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Mike DeLong Inside CentCom If you want the inside story of what was being said and done at the top levels of U.S. government from the September 11th attacks until the fall of Saddam Hussein, you can ask one of two men -- Army General Tommy Franks, or Marine Corps General Mike DeLong, who was Franks' deputy. Listen to Mike DeLong at link....

 A recent article by Pulitzer-winning AP writer Charles Hanley entitled “Half of U.S. still believes Iraq had WMD” builds a not so subtle argument: those who believe Saddam Hussein still had WMD need to get fitted for tin foil hats. He begins the piece with a reasonable question “Do you believe Saddam Hussein had WMD in 2003?” What follows is an examination of possible reasons why fifty percent of American’s said yes: experts see a raft of reasons why: a drumbeat of voices from talk radio to die-hard bloggers to the Oval Office, a surprise headline here or there, a rallying around a...

Don't understand why my local paper printed this but doesn't have it on their website, so here's the Reading Eagle's website.Not trying to break the rules about not posting AP stories, but I find it interesting why this keeps popping up in the news.

Unable to link directly to AP. . .

  Dave Gaubatz A former U.S. federal agent and counter-terrorism specialist deployed to Iraq before the war says he waged a three-year, unsuccessful battle to get officials to search four sites where he believes the former Saddam regime buried weapons of mass destruction. Dave Gaubatz, an Arabic linguist who now serves as chief investigator with the Dallas County Medical Examiner, told his story to Ryan Mauro of WorldThreats.com. Gaubatz said the suspected sites have never been searched by the Iraq Survey Group, the fact-finding mission dispatched by the U.S.-led multinational force. Two sites are within the city limits of Nasariyah,...

When angry Democrats briefly shut down the Senate last year to protest the slow pace of a congressional investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) claimed a rare victory. Republicans called it a stunt but promised to quickly wrap up the inquiry. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is overseeing the investigation, said his report was near completion and there was no need for the fuss. That was nine months ago. The Republican-led committee, which agreed in February 2004 to write the report, has yet to complete...

<p>Americans are waking up from a distorted reality. Half now believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That's up sharply from last year, when only 36% believed that he had banned weapons.</p> <p>The numbers, from a Harris Poll conducted earlier this month, showed — again — that the "Bush lied" crowd doesn't have a good handle on the truth.</p>

Many adults in the United States think Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before the start of the coalition effort, according to a poll by Harris Interactive. 50 per cent of respondents believe Saddam Hussein’s regime had such weapons when the U.S. invaded, up 14 points since February 2005. Polling Data Do you believe that the following statements are true? Jul. 2006 Feb. 2005 Oct. 2004 The Iraqis are better off now than they were under Saddam Hussein 72% 76% 76% Saddam Hussein had strong links with al-Qaeda 64% 64% 62% History will give the U.S. credit for bringing freedom...

The following is a translation of a newly posted Iraqi document done by an unofficial translator. The document, posted in Arabic, is from a Department Of Defense program. It is dated July 13 -- probably 2003.In it an Iraqi opposition source (a Kurd) working in Syria reports on the movement of Iraqi trucks to Syria before the start of the US invasion of Iraq. It is his understanding that the trucks contained proscribed weapons of mass destruction.EnlargeEnlargeHere is one page from the pdf file showing the original document in Arabic:Enlarge

Despite the antiwar Left's favorite mantra about how Bush lied regarding WMDs in Iraq, the evidence now proves there were WMDs after all. According to recent announcement made by Senator Rick Santorum and Rep. Peter Hoekstra , approximately 500 weapons munitions, containing degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent, have been discovered in Iraq since 2003. Saddam, therefore, had the means to put WMDs into terrorists' hands. So what is the primary significance of these revelations? And why are these developments not front page news in our media? Where are all of Bush's critics who called him a liar? Where are...

Valerie Plame and Joseph WilsonNow that Joseph and Valerie Wilson's fantasies of having been persecuted by high officials in the administration have been so thoroughly dispelled by Robert Novak (and now that it seems the prosecutor has determined that there was no breach of the relevant laws to begin with), we may return to the more important original question. Was there good reason to suppose that Iraqi envoys visited Niger in search of "yellowcake" uranium ore? In a series of columns, I have argued that the answer to this is "yes," and that British intelligence was right to inform Washington...

(CNSNews.com) - According to a recent Harris Poll, a growing number of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States went to war in March 2003. Fifty percent of American adults, when questioned by telephone between July 5 and 11 said they believe weapons of mass destruction (WMD) existed in Iraq before the U.S. invaded and toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. In February and March 2003 - just before and just after the invasion - Harris Interactive found that 81 percent of Americans believed the WMDs existed, but following the Iraq Survey Group's 2004 report, which...

Despite being widely reported in the media that the U.S. and other countries have not found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, surprisingly; more U.S. adults (50%) think that Iraq had such weapons when the U.S. invaded Iraq. This is an increase from 36 percent in February 2005. Overall, attitudes toward the war in Iraq are negative, and less than half of the U.S. population believes that the threat of terrorism has been reduced. U.S. adults are not confident that Iraq’s government will eventually become stable, and many think the war in Iraq is continuing to hurt respect for...

One of the Last Pre-War Documents : From Saddam Himself ! IZSP-2003-00000008 (Full Translation) Order Number: 31 Based on Para B, Article 58 of the Constitution,the following Order is issued : All people and companies in the private and mixed sectors are forbidden from importing and producing Biological, Chemical and Nuclear weapons and materials. All Ministries involved must carry out this order,and must prosecute violators. Written in Baghdad on 14 Feb 2003. Saddam Hussein Top Secret Western Area. The above order is from from the President # 1133 15 Feb 2003 #3092, 25 Feb 2003 Please review. From: COL Nabeel...

Like chanting Buddhist monks, the president’s critics repeat 100 times daily: “Bush Lied — People Died.” The “lie,” of course, is that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Death. “There were none,” Senator Jack Reed (D., R.I.) told his colleagues June 21. “They were not there.” Absent such munitions, the argument goes, U.S. involvement in Iraq is nothing but a blood-soaked misadventure unfolding on a collapsed façade of falsehoods. Nevertheless, while the liberal press gently sleeps, evidence continues to mount that Hussein had WMDs, though perhaps not in quantities that would bulge warehouses. “Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately...

Congressional Republicans are at odds with Democrats -- and the Bush administration -- over the significance of 500 munitions found in Iraq since 2003 and recently disclosed by the Pentagon. The rocket and artillery shells hold deadly sarin and mustard gas, a small part of the vast weapons of mass destruction (WMD) arsenal that Saddam Hussein built in the 1980s. Republican lawmakers say the 500-plus shells, with more likely to be found in the coming months, are evidence that Saddam was still concealing WMDs in 2003 in violation of United Nations resolutions to disarm after Iraq's failed invasion of Kuwait....

The Captured Iraqi Intelligence Documents: What Do They Reveal and How Should They Be Handled? RSVP | Send to a Friend Date: July 11, 2006 Time: 12:00 noon Speaker(s): Keynote Remarks by: The Honorable Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) Chairman, House Intelligence Committee Followed by a Panel Discussion with: Peter Brookes Senior Fellow, National Security Affairs, The Heritage Foundation Thomas Joscelyn Terrorism Researcher Michael Tanji Former Chief of the Document and Media Exploitation Division, Defense Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Human Intelligence Host(s): James Jay Carafano, Ph.D. Senior Research Fellow, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation Details:...

Iraqi Documents: UNMOVIC Knew Of Renewed WMD Efforts Continuing my review of the many documents released from the DocEx files over the last two days, I found yet another interesting piece of information regarding Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMD. In a summary of a larger document, the translators found that Iraq had restarted its processing of castor-bean extraction, from which ricin can be developed -- and that UNMOVIC discovered it in December 2002. From CMPC-2003-003766-HT.pdf, with line breaks and emphases mine: Ricin toxin is found in the bean of the castor plant. UNMOVIC inspections since December 2002 have verified that...

One of the reasons that the DoD may have sat on the captured IIS files without translating or releasing them, some speculate, was that the contents may embarrass some of our allies in the overall war on terror. One document released yesterday seems to support that analysis. According to document CMPC-2003-000878, the Russians gave more active support to Saddam prior to the March 2003 invasion than previously known -- and they used Syria as a conduit for their materiel:

For those who continue to reject evidence of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of WMD programs, the document released yesterday by the FMSO DocEx project makes it a much more difficult proposition. Document CMPC-2003-004346 reveals that Dr. Rehab Rasheed Taha, otherwise known as Dr. Germ, prepared an analysis in 2002 of how to spread biological weapons material using an aircraft as the medium, and how far they had advanced on the application: