Anti-War Group Doubts Authenticity of Saddam/WMD Documents Authenticity

An anti war group says it doubts the substance and authenticity of CNSNews.com's exclusive report based on Iraqi intelligence documents that show Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had ties to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda.

"[The CNSNews.com article] is probably a complete fabrication. There is just so much evidence to the contrary that Saddam and Osama [bin Laden] hated each other, were in opposite poles in the world. It's just really tough to swallow," said Michael Austin of AntiWar.com in an interview conducted just a day or two after the original article was published.

"It just seems odd that the article would only be with you guys, not in other major news sources if it is true," Austin said.

Austin also doubted the authenticity of the documents that CNSNews.com obtained. "We could say we had documents that prove otherwise, just as easily," Austin said.

"So we look forward to seeing the documents when they become public, and if they are true, we will of course change our tune, but in the meantime we wouldn't give it much credence," he added.

The Iraqi documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com, show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein's regime to work with some of the world's most notorious terror organizations in targeting Americans. The documents also say that Saddam's government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered to be weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, at a time when United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

Most of the anti-war groups contacted for their reaction to the article either did not return calls or did not wish to comment. Calls to International Answer, MoveOn.org, and Veterans for Peace were not returned. An organizer for the Chicago-based anti-war group Voices in the Wilderness said his organization was familiar with the CNSNews.com article but would have no comment.

"We do not have a response. We are sorting through the information on your site," Jeff Leys said.

There is just so much evidence to the contrary that Saddam and Osama [bin Laden] hated each other, were in opposite poles in the world.

Yet, other anti-war activists have claimed that attacking Saddam "played into the hands of Al-Qaeda" by increasing its recruitment and that Saddam wanted the attack for the same reason.

These people really need to compare notes before they spout off.

Yep, just got caught up on that other thread. Now that they are web published, it will hit the blogosphere and then the chat rooms and email lists.

3 weeks is plenty of time for this to perculate down in sheeple land via email.

I posted the original first arcticle from CNS to a private chat board dominated by libs. Twas absolutely priceless to watch them foam.

I'm off to create more mayhem!

They did provide the provenance of the documents, just not the name of the non political appointed employee. This means he is a career employee and his job is on the line because I'm pretty sure he broke the law in providing the documents.

They provided far more provenance than Blather did, who was finally forced to admit what everyone had already guessed.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be sceptical, but we should all demand that professional journalist do their damn job and investigate the news instead of filtering it to suit their political agenda.

"Non-political appointed employee" is an oxymoron.

If he/she is a career employee, then they have protection of civil service as well as through the whistle-blower act.

This is just another reason to be very very sceptical about these documents.

If these documents were actually from a government agency, Why would the Bush administration be keeping these documents hidden? Makes no sense at all.

The whistleblower act isn't going to protect a civil service employee from leaking seized foreign documents to the media.

The Bush administration isn't hiding anything. There are mountains of documents to be translated and declassified. The mills of the gods grind slowly, etc.

This person was trying to leapfrog the system, perhaps because some other career employee was stymieing his efforts to bring these documents to higher level attention?

I'd wager that most civil servants in D.C. are dimrats and not all of them serve Republican presidents well.

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