Documents Show Saddam's WMD Frustrations

AP via Yahoo! News ^ | 3/21/06 | CHARLES J. HANLEY,

[libertarianPA]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons.

"We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show.

At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked.

It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated its weapons of mass destruction long ago, a finding that discredited the Bush administration's stated rationale for invading Iraq in 2003 — to locate WMD.

The newly released documents are among U.S. government translations of audiotapes or Arabic-language transcripts from top-level Iraqi meetings — dating from about 1996-97 back to the period soon after the 1991 Gulf War, when the U.N. Security Council sent inspectors to disarm Iraq.

Even as the documents make clear Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons, they also attest to its continued secretiveness: A 1997 document from Iraqi intelligence instructed agencies to keep confidential files away from U.N. teams, and to remove "any forbidden equipment."

Since it's now acknowledged the Iraqis had ended the arms programs by then, the directive may have been aimed at securing stray pieces of equipment, and preserving some secrets from Iraq's 1980s work on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Saddam's inner circle entertained notions of reviving the programs someday, the newly released documents show. "The factories will remain in our brains," one unidentified participant told Saddam at a meeting, apparently in the early 1990s.

At the same meeting, however, Saddam, who was deposed by the U.S. invasion in 2003 and is now on trial for crimes against humanity, led a discussion about converting chemical weapons factories to beneficial uses.

When a subordinate complained that U.N. inspectors had seized equipment at the plants useful for pharmaceutical and insecticide production, Saddam jumped in, saying they had "no right" to deny the Iraqis the equipment, since "they have ascertained that we have no intention to produce in this field (chemical weapons)."

Saddam's regime extensively videotaped and audiotaped meetings and other events, both public and confidential. The dozen transcribed discussions about weapons inspections largely dealt with Iraq's diplomatic strategies for getting the Security Council to confirm it had disarmed.

Scores of Iraqi documents, seized after the 2003 invasion, are being released at the request of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), who has suggested that evidence might turn up that the Iraqis hid their weapons or sent them to neighboring Syria. No such evidence has emerged.

Repeatedly in the transcripts, Saddam and his lieutenants remind each other that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s, and shut down those programs and the nuclear-bomb program, which had never produced a weapon.

"We played by the rules of the game," Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said at a session in the mid-1990s. "In 1991, our weapons were destroyed."

Amer Mohammed Rashid, a top weapons program official, told a 1996 presidential meeting he laid out the facts to the U.N. chief inspector.

"We don't have anything to hide, so we're giving you all the details," he said he told Rolf Ekeus.

In his final report in October 2004, Charles Duelfer, head of a post-invasion U.S. team of weapons hunters, concluded Iraq and the U.N. inspectors had, indeed, dismantled the nuclear program and destroyed the chemical and biological weapons stockpiles by 1992, and the Iraqis never resumed production.

Saddam's goal in the 1990s was to have the Security Council lift the economic sanctions strangling the Iraqi economy, by convincing council members Iraq had eliminated its WMD. But he was thwarted at every turn by what he and aides viewed as U.S. hard-liners blocking council action.

The inspectors "destroyed everything and said, `Iraq completed 95 percent of their commitment,'" Saddam said at one meeting. "We cooperated with the resolutions 100 percent and you all know that, and the 5 percent they claim we have not executed could take them 10 years to (verify).

"Don't think for a minute that we still have WMD," he told his deputies. "We have nothing."

[Puppage]

Dare to dream

Sadly, you hit the nail on the head.

[johnny7]

Cherry-picking... the MSM accuses others(Bush) of it... but performs it daily.

May they rot in hell!

[street_lawyer]

What is really confusing is that when democracy fails, the first to fall is the media. Why then are they chopping down their own tree?

Interesting question isn't it. What's the obvious answer?

[Rick_Michael]

Anyone know if the tapes/documents are public yet? Links...anything?

[shield]

May they rot in hell!

DITTO DITTO DITTO....

[SevenMinusOne]

D@mn it this makes me mad. Those same tapes had Hussein and Aziz stating that at Saddam's word, they were able to resume chemical weapons programs ASAP. Only Fox News covered it. When General Sada came over and said he knows where the WMDs are, only Fox News covered it. Now that this part of the tape has Hussein and his cohorts swearing up and down they don't have anything, they're all over it. Nowhere does this guy mention the other hours of the tape that state that they're ready to resume their program on Hussein's order! F-ing MSM!!!

Exactly. It is mind boggling at times just how bias the MSM have become. Yet where is the RNC, where is the WH! Setting the record straight!

[rightinthemiddle]

This is frustrating, to say the least.

You've done so much work...I hope someone in the responsible media is monitoring FR and runs with the story.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

A perfect illustration of Saddam's actions.

[epluribus_2]

Yup. If your gonna use this source to bash Bush, MSM, ya better be prepared to discuss ALL the items from that source. Your monopoly on what americans get to find out ended years ago.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks. MSM at work.....

*******************************************

There is a book,:

Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left (Hardcover)

*******************************

And a review:

****************************************

Communism is dead. Long live Islam!, September 30, 2004

Reviewer:

Kevin Beckman (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

It sounds absurd: why would Leftists make common cause with a religion that is diametrically opposed to everything the Left stands for? David Horowitz explains that it is really quite logical given the Left's first principle: America is evil and anything or anyone opposed to America is good.

Part I of the book is a brief history of 9/11 through the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and the Left's behavior during this time. Horowitz includes the reaction of Katha Pollitt of The Nation magazine: "The flag stands for vengeance, and jingoism, and war." Anthropology Professor Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University said he hoped for "a million Mogadishus." His colleagues objected, not to the despicable sentiment, but because of the bad publicity it brought their "teach-in." Our tax dollars at work!

Part II is the heart of the book: a history of the American and international Left. Horowitz calls them Neo-Communists or Neocoms. The Neocoms of old believed in the Soviet Union the way religious people believe in God. Those who spied for the USSR didn't see themselves as traitors to their country, but rather loyalists to humanity and an ideal of America that's never existed. When the Soviet Union fell, a few of them stopped for some introspection but most pressed on as if nothing happened. Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm put it nicely: "Without the Revolution, my life and my work are meaningless."

Now that they no longer have to defend an indefensible regime, modern Neocoms are simply nihilists. They know what they oppose but they have no plans for the aftermath of the revolution which they still believe will happen. They don't know what they want, but they know what they hate: the United States, capitalism personified.

So why are they allying with radical Islam? Horowitz says that the Neocoms still believe in Marx's dictum that "religion is the opiate of the masses." Once private property is abolished, the need for religion will vanish, and Islamic radicals will stop being Islamic and radical. The only thing standing in the way is the United States.

Sound insane? It is. They are. I highly recommend this book. Horowitz makes the insanity understandable.

[justshutupandtakeit]

The writer also allows Aziz to get away with the LIE that the weapons were destroyed in 1991. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about this knows that the weapons were hidden and only were revealed to the UN when Saddam's sons-in-law fled to Jordan and gave them up. FIVE years after the search began.

[MarkeyD]

Saddam's WMD and terrorist connections all proven in one document!!!

[libertarianPA]

What's even worse - siding with the enemy!

I hated Clinton, but goddam it... I would never side with a brutal dictator or make him look like a victim just to make my him look bad!

Jesus! Imagine hating someone that much that you would rush to defend one of the worst dictators in history just so it would make your own President look bad. That's beyond treason... that's f*cking evil!

[justshutupandtakeit]

NYT is domestic. So is Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC.

Fox is foreign owned and the only one halfway decent.

[MikeA]

Amazing. The one document story the MSM picks up on is one which in no context whatever confirms their "Saddam was a charming innocent rogue" line of thinking. Meanwhile, they ignore the later tapes that show Saddam was trying to hide WMD and that he plotted the use of anthrax attacks using Palestinian terrorist groups as well as bio attacks within the US as well as other documents showing that he worked with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Yet the media focuses on one document of many that supports their line without ever questioning that if Saddam was truly wanting UN inspections to end why he didn't give them free and unfettered access rather than obstructing them at every turn. LOL, I guess this should have been predictable that the lapdog media would pull this.

[LibLieSlayer]

"That's beyond treason... that's f*cking evil!"

I've been preaching that here for a long time. I am so happy to see you think so too!

LLS

[Just A Nobody]

Is this the one you are thinking of?

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1594805/posts?page=8

[Wristpin]

The treasocrats start the "Free Saddam, Jail Bush" campaign next week.

[massgopguy]

DU is overjoyed by this. By the way, what happened to thier massacre committeed by the Marines thread that they ballyhood yesterday?

[Wasanother]

In 1996 Saddam wondered how to prove to the world his WMD programs were destroyed? Now for someone trying to prove this, I'm just not sure kicking the UN Weapons Inspectors out in 1998 was really the way to approach it which the article fails to mention.