Last Tuesday, I wrote about the (potential) forthcoming release of 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that, as the New York Sun story I quoted put it, “may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction”. According to the Sun report, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was studying the tapes. Noted the Feb 7 story:
[…] The committee has already confirmed through the intelligence community that the recordings of Saddam’s voice are authentic, according to its chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who would not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context. They were provided to his committee by a former federal prosecutor, John Loftus, who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst.
Mr. Loftus will make the recordings available to the public on February 17 at the annual meeting of the Intelligence Summit, of which he is president. On the organization’s Web site, Mr. Loftus is quoted as promising that the recordings “will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very importantâ€â€and controversialâ€â€weapons of mass destruction questions.†Contacted yesterday by The New York Sun, Mr. Loftus would only say that he delivered a CD of the recordings to a representative of the committee, and the following week the committee announced that it was reopening the investigation into weapons of mass destruction.
The audio recordings are part of new evidence the House intelligence committee is piecing together that has spurred Mr. Hoekstra to reopen the question of whether Iraq had the biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons American inspectors could not turn up.
At the time of the original Sun story and my post, there was very little media attention being given to the revelations—prompting a few commenters to betray a good bit of (not completely unreasonable) skepticism.
Now, however, ABC News’ “Nightline” is planning a special (this evening) to air parts of those tapes, which, at the very least, could reopen discussion on the WMD issue, and on whether or not Saddam was a threat (either directly or via his ability to aid international terrorist groups with material)—something the adminisitration argued in advance of the Iraq invasion (and something that previous administrations codified in the form of Iraqi Regime Change legislation)—or whether he was NOT, as many backpeddling anti-war Democrats, libertarians, and a few fringe Republicans have taken to arguing, mostly from the safety of retrospect and from an ossified and misleading official narrative that has us going to war against Iraq because we them an “imminent threat” (the President said precisely the opposite) and because of WMDs (which were never found, at least not in the quantities most of the world’s intelligence agencies suspected we’d find them). From CNS News:
Secret audiotapes of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with weapons of mass destruction will be the subject of an ABC “Nightline” program Wednesday night, a former federal prosecutor told Cybercast News Service.
The tapes are being called the “smoking gun” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. The New York Sun reported that the tapes have been authenticated and currently are being reviewed by the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), declined to give the Sun details of the content or context of the recordings, saying only that they were provided to his committee by former federal prosecutor John Loftus.
Loftus has been tight-lipped about the tapes, telling the Sun only that he received them from a “former American military intelligence analyst.” However, on Wednesday he told Cybercast News Service, “Saddam’s tapes confirm he had active CW [chemical weapons] and BW [biological weapons] programs that were hidden from the UN.”
On Tuesday night, Loftus told Cybercast News Service that ABC’s “Nightline” would air an “extensive report” on the tapes Wednesday night. Loftus also described an ABC News “teaser,” which reportedly contains audio of Saddam Hussein discussing ways to attack America with WMD. “Nightline will have a lot more,” said Loftus.
The tapes are scheduled to be revealed to the public Saturday morning at the opening session of The Intelligence Summit, a conference which brings together intelligence professionals from around the world.
All of which would seem like good news for the administration and horrific news for many House and Senate Dems (not to mention several major media outlets) who have repositioned themselves on Iraq so often that, were Iraq a john, it would probably leave a huge tip on the nightstand.
Which is why Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff are quick to preemptively put out a potential fire by pissing all over the furniture well in advance:
Government investigators are trying to determine how 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein and his aides, acquired by U.S. personnel in Iraq, got into the hands of the organizers of a private “intelligence summit” to be held in D.C. next weekend. John Loftus, a former government prosecutor and self-described whistle-blower, claims the tapes “will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very importantâ€â€and controversialâ€â€weapons-of-mass-destruction questions.” At one point Saddam muses how vulnerable D.C. would be to a “biological” attack, but adds that Iraq wouldn’t do it.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra is reviewing transcripts to determine if U.S. officials missed WMD evidence after the war. But intel agencies are skeptical. The tapes were taken without permission from an FBI-run translation center, officials say, and are years old. Two government officials, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive subject, say the tapes in no way prove that WMD stockpiles or programs existed at the time of the U.S. invasion or were moved to another country before U.S. troops arrived.
Ah. So there you have it, then. Intel agencies are skeptical. And what to make of this private “intelligence summit” (as Isikoff and Hosenball so helpfully scare quote it)?
Note, too, the carefully placed tail note to the mention of Saddam’s “musing” that Washington would be vulnerable to a WMD attack: Iraq, Isikoff and Hosenball remind us, “wouldn’t do it”. Which of course was never our fear, something the authors don’t remind us. Our fear was that Iraq would provide the material to a nationless terrorist organization that would do it.
At the time of my initial post on the subject, I predicted a political reaction much like the one we are beginning to see in the blogosphere, and in the skeptical blurb from Isikoff and Hosenball:
some quiet and some quite vocal triumphalism on the right (who, after having had to “concede†that the “main reason†for going to war in Iraqâ€â€as it was “sold†to gullible Americans by Bushco, themselves were so desirous of bloodsport that they “cherrypicked†and “manipulated†the evidence, even going so far, in Dick Cheney’s case, as to make provocative visits to the CIA which may have, wordlessly, “influenced†the final intelligence report); and, at least initially, silence on the anti-war leftâ€â€which will be followed by attempts to throw doubt on the authenticity of the recording, then to question the motives of those who brought it forward, then questioning of the timing (NSA “corruption scandalâ€Â? Abramoff?), and finally, the suggestion that perhaps Saddam knew he was being recorded, and was simply setting up another red herring meant to provoke the US into a strike of (likely) Syria. WHICH IS WHY WE MUST RESIST THE URGE TO STEP UP OUR ENGAGEMENT WITH DAMASCUS.
Others, I suspect, will suddenly embrace the thesis that, though Saddam himself thought he had WMD, behind his back, the military was hiding from him the bankruptcy of the program; and still others will simply deny the authenticity of the recordingâ€â€and would do so even were Saddam himself to confess, miraculously, under a Perry Mason-esque cross examination.
Isikoff and Hosenball certainly didn’t let me down, that’s for sure.
But even as the spin to discredit—or at least to dilute—the contents of the recordings is about to begin in earnest (hey, it’s the duty of patriots to do their best to discredit any evidence that shows their country is not the crazed, imperialist hegemon the world takes it for), The American Thinker, via Peter Glover’s Wires from the Bunker, points us to the news that “a second Iraqi former commander confirms WMDs”:
Only two weeks ago, General Sada, formerly Sadaam’s no 2 Air Force Commander, told the New York Sun that Sadaam’s WMD was moved to Syria just six weeks before the US-led invasion. Now Ali Ibrahim confirms this and explains the underlying strategy of Saddam:
I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn’t going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists. He also has wanted since he took power to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, who he has a personal grudge against. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.
Moreover, Ali Ibrahim debunks other shibboleths of the left, including the allegation of no ties between al Qaeda terror and Saddam:
As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned this support was limited for a long time, mainly due to the fact that Al-Qaeda had the hopes of creating an Islamic empire while Saddam wanted a secular Arab nationalist empire. They only really came to terms in the mid-90’s due to the fact that both knew they shared the same short term enemy. Once they came to terms on this Saddam provided Al-Qaeda with intelligence support and whatever money or munitions they could provide. Saddam has had very long standing contacts in the black market as well as with Moscow and would provide whatever munitions he could through these contacts.
[My emphasis]
That sound you hear is The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes popping a Champagne cork and ordering up a dozen hookers on Bill Kristol’s dime.
But I digress.
He also addresses the claim that the US bears responsibility for bringing Saddam to power and for armning him with WMDs:
This is absolutely ludicrous. I was in the Ba’athist Revolution who received support from the Soviet Union because of the socialist ideology behind it. The Soviet Union openly supported and backed the Ba’athist revolution in Iraq at the time and I am sure you can find news articles about it in European press agencies and others at the time. I was there helping with the revolution and worked on two occasions with Soviet KGB officials to help train us, much like the United States did with the Taliban during the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. The United States never directly gave us any WMDs but rather ingredients. They were not mixed and these ‘ingredients’ could have been easily used for commercial use but were rather used to build low life chemical weapons.
The tape recordings of Saddam discussing WMDs are said by Ryan Mauro of Worldthreats.com to be a “smoking cannon.†If all of this information proves out, the left in the US and UK are going to face an awful reckoning. As usual, it will take some time for the new information to travel from the blogosphere to the alternative media, and finally into the antique media.
What will be most interesting to watch is the amount of the coverage this receives. I suspect the next stage of legacy media denial will come in the form of, “because ‘intel agencies’ and other unnamed sources have expressed no clear consensus about what these tapes signify, we are simply being circumspect about our reporting.”
Of course, had somebody suspected Dick Cheney of keeping a flask of whiskey in his hunting vest, that would be a different story entirely…*
Raw Story’s Ron Brynaert requests an apology from me for linking his piece about, among other things, the MSNBC story that temporarily removed a mention of alcohol; I graciously declined, and explain my reasoning here.
****
update: Surveying the political landscape, maverick conservative Andrew Sullivan sees this (h/t Allah):
This reader is onto something:
“I’m not a paranoid lefty who ascribes the worst motives and monster qualities to Bush/Cheney/Rove. So I’d never say they shot someone on purpose. However, it’s worth noting that this Cheney debacle has provided cover and substantially diverted attention from some otherwise very icky news stories this week: Congress close to deep-sixing any investigation into the NSA spying program; Chertoff and HSA getting slammed by a new Katrina report and hearings; new Abu Ghraib torture photos; the Shays hearings; Rice getting grilled by members of her own party over lack of progress in Iraq, etc.
On balance, if I were a Bush flack I’d take a bizarre hunting accident over those more terrible news stories any day. In fact, now’s the time to release names or reports or legislation or bill signing statements or nettlesome employees while we’re fixated on the fact that the Vice President shot a man in the face on his way to confirming once and for all how awful his judgment is.”
My only quibble is that the pretty good economic news was drowned out.
To summarize: one of Sullivan’s readers, claiming not to be a kneejerk anti-Bushie, suggests— cautiously—that the VP just may have shot his friend in order to cover for a stuttering Michael Chertoff and an Abu Ghraib story that is now only of interest to Andrew, anti-war partisan diehards, and of course Islamists able to use the story as a jihadi recruiting tool—and Andrew’s frame for the missive is, “This reader is onto something.”
No mention of the forthcoming Saddam tapes as mitigation to the “shoot the old guy to cover for some bad news” theory. Nor is there any mention that Congress is actually backtracking on the charges the President acted inappropriately in authorizing the NSA foreign surveillance program, finding them to be political poison.
But how dare anyone claim Andrew is not a “conservative.” What, just because he supported John Kerry and is now taking seriously the suggestion that the shooting may have been part of a plot to cover up a (dubiously-described) bad news week?
Pshaw, I say. Pshaw and for shame!
****
update 2: Michelle Malkin points out that while those new Abu Ghraib photos are making the rounds in the mainstream press, many of the very same media outlets who are running in unexpurgated form—unafraid that publication will offend Americans, or INFLAME THE ARAB STREET—continue to defend their decision to withhold publication of the Danish Mohammed cartoons for fear of offending Muslims and INFLAMING THE ARAB STREET.
Presumably because Allah demands as much.
Here is a way to expose anti-Americans who are disingenuous about the ‘no WMDs’ issue.
“That sound you hear is The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes popping a Champagne cork and ordering up a dozen hookers on Bill Kristol’s dime. “
Bill won’t pay for twelve. Ten, sure. But no editor will ever pay all of a writer’s expense tab.
“Hosenball”? Why didn’t his folks just name him “Shit-for-brains”?
Actually, the sound you hear is my nipples hardening into carborundum and ripping through my blue button-down as I imagine a deeply satisfying news piece:
A grainy slow-motion shot of Saddam talking to his advisors, his voice from these tapes (in Arabic) hums in the background.
The screen fades to grey as the voice of the translator comes on, deep and sonorous and crystal fucking clear: “This is how we are going to kill Americans.”
A montage of Bush’s speech to the UN about how Saddam is a threat.
An moving aerial shot over a beach. The camera pushes fast-forward out over the ocean.
Cut to a shot of Saddam being plucked from his spider hole. The V.O. of Bush saying “weapons of mass destruction” loop repeatedly then fade to silence.
Fin
This could be big. It will, most certainly, NOT change any of the koskids or their ilk’s minds. But to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack who have been subjected to the constant negative MSM bombardment over lack of WMDs, it will strike a cord. And that IS something.
”….Government investigators are trying to determine how 12 hours of tape recordings of Saddam Hussein and his aides, acquired by U.S. personnel in Iraq, got into the hands of the organizers of a private “intelligence summit†to be held in D.C. next weekend….”
More importantly, it seems some DoJ investigators will try to determine how details of a terrorist tracking/monitoring program got into the hands of a hireling of a private “news” paper published daily in Manhattan.
Cordially…
TW: got, as in (I hope) “got ‘em!”
Wow, what a gambit. I recall thinking along these lines back in 2003, when Bush gave The Ultimatum – I was thinking, What will Saddam do? He can’t win, so what will he do?
I thought, He won’t actually use WMDs against Coalition troops, because to do so would be be to validate one of Bush’s casi belli (actually that plural may be an irregular, casus, but I’m having trouble finding it – anyone?), but… he’s going to lose; what’s he planning?
Time went on, we took Baghdad, we found him in his hole and put him in jail, and I thought, You’re kidding. He didn’t have a better plan than this?
So maybe he didn’t. Maybe his whole plan was just this gambit: keep working on the CBN weapons, if the US actually starts making noise about invading then hide them in Syria or somewhere, and hope that Bush 43 is as squeamish as Bush 41 and will quickly go away in embarrassment if the WMDs aren’t lying around. Like the old riddle about the tramp on the railroad tracks: when he heard the train coming, why did he first run along the tracks for fifty feet before he got off them? Because he was on a trestle. Maybe Saddam just got caught by the train before he ran the whole fifty feet.
I don’t think it matters what we find out about Saddam’s WMDs anymore to those against liberating Iraq. David Kaye found – amongst hundreds of violations – that Saddam attempted to make illegal missile deals with North Korea and North Korea got cold feet because the USA was about to invade. This meant nothing to opponants of the war.
The mainstream media no longer even acknowledge that Saddam supported and funded terrorism and gave safe harbor to terrorists. This point is not even debtable, yet they mislead millions of Americans into thinking Saddam’s Iraq was not a terrorists supporting state.
What supporters of the liberation of Iraq have to do is publish the facts without propaganda or hype so it is documented for history. I notice people are even forgetting that the Baath regime was committing genocide on the Kurdish people.
Even better, LoafingOaf – I think it was over on Tigerhawk’s blog that one commenter was completely dismissive of Chemical Ali’s massacre of the Kurds, in terms like, “It took Saddam several days and a bunch of planes to drop enough chemicals on those villages to kill the people. Really inefficient and slow. Those aren’t WMDs.”
I have recreated the quote from memory, but that’s the essence. <eye roll>
Was it on that same thread that maybe even that same commenter talked about how we’d betrayed the Kurds by not backing their revolt after GWI? I can’t remember. But doublethink, nonetheless: the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in mind simultaneously.
TO consider,
As much as anything else, it’s also a question of media exposure. Whether or not they wanted to, the anticipatory spin has elevated the media profile of this story, making it difficult to ignore the whole thing, like was done with the Duelfer Report and other clear evidence that Iraq was in violation of disarmament agreements.
BRD
Who among us would doubt one of saddam’s henchmen? Have we ever?
Actus,
I’m going to guess you’re driving at something here, but please, help a guy out, and like, you know, actually make a point, if you would be so generous.
BRD
How many times have we been on the verge of discovering the smoking gun?
I can’t think of any explanation for what’s going on with the WMDs that actually makes sense (that takes into account Iraq’s behavior before invasion, the lack of large discovered stockpiles after invasion and the continuing silence of the large number of people who would have to know about the program if it existed), but the explanation that makes the least amount of nonsense is that Saddam had them and employed an effective “cleaner” operation while western liberals bought him time by serving as his first line of defense.
Nevertheless, we’ve heard similar before. I’ll reserve judgment while waiting to see the canon that may or may not be smoking.
Dontcha love that self-described bit? You’re not a whistle-blower unless the press decides you are.
Leak classified information—the press calls you a whistle-blower.
Bring out unclassified evidence that goes against the press’ narrative—you’re a “self-described” whistle-blower.
Nevertheless, we’ve heard similar before. I’ll reserve judgment while waiting to see the canon that may or may not be smoking.
I love certain typos. (Sorry, tim.)
The canon of leftist myth, obfuscation, distraction, and tight-fisted grasp of their uber-narrative is starting to smoke.
We’ve trusted what saddam’s henchmen tell us for a while now. No reason to distrust them now.
I’ve always like the one that his program, whatever there was, was decimated by the 91 war, the sanctions/inspections, and the later bombings. But he could never admit to this and had to act all like he had them, because that’s how a thug like that thinks. He thinks his power is due to fear people have of him.
The oddest—and I admit because of that attractive—theory is that his scientists knew that the program had been decimated and was non-existent but never told him. Like how Hitler gave orders to make-believe divisions from his bunker in hte last days. Nobody told him bad news.
Thanks for the pointer, kelly. If I were a smarter man, I’d say it was an intentional pun.
TW: shall. Maybe I shall. Sure, I meant it as a pun.
Actus,
Your “oddest” scenario is possible and rather interesting. The interesting thing about it, is that it implies if the level of deception was sufficient to keep Hussein in the dark, then it becomes rather difficult to expect foreign intelligence agencies to produce better intel than Saddam’s own secret police could.
And I still don’t get the whole henchmen thing you’re on about. Is that a backhanded way to say that because they worked for Saddam, none of them cannot, therefore, be trusted?
BRD
This is beside the point and not relevant to what we’re currently discussing and that is who Ddecided not to contact me with information about who DIck Cheney shot and why.
I was at a cocktail party with my wife Saturday but I could have been interrupted. I’ll ask the questions about this.
Saddam Hussein is nothing, no one cares. What is important is the question of why this administration did not personally contact me as soon as Dick Cheney shot someone…that is all that is important right now.
Stop taking shots at me personally too, I don’t appreciate it.
The idea that his program was completely destroyed with hardly a remaining trace, against Saddam’s will, by a long series of essentially ‘shot in the dark’ hits by GWI, sanctions, inspections, etc. doesn’t strike me as plausible.
I have to admit, though, your other explanation is attractive. It is simple and straightforward (though it explains only Saddam’s behavior, the rest is left hanging). I mostly like it because it makes fear–the tool through which Saddam ruled–the agent of his downfall. There’s something poetic about it.
Dick Cheney puts day-old corn whiskey in a flask and within three hours has 5 oz of Wild Turkey 12 Year.
But its not hardly a trace. We have found traces of a former program. The UN did too. Its these traces that believers in the existence of WMD’s point to.
Another thing that may have dismantled the program is the guy himself, trying to mothball and hide it.
Actus.
You do note, that in keeping “a trace” around (and in such a manner that those elements only came to light after the Iraq War), that it demonstrates non-compliance with UN resolutions regarding disarmament.
BRD
A trace being empty shells, etc… The thing is a trace can be consistent with a non-functional program as well as a functional one. His program didn’t dissapear without a trace.
Actus,
As you may recall from the centrifuge found in the rose garden, there were actual, real-life proscribed items found. Non-compliance. Failure to disclose. Full-stop.
You’ll also note that this is a prime and early example of the goalposts starting their headlong march downfield.
BRD
Actus: I suppose too in your favor are stories (maybe true, maybe not) like the one where an Iraqi scientist dumped a truckload of toxins in the sand as a way of destroying the stockpile, then realized too late the now toxic dump site was very close to a palace. Rather then admit what she’d done, she claimed she was still storing the stockpile (which she couldn’t later account for destroying because she didn’t have it to destroy).
More of the “live by the fear, die by the fear” stuff.
Jeff,
How about an apology (and an appended correction) for smearing me here…by linking my name to a post about smearing Dick Cheney: “Of course, had somebody…”
All I wrote about was the story being removed…and the only reference to alcohol was at the picnic…not a “flask” in Cheney’s pocket.
And, as it turns out, I was right. MSNBC re-added the paragraph today, after verifying it, and, most probably after the Vice President admitted to having a beer earlier in the day.
Hey, did you ever stop and think that maybe Andrew Sullivan is the real conservative here and maybe you’re not, Mr. Sarcasm? After all, John Kerry was “the conservative choice” in the 2004 election–Just ask Andrew!
Or are you some kind of HOMOPHOBE?!!
Did some Googling on Loftus; did you know that he claims to have been the one to unearth the “Bush-Nazi” connection? Kinda hard to figure out what to make of that; seems unlikely that he’s shilling for Bush, but also indicates that he’s just a little nutty.
Ron —
Your post is an attempt at promoting the idea of an alcohol-related coverup, which in itself is an attempt to seed the ground for some sort of criminal charges. As reinforcement for that idea, it includes this excerpt from John Nichols, writing at the Nation:
It also includes this bit from you:
Now, as one of my commenters has pointed out again and again, the likelihood of the secret service allowing drunken fratboys to be wandering throughout the woods with loaded firearms is laughable on its face. And the impugning of you do of Armstrong is baseless, though carefully non-commital.
Cheney admitted to a beer at lunch. The shooting incident took place at dusk (at least 5-6 hours later). According to everyone else involved, there was no other drinking. I don’t know how much the VP weighs, but I can safely say from the facts that I now have that alcohol did not play a factor in the shooting.
The reference to a flask I make in my post was intended as hyperbole, and meant to highlight where certain media organizations’ priorities lie: on a day when Nightline will be running audio tapes of Saddam discussing WMD, Rawstory is running suggestive pieces about Dick Cheney’s college drinking habits.
To that end, I read your story as an attempt to create the impression that Cheney may have been drunk and that there may have been an orchestrated cover up because of it.
Even so, I did you the courtesy of linking your piece so that others can decide for themselves what to make of its intent, nature, and tenor.
To answer your direct question, then, no, I don’t wish to apologize for noting your story. Because a) simply linking to it doesn’t mean I am accusing you of the worst abuses contained therein, and so I haven’t “smeared” you in any way; and b) because my readers are intelligent enough to use your story as a source for secondary material that DOES seek to directly make such unfounded accusations based on wild supposition, I maintain that linking to your piece actually provided the precise service it was meant to, given its point in my post.
As far as believing Hussein’s “henchman”, many of the professional conspiracy theorists on the left claimed a “July Suprise” plot by BushCo during the ‘04 election. Or was it August? September? I lost track of the left’s Conspiracy Of The Month Club a long time ago.
Anyhow, The New Republic waved claims by members of the notoriously corrupt Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan as evidence that the Bushies demanded they hold off releasing the news of captured Al Qaeda operatives until just before the Democratic National Convention. This, of course, was seen as a credible scenario by the left, who to this day still seem to complain every time Al Qaeda members are captured because, like, where’s the evidence they did anything wrong?
Unless, of course, the captured AQ dude is Bin Laden, which would end global terrorism altogether.
Well, this interview has personal meaning. I’ve never waivered from my belief that Saddam had in his possession WDMs since 1991-92 when I lived in Moscow, my ex-husband’s family had bought the newspaper Pravda. I recall numerous conversations with my ex back then about the mafia dealing with Iraq, Iran, Syria and anyone else in the ME who were in the market for arms and state secrets (like hiding things). Back then, America was at ‘peace’ with the Gulf War having ended we are told, troops were coming home, the Presidential election was getting started with Hollywood Bill and his new America as the hit band running for office. In any case what sealed the deal for me was after I left Moscow for NYC, a year later the WTC was bombed by the Yassin brothers (Iraqi), one of which was given santuary in Baghdad after the bombing. After 9/11 I would have considered it a dereliction of duty if Bush had not dealt with Saddam.
Today with the advent of internet I do blame traditional media for their ridiculous role in getting it all wrong, misleading the masses and for marketing mayhem all the while aiding the enemy.
Bastards.
And Actus, you’ve been had.
OMG – Cheney actually quaffed a beer…. Pray for the future of our Republic….
– Do you moonbats have any idea how unhinged and compulsively partisan you look?
– Nevermind. I don’t expect you to ever for a second wonder as to the health and safety of our VP. That would be a level of true compassion that just doesn’t exist with the average leftist cynic, and asking someone to self diagnose a syndrom is by definition a losing battle. Forget I asked….
– Oh and syn… We have our own version of Pravda… the NYTrash….
I suspect that the latest round of Abu Ghraib photos are being run as an additional fuel source for Gore’s rant in Jeddah.
Well, while we are talking about conspiracy theories, why don’t we ask who the Dems will get to be the “Ross Perot of 2008”? We know Hillary (like Bill both times) can’t get a majority, so who are they going to get run on a strong 3rd party ticket in order to split the center-right vote?
Is it possible, that at the root of all this mania from the left they are simply enraged that Ned Flanders was elected President? And while their current behavior is counterproductive, treasonous etc– the core of their complaint has merit? Ever since Martin Luther kicked off things 500 years back, reason has triumphed over faith. And that was a good thing. And the left’s role in the current ecosystem is to keep that deal going, to fight that battle. Especially when Ned Flanders is President. Just a thought.
That’s some stunning analysis and deep thinking there, “Flanders.” But what does it have to do with Iraq’s WMD programs or Cheney’s hunting accident?
I think everything. Iraq obviously had WMD with the worst of intentions. Cheney’s hunting trip is the latest mad trip for the left. We are grappling with a situtation that is beyond absurd, a clear denial of all reality. And I think it is interesting to explore why. We can call the left names, and detail their sins, crimes etc. We can (and do) spend years of our lives analyzing and combatting this. But it makes sense to analyze where this is all coming from. We have to. There has to be some source to all this.
I’d reccomend a good dose of Ibogaine for that inflamed street. Gotta nip that in the bud (as Barney used to say) before it gets outta hand and starts burning down fast food resturaunts.
Oh.
Never mind.
There’s little new information here, thus far.
Iraq’s biological weapons programme was bombed and voluntarily shut down in 1991. Saddam foolishly decided not to admit to having such a programme in the hope the UN inspectors would pack up their belongings and not come back. However, UNSCOM came well prepared and quickly ascertained that Iraq was hiding important details of its then-defunct programme.
To repeat: Iraq was not hiding details of an active, ongoing biological weapons programme; rather, it was hiding the existence of a programme that was heavily destroyed and closed down.
In 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney claimed that Iraq only admitted to having a bio-weapons programme after Kamel’s defection, but that is false, since UNSCOM bio experts [Dr David kelly, etc.] actually got Iraq to admit as much shortly before Kamel’s defection. Kamel was valuable in that he provided the location of a large stash of documents – the brain trust, as some Iraqi scientists referred to it.
Iraq would have been better off admitting to the true scale of this programme from the beginning as the inspectors exposed a whole series of lies relating to it.
What Kamel says on the tapes rings true. They didn’t tell the complete truth, and withheld important quantitative data from the inspectors. Equally, what Kamel said after defecting, “I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons – biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed”, was also true.
http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf
Iraq was disarmed, and experts with a slightly fanatical respect for the truth knew this to be the case, but were sidelined.
Great post, Jeff – thanks.
But this all goes to where I’ve been at all along: We didn’t know jack about the disposition of the Iraqi WMDs, and we still don’t know jack. But we know they exist.
<font size=”+1″>Why the fuck aren’t we working from that as a baseline? </font>
Kevin L. Connors, Editor
<a href=”http://sgtstryker.com>The Daily Brief</a>
Lying former Iraqi commanders. Probably just looking for book deals.
Likely true, Jeff. I am reminded of the now popularly discredited Saddam’s Bombmaker. But this is why we pay our people the big bucks – to make sense of this crap.
But what we shouldn’t be doing is jumping into war, any more than we should be jumping out, over something as trifling as “popular consensus.”
So Stephen, if Iraq had been disarmed in 1991 why then did former President Clinton and Congress issue the 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act which declared that Saddam was a threat to the free world and was hiding his weapons programs?
Flanders asked ‘there has to be some source to all this’.
Well, I have come to the conclusion that the source of today’s progressive insanity was incubated back in the late 60’s when two forces converged. One was that a small group of disfunctional people who were high on LSD, read the philosophy of Margaret Sanger and managed to ‘revoluntionize’ the American public by convincing everyone that the only path to finding self-enlightenment was to screw as many people as possible without any consideration as to the consequences while the other force was another small group of disfunctional people who were high on Marxist utopia and thought the path towards equalization was to strike a sword into the heart of captalism and turn America into the former USSR.
Put the these two forces together and you’ll be living in freakedoutville.
Don’t get me wrong, sex is the greatest pleasure on earth but there is somthing impotent in the desire to find oneself though it all the while demanding that we rob hardworking Peter to pay for Paul’s own pleasurehood.
“A trace being empty shells, etc…”
Or binary mix-in-flight sarin munitions of a type that may not have been previously declared. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Give me a drillpress and some jerrycans and I could kill hundreds of people with that weapon.
What I’m puzzled about is why these fanatical experts (e.g. Plame and her colleagues) didn’t do anything over the course of 10 years, and Administrations of opposing parties, to alter the consensus opinion that there were no WMD left. Wouldn’t some congratulations have been due someone if we’d been able to claim that?
And UNSCOM certainly believed there were still weapons, as late as 1998. Clinton believed there were unaccounted-for stockpiles as late as January 2001. Looks like the Executive’s been poorly served by the WMD experts for some time now.
Sorry, should have said “the consensus opinion that there were WMD left.”
Its sort of like nobody ever got fired for buying microsoft.
The thing is, DrSteve, we really don’t know that there were no WMD. All we really know is that they were there once, and aren’t there now.
But, TTBOMK, we have yet to sweep the desert with ground penetrating radar. And then there’s the Syria question.
Kevin L. Connors, Editor
The Daily Brief
Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg was a good read and well documented during his 28 years with CBS. My favorite is the reporter on the west coast, under a table during an earthquake? in the early 70’s on the phone to his newsdesk. On the other end: ~ but the AP hasn’t picked it up,,, ~~I’m here experiencing it live, myself~!!!
This innuendo must stop. It is almost criminal.