of the war as they see fit.
fyi
fyi
Thanks for the ping.
This goes back to the question that I have been asking for about two years.
How did the MSM and the DNC know that there were no WMDs left in Iraq, before the first phase of the war was over?
To be honest, for anyone to suggest that a picture like that proves anything about WMD is just nuts. It does prove perhaps that there are buildings and trucks in Iraq.
"How did the MSM and the DNC know that there were no WMDs left in Iraq, before the first phase of the war was over?"
They didn't! Even Joe Wilson was against the war on the basis that he feared Saddam would use Chemical weapons on our troops. The guy is married to a pillow talking CIA WMD Analyst for crying out loud. The "issue" just fell into their laps. Combine it with the inept Whitehouse PR machine and you have the perfect storm.
I don't know their name, but I'm pretty sure I could tell you who they voted for in 1992,1996,2000, and 2004.
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