Is there a way I can log in at Powerline and answer some of the questions?
Now on the Captain's Quarters Blog....we have a reference to your work again:
Moving The 'Special Ammunition' To Baghdad
April 17, 2006
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Joseph Shahda has dedicated himself to the arduous task of reviewing the documents captured in Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom and left untranslated by the US military. Joseph has posted these translations at Free Republic and his translations have been confirmed as accurate by independent translators abroad. Today, Joseph posted a translation of military orders commanding the transfer of "special ammunition" from Najaf to Baghdad in the week before the American invasion of Iraq:
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As Joseph explained, the designation "special" usually meant prohibited materiel -- the chemical and biological weapons that Saddam insisted the Iraqis did not possess. This shows that not only did Saddam believe these weapons to be in his possession, but also that his subordinates also believed it. This conflicts with the oft-argued notion that Saddam's underlings only told him what he wanted to hear, afraid to tell him that the weapons were nothing more than vaporware. In the midst of preparing the Iraqi Army to fight the Americans they knew would be coming, General Sultan tasked valuable resources to move munitions of some "special" type closer to the capital, where the Iraqis expected to make their stand against the invading forces.
The timing should alert people to the nature of the revelation. This isn't a document from 2002 or 2001, when George Bush had not yet committed to action in Iraq. The author of this memo didn't copy Saddam Hussein or his inner circle to extend some elaborate illusion. Instead, this order came from the Army chief of staff to the Western Command -- the opposite direction one would assume if it would serve as a deception to Iraqi leadership -- and diverted badly-needed resources just days before the invasion that US and UN diplomacy had telegraphed.
What could be more important than manning defenses and establishing attack zones? And why would Iraq need to transfer conventional ammunition to Baghdad, where procurement assumably would be centered? Normally, one would expect a nation about to be invaded to send munitions to the outer defenses, not strip them to recall munitions away from the perimeter. This would be akin to the Germans removing the ammunition from the French coastline the week before D-Day in order to send it to Paris or Berlin.
These strange orders underscore the "special" nature of the ammunition in question. It also shows that the supposed deception of Saddam Hussein doesn't account for all of the references to WMD in the Iraqi record. These orders specifically names depots where the materiel had been stored and the type of ordnance which it comprised.
We are getting a much better picture of prewar Iraqi involvement in WMD and terrorism from these documents, and all of it contradicts the conventional wisdom that the media has fed us since Baghdad fell. See Power Line for even more thoughts on this memo.
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