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.
I read not so long ago (forget where) that only a fraction of the volumes of documents and records seized after the fall of the Hussein regime have been translated.
This is the first I’ve heard of any such tapes. Is this the first time their existence has been publicized?
There are online reviews at amazon.com for a book written by one of Saddam’s two-star generals that contain repeated references to Saddam’s alleged intention to launch a massive chemial weapons attack against Israel in 1991 in retailiation for the US action in Desert Storm. According to the author, he managed to convince Saddam that the response would be of the tactical nuclear variety.
Of course, it’s difficult to ascertain the truth of the matter sitting here in comfort, but I do not find the notion all that far fetched.
I don’t have the link handy, perhaps another commentor can provide.
any bets that CBCpravda wont even headline it tomorrow.
their headlines today- Khadrs again. always using the words “linked to” , “alledged” , “held without bail” and the the usual sympathetic $hit.didnt screeching “Mama Khadr” brag up their participating whilst demanding healthcare.
toss the lot.
I would be surprised if this turns out to be any ‘smoking gun’ since it is now believed that Saddam’s underlings routinely made up stuff about Iraq’s arsenal and military capability. I can’t imagine any general saying: sorry fearless leader those WMD, gone, kaput, nada. That would be the end of the general.
The world’s left-wing MSM has also conveniently developed amnesia about Iraq’s massive use of bio and chemical WMDs in the Iran-Iraq War in the 80’s.
I can recall seeing horrific images in magazines and on TV news broadcasts of Iranian troops airlifted to Europe for medical treatment of exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons. Plus Saddam’s bi and chemical WMD holocaust against the Kurds is well-known and documented.
Even the UN’s extremely soft and appeasement-oriented weapons inspection team reluctantly documented that there were thousands of tons of chemical and bio weapons production agents unaccounted for.
Which then brings us to the question: Were/are there or were/are there not WMDs in Iraq? Among others, the Israeli Mossad thinks so. They’ve talked about several large convoys of trucks moving huge amounts of WMDs from Iraq into Syria, supposedly to be stored in Syria’s own WMD storage sites in the Syrian desert.
Also, an Iraqi Air Force general very recently came forward and talked about dozens of special flights of Iraqi transports loaded with WMDs from Iraq to Syria.
I bet NONE of this was ever broadcast on the CBC or printed in the Star or Globe and Wail. Any comments in this?
…and if these tapes are authenticated and broadcast on American TV, President Bush will find himself largely vindicated in the eyes of the American people regarding Saddam’s WMD danger.
And a lot of prominent, mouthy, Bush-hating Democrats will be extremely embarrassed and eating crow. (Which is not the substance they ought to be eating, IMO.)
It’s my recollection that the bio-agent cultures were supplied by a US lab, so the Americans at least know what Iraq started with. What WMD’s were developed, how many and where they are now is the only question, I believe.
From a pragmatic point of view, it would give the needed political capital to go after Iran.
Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard has written about the volume of what has been found, the paucity of what has been released, and the timerity of the Bush Administration in allowinging it to be examined by even sympathetic reporting.
…unless the material has been slotted to help with the 2006 mid-term elecion cycle…(nyer’, nyer’, nyer’!)
All this stuff is just a hangover from the Iran Iraq wars. The West and the Soviets were happy to see them clobber each other; whilst selling them copious amounts of arms.
As Henry Kissinger once stated: “Too bad they both couldn’t lose.”
Of course now Iran is outstanding in the balance of terror geopolitical game. Trouble is they are close to going nuclear.
Yep, human rights is for pussies.
As the Iranian president would say; “Just nuke them all and let God sort them out.”
And who are the brilliant idiots who are selling them all this delightful stuff? This is a much better question.
“It’s my recollection that the bio-agent cultures were supplied by a US lab.”
If you are speaking of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) but certainly not any military labs. You can thank our buddies the french and germans fro chemicals.
You know, the more I look at the war in Iraq, the more I wonder what was going through the planners heads?
Meaning, not only was there gross negligence in planning what to do AFTER the attack, as in logistics, support and beefing up the local Iraqi security with their OWN people, but what about the CIA, NSA, XFiles, Maulder and so on watching the surrounding areas.
We heard semi’s loaded with cash got away…oh? Where to? Syria? Wasn’t anyone watching the increase in traffic to Syria? I heard ‘rumour’ that some of the WMD was smuggled to Syria.
Also realize Saddam was posturing with half his statements, typical dictator retort.
Well to be fair there could be two streams of thought as to why the borders surrounding Iraq weren’t monitored more closely:
1. Ooops.
2. Let them through, we’ll have an excuse to attack later.
Then again it could be a favour being done just like the Bin Laden family, friends of Bush and Co., get to fly out when all other planes are grounded…or has that been disproven?
Justice Minister An…, er, Ms. McL.. er, … who is Vic Toews?
Justice Minister to Determine Khadr’s Fate
Josh Pringle
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 3:12 AM
Canada’s justice minister will decide the fate of a Canadian man accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
24-year-old Abdullah Khadr has been in custody since the Mounties arrested him at the request of American authorities in December
The United States wants to extradite Khadr to face terrorism-related charges in the US.
Justice Minister Vic Toews has 30 days to decide whether to go ahead with that request. >>
cfra.com
Dave “I bet NONE of this was ever broadcast on the CBC or printed in the Star or Globe and Wail. Any comments in this?”
There probably still smarting over Curveball. You remember him the taxi driver who claimed to be involved in the manufacture of chemical weapons. The media jumped all over that and they got burned. They also got burned publishing stories from Iraq that turned out to be propaganda paid for by the Pentagon. If they’re smart they’ll wait for some evidence.
We don’t even need to “find” these alleged WMDs to prove their exsistence. We’ve got chemical tests that can detect their presence in the parts per billion range nowadays. That means if a warehouse was used to store WMDs in the past we can find out today with a few simple tests. The US has already spent billions performing such tests and have come up with nada.
tomax,
The book “House of Bush…House of Saud” proports to show a photocopy of the manifest (hand-written) for the B-727 that departed BOS (Boston Logan airport). It’s previous departure point was in the “Bluegrass State”. No, they weren’t buying fiddle music but race horses!
Saddam general: WMDs in Syria
WDN ^ | February 15, 2006
Posted on 02/15/2006 7:17:59 AM PST by Kaslin
Another former confidant of ex-dictator makes claim, also links Iraq to al-Qaida
A former general and friend of Saddam Hussein who defected but maintains close contact with Iraq claims the regime supported al-Qaida with intelligence, finances and munitions and believes weapons of mass destruction are hidden in Syria.
Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s, spoke with Ryan Mauro of WorldThreats.com.
Known as the “Butcher of Basra,” al-Tikriti commanded units that dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991.
Last month, Saddam Hussein’s No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, told the New York Sun Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were moved to Syria six weeks before the war started. Sada claimed two Iraqi Airways Boeing jets converted to cargo planes moved the weapons in a total of 56 flights. They attracted little attention, he said, because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in 2002.
Discussing Saddam’s support of terrorism, al-Tikriti said the dictator’s regime sponsored Palestinian groups with logistical and material support. >>>
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1578980/posts
(that book may have been ..”House of Saud…House of Bush).
‘Able Danger’ Identified 9/11 Hijacker 13 times
Conservative News Service ^ | 2/15/06 | Sherrie Gossett
Posted on 02/15/2006 7:14:18 AM PST by americaprd
The top-secret, military intelligence unit known as “Able Danger” identified Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, 13 times before the 2001 attacks, according to new information released Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees.
Able Danger has been identified by Weldon and team member Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer as an elite group of approximately two dozen individuals tasked with identifying and targeting the links and relationships of al Qaeda worldwide.
On June 27, 2005, Weldon said that Able Danger had offered in the year before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to share its intelligence with the FBI and to work with them to take down the New York City terrorist cell involving Mohammed Atta and two other 9/11 terrorists. Weldon said Clinton administration lawyers prevented the information from being shared with the FBI.
According to Weldon, the lawyers told Able Danger members, ” [Y]ou cannot pursue contact with the FBI against that cell. Mohamed Atta is in the U.S. on a green card and we are fearful of the fallout from the Waco incident,” a reference to the FBI’s raid on the David Koresh-led Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in April 1993.
Media reports indicated that lawyers for Able Danger were concerned that sharing data with domestic law enforcement was illegal.
Weldon on Tuesday said that despite testimony indicating that Able Danger’s data had been destroyed, he has discovered data still available. “And I am in contact with people who are still able to [do] data mining runs on pre-9/11 data,” Weldon said. “In those data runs that are now being done today, in spite of what DOD (Department of Defense) said I have 13 hits on Mohammed Atta …” >>>
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1578976/posts
maz2 :
I’m looking for the title of a book I believe you would find interesting (regarding your last post) but the mouse has failed on my other computer. I’ll wait ’til my young tech arrives home and will post around 4pm today.
WMD lies (even if they are not lies based on cherry picked intelligence) are not to me the worst.
What’s worse is the lies making a connection between Saddam and 9/11.
Controlled, he would have been a bulwart against Iraq becoming a terrorist playground. There’s no way he would have allowed a rival such as Al-Zirquawi to exist.
We then might have had Osama 3 years ago.
Anybody the still says that there are no WMD in Iraq better get over to the eye doctor.
Saddam Hussein is the biggest WMD in the country! Anything else they find is just gravy.
And if he is finished singing like a canary I’d prescribe 88 grains of lead applied directly to his liver.
There must be hundreds of parents, brothers, sisters, widows, orphans that would like to dose him with that.
WMD UPDATE: ABC’S NIGHTLINE WILL AIR TAPES OF SADDAM TALKING ABOUT HITTING DC WITH WMDS!!!
SCROLL FOR UPDATES… h/t Drudge Report CNS News is reporting (via Crosswalk.com) that organizers of an Intelligence Summit have 12 hours of Saddam tapes that may just be the “smoking gun”. Apparently ABC’s plans to devote tonights Nightline to these…
Grewal Tapes to be aired when a translator is found who can understand Librano$ language. >>>>
ABCNEWS PLANS AIRING OF SADDAM TAPES TONIGHT
DRUDGE ^ | 2/15/06
Posted on 02/15/2006 9:08:14 AM PST by areafiftyone
ABCNEWS PLANS AIRING OF SADDAM TAPES TONIGHT: Saddam talking with his advisors about hitting Washington with WMD, hiding weapons, etc… Developing…
1 posted on 02/15/2006 9:08:14 AM PST by areafiftyone
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]
To: areafiftyone
But, wait, I thought Saddam had no WMDs? >>>
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1579051/posts
(Garry P.: await the title…Thanks)
Ask yourself why this administration is still seeking justification/absolution for a foreign policy that is essentially a done deal….that is unless they need some more public credibility to expand this expensive Middle east adventure into Syria.
Sure glad it’s not my tax dollars or my government’s credit limit that’s being maxed out in these adventures….wake me up when we invade China or north Korea….now that is an adventure worthy of a real neocon. 😉
As Dave mentions above, Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard, has done admirable reporting on the more than 2 million “exploitable items” (computer hard drives, paper docs, etc.) recovered in Iraq, now housed in Doha, Qatar, and known as `DOCEX’. See especially his `Down The Memory Hole’ at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/475yhurv.asp
John Loftus of Intelligence Summit has received 12 hours of recorded conversations between Saddam and his various underlings, regarding, among other things, WMD. These recordings are the subject of the ABC piece Kate refers to. The recordings have been authenticated, and copies have been given to Congress. Loftus will release them to the public on Fed 17 at Intelligence Summit. See especially `Congress’s Secret Saddam Tapes’, by Eli Lake at:
http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=11307
Hold onto your hats.
I remember hearing a rumour that they had intercepts of Saddam ordering his troops to use nerve gas against coalition forces, and then freaking out when the nerve gas wasn’t used.
The rumour also said that certain high ranking Iraqi generals were telling the officers below them that although they weren’t getting the WMDs the guys next to them were and vice versa. Meanwhile truck convoys are spotted going to Syria and Iran.
The theory accompanying the rumour was that Saddam’s minions, sensing an imminent invasion, sold the WMDs to Syria and Iran under Saddam’s nose, pocketed the money themselves, and convinced him that he still had the WMDs.
The fact that Saddam ran the country into poverty and destruction, despite its oil wealth, and his recent courtroom antics shows that he’s just dumb enough for this theory to be true.
I’m with Stephen Hayes, we need more of this material released so we can at least try to figure out what happened beyond the MSM’s lame soundbytes.
Too bad the CIA is only interested in leaking rumours and opinions that harm the Bush administration.
does anyone get tired of the on going american proganda over suddam; not defending suddam, but the on going instilling of fear; bush is becoming to sound like the worst tabloid on this planet.
-Weapons of Mass Destruction ( or Distorsion or Deception? You decide…)–
-When the Dungeon Doors Swing Open…–
It would be surprising if Saddam DIDN’T have WMD and eventually I believe more information will surface. Look at the Vietnam war. The North Vietnamese Army’s own official history of the war refutes virtually all of the anti-war movements arguments, including confirmation of the fact that the Viet Cong were simply a front for Hanoi. In Con Couglin’s Saddam: The Secret Life, p. 250, Saddam is reported as having threatened the American ambassador in July, 1990, just prior to his invastion of Kuwait, “If you use pressure, we will deploy pressure and force. We cannot come all the way to you in the United States but individual Arabas may reach you.”
Frontpagemagazine.com has been posting articles on WMD in Iraq for a long time including most recently an Iraqi pilot who admitted to making daily flights of WMD cargo to Syria prior to the start of war in 2003. Plus the Russians had a couple of generals in Baghdad at the same time who were supposedly helping Saddam ‘clean up’ his arsenal. A Swedish institute that tracks arms sales estimated France was the seller of 13% of Iraq’s arms in the 30 years prior to 2003. So France would have been worried what an American victory would uncover, and work to avoid it happening.
Jeez, you’d think that the tapes had some new information in them from the way some of the more right-leaning folks are going on. Perhaps reality will eventually dawn on them:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Investigation/story?id=1616996
“One of the most dramatic moments in the 12 hours of recordings comes when Saddam predicts � during a meeting in the mid 1990s � a terrorist attack on the United States. “Terrorism is coming. I told the Americans a long time before August 2 and told the British as well � that in the future there will be terrorism with weapons of mass destruction.” Saddam goes on to say such attacks would be difficult to stop. “In the future, what would prevent a booby-trapped car causing a nuclear explosion in Washington or a germ or a chemical one?” But he adds that Iraq would never do such a thing. “This is coming, this story is coming but not from Iraq.”
Also at the meeting was Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who said Iraq was being wrongly accused of terrorism. “Sir, the biological is very easy to make. It’s so simple that any biologist can make a bottle of germs and drop it into a water tower and kill 100,000. This is not done by a state. No need to accuse a state. An individual can do it.”
Nothing to see here, move along…
maz2: apologies but have not located the title yet (even had the great staff at our local library assisting but no joy). It dealt with the time period prior to 9/11 and was a build up to the original “exploding white van” attempt to bring down the TC towers and how the FBI and CIA were very close on the trail of the terrorists involved but would/could not interact/exchange information. AS always, one must read with an ounce of skepticism, but it was a great backgrounder.
I have a list of 11 books I’ve read in the past couple of months but I won’t post them here (maybe I’ll send directly to Kate and she can decide). I would recommend: SANDSTORM (Policy Failure in the Middle East) by Leon Hadar and, for a historical perspective concerning how the US got caught up in the ME to start with: CHURCHILL IN AMERICA by Martin Gilbert. Both excellent backgrounders.
Maz2 re: “Justice Minister Vic Toews has 30 days to decide whether to go ahead with that request.”
30 days??
I wouldn’t take 30 SECONDS to hand that piece of crap over to the Americans. :>)
Saddam is the WMD.
he is currently on trial in Bagdad and on the extreme Jenny Craig program.
there are a few thousand Kurds that cant answer to where they last saw the Iraqi WMD.
most are likely moved to Syria now.
Shaken, Bill over at Strong World (I think it’s strongworld.blogspot.com) did something on that Iraqi general a few weeks back. I recall the book title being mentioned. Check his archives.
cal2 “most are likely moved to Syria now.”
They did a good job moving them. Not even trace amounts left behind in any of the sites inspected. Not only did they move the WMD but they picked up all the stray molecules that inevitably get left behind whenver you transport, store or process chemicals. Those Iraqi evil scientists must be operating on a level of sophistication that far surpasses anything we in the west possess.
Jose
What happened to the chemical weapons that were admitted by Sadam and inspected by the UN and later went missing ?
You know the ones he used to gas the Kurds.
How come the sensors that you know can find anything could’nt find where they were manufactured, transported ,or stored ?
Did your sensors pick up the stray molecules from the dead Kurd bodies ?
I hope they never find them , I hope Sadman has set precedent to where we (civilized world)can now invade and kill any dictator that threatens the use of WMD even if they are bluffing.