Feb 16 2006
Saddam Tapes On Nightline
Now that we have Saddam talking about terrorism on the US and WMDs I guess all those people who claimed this madman could be controlled are now proven to be a tad naive.
Saddam talks about hiding his WMDs from the UN and wishing he had launched more at Israel (that’s sane?). He admits he has undeclared WMDs and he keeps them hidden.
Any wonder people believed Saddam had WMDs? Saddam believed he did! Who am I to believe – Saddam or Bill Mahr and Michael Moore?
More at American Thinker
iNTERESTING THAT THEY GAVE STORY SO LITTLE TIME.
I saw that ABC is showing the Abu Grhaib pics today on
Malkin.
To make this one of three stories, Cheney shooting spree,
Saddam’s tapes, and something about babies just seems
an obvious way to send message – this really isn’t
that important.
What do you think?
I agree completely Larwyn.
However, I would say this doesn’t “prove” anything, at least in terms of W’sMD (I use “W’sMD” cuz it isn’t weapon of mass destructions, it is WEAPONS!, anyways) but it does prove that all of this “we know now!” ” We Know. . . ” “after the SotU’s 16 words, we now know. . . ” CRAP! what Nightline informed us of is that everyone who “knew” anything, didn’t know Jack Crap!!! I trust in the existence of Susan Sarandan’s strategic brilliance than I do in what the Democrats who so loudly proclaimed what they “knew” know.
Tariq Aziz also talks about how the French and Russians could help them solve the problem of them wanting to have biological weapons, by arguing that anyone can make them…
I also find it intriguing that this is only a couple minutes out of 12 HOURS of tape. ABC News is most definitely saving some nuggets for Saturday, and who knows what that might contain?
I only hope that ABC releases the tapes in full, and the transcripts of the full 12 hours of the tapes. In not, then all the blasting of the Bush administration for being “secretive” falls on completely deaf ears.
We don’t need ABC telling us what parts of the tape they deem are important, we need the whole thing.
Get real. Trusting ANYTHING that Saddam says? As for 12 hours of tape I’d LOVE to see the screams ABC would get for running 12 straight hours of Saddam. Most of you can’t hold still for ten minutes of C-Span much less 12 hours of a guy that will say anything to throw a monkey wrench into the US.
Additional note – Sorry, I left out the point that I’m NOT talking about AJ here. I don’t agree with most of his points and I think many of his posts read like propaganda. But I respect his willingness to wade through the C*ap to get his information.
It is also clear the Duelfer did a very incomplete job before he declared there were no WMDs.
The main focus about these tapes are just icing on the cake. Here in lies another amzing story about his WMD’s. You know what, lets not BS, we sold him WMD’s and their components up to 1992. The real issue is the government doesnt want you to know we sold him some very nasty stuff and the precursers and equipment to make it. Then you tie in the Libya nuclear EU program at Khans disposal, its obvious he was working…as Bush said ” a growing and gathering threat”. Anyone that believes Saddam didnt have the ability to make WMD’s of any kind, is a moron. PERIOD!!!
Now with that being said. Regardless of all the attention to hs WMD’s. Let this be real clear. It was Saddams duty, according to the cease fire agreement to fully disclose everything. The burden of proof relied on saddam showing he got rid of them and not the US to prove he has them. Everthing falls under UN mandate, resolution 687 and Saddam clearly didnt cooporate for 12 years.
Intelligence began to erode after 1996, this timeline is crucial in order to understand Saddams practices of deceit. With little to no cooperation from Saddam’s regime and their blatant disregard for the IAEA from 1996-2000. The UN sanction’s may have slowed Saddam’s programs to a certain degree. Instead it appears Saddam’s bribery of UN officials in the oil-for-food program and subsequent nations like Russia, Germany, France. All of which, had a hand in Saddam’s revitalization of his weapons programs, by means of supporting the sanctions being lifted. Inclusive their direct involvement in the oil-for-food scandal. “With help from Russia, France and the Arab world, Iraq has ended a de facto air travel embargo. In 2000 Iraq began chipping away at 10 -year-old U.N. economic sanctions and seeking more control over its oil riches. Iraq is unlikely to allow inspectors back in”….according to a BBC article.
Iraq was benefiting from the erosion of sanctions and bribed UN officials. In late June 2003, Dr. Mahdi Shukur Ubaydi, the head of Iraq’s pre-1991 centrifuge uranium enrichment program approached U.S. officials in Baghdad .Dr. Ubaydi turned over a volume of centrifuge documents and components he had hidden in his garden from inspectors since 1991. These items, blue prints and key centrifuge pieces, represented a complete template for what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program. He also claimed this concealment was part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended.
These tapes are going to be a focus of a conference this weekend
http://www.intelligencesummit.org
A talk on this will be given on Saturday Morning.
ABC News obtained the tapes from Bill Tierney, a former member of a United Nations inspection team who translated them for the FBI. “Because of my experience being in the inspections and being in the military, I knew the significance of these tapes when I heard them,” says Tierney. U.S. officials have confirmed the tapes are authentic, and that they are among hundreds of hours of tapes Saddam recorded in his palace office….”Intelligence community analysts from the CIA, and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating, from a historical perspective the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their post-war analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey group report,” she said in a statement.
“The tapes mostly date from early to mid-1990s and cover such topics as relations with the United Nations, efforts to rebuild industries from Gulf war damage and the pre 9/11 situation in Afghanistan….”
Charles Duelfer, who led the official U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction after the war, says the tapes show extensive deception but don’t prove that weapons were still hidden in Iraq at the time of the U.S.-led war in 2003. “What they do is support the conclusion in the report, which we made in the last couple of years, that the regime had the intention of building and rebuilding weapons of mass destruction, when circumstances permitted.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Investigation/story?id=1616996
Still smokin’ that Dutch Cleanser huh? Iraq was a strategic blunder of breathtaking magnitude.
This Republican administration is incompetent in all things military and governmental. Failure after failure, mis-step after mis-step leaving a legacy of bumbling that only a Republican could love.
Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003 and had not begun any program to produce them.
The long-awaited report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, says Iraq’s WMD program was essentially destroyed in 1991 and Saddam ended Iraq’s nuclear program after the 1991 Gulf War.
In February 2003, Powell said: “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.”
But two years earlier, Powell said just the opposite. The occasion was a press conference on 24 February 2001 during Powell’s visit to Cairo, Egypt. Answering a question about the US-led sanctions against Iraq, the Secretary of State said:
“We had a good discussion, the Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions — the fact that the sanctions exist — not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein’s ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq…”
In 2001 he said:
“The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years, not in deterring him from moving in that direction, but from actually being able to move in that direction. The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. It doesn’t have the capacity it had 10 or 12 years ago. It has been contained. And even though we have no doubt in our mind that the Iraqi regime is pursuing programs to develop weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological and nuclear — I think the best intelligence estimates suggest that they have not been terribly successful. There’s no question that they have some stockpiles of some of these sorts of weapons still under their control, but they have not been able to break out, they have not been able to come out with the capacity to deliver these kinds of systems or to actually have these kinds of systems that is much beyond where they were 10 years ago.”
Powell wasn’t the only senior administration official telling the truth before the truth became highly inconvenient. On 29 July 2001, Condoleezza Rice appeared on CNN Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer (an anonymous reader sent me the full transcript from Lexis-Nexis). Guest host John King asked Rice about the fact that Iraq had recently fired on US planes enforcing the “no-fly zones” in Iraq. Rice craftily responds:
“Well, the president has made very clear that he considers Saddam Hussein to be a threat to his neighbors, a threat to security in the region, in fact a threat to international security more broadly.”
Notice that she makes it clear that Bush is the one who considers Hussein a threat. She doesn’t say, “I consider…” or even, “We consider…”
Then King asks her about the sanctions against Iraq. She replies:
“But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let’s remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt. ”
It was all spin, all lies from a bunch of incompetent chickenhawks that Republican voters put in place.
Im curious Ghost have you ever read resolution 687 that Saddam signed. Everything you mentioned in fact gives credence to the Iraqi Liberation Act: America’s set policy towards Iraq by Congress under Clinton in 1998. The first words out of Clintons mouth was after this was signed.
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON (Office of the Press Secretary)
October 31, 1998.
“Today I am signing into law H.R. 4655, the “Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.” This Act makes clear that it is the sense of the Congress that the United States should support those elements of the Iraqi opposition that advocate a very different future for Iraq than the bitter reality of internal repression and external aggression that the current regime in Baghdad now offers. Let me be clear on what the U.S. objectives are: The United States wants Iraq to rejoin the family of nations as a freedom-loving and law-abiding member. This is in our interest and that of our allies within the region.
The United States favors an Iraq that offers its people freedom at home. I categorically reject arguments that this is unattainable due to Iraq’s history or its ethnic or sectarian make-up. Iraqis deserve and desire freedom like everyone else. The United States looks forward to a democratically supported regime that would permit us to enter into a dialogue leading to the reintegration of Iraq into normal international life. My Administration has pursued, and will continue to pursue, these objectives through active application of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. The evidence is overwhelming that such changes will not happen under the current Iraq leadership. In the meantime, while the United States continues to look to the Security Council’s efforts to keep the current regime’s behavior in check, we look forward to new leadership in Iraq that has the support of the Iraqi people. The United States is providing support to opposition groups from all sectors of the Iraqi community that could lead to a popularly supported government.
Looks to me policy towards Iraq was approved in 1998 and further comments by Hillary Clinton prove that policy changed from containment to regime change. Note how many times Clinton mentions freedom in his speech but if Bush does it its all lies, propaganda, etc…etc.
– Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002
SENATE FLOOR (clinton.senate.gov)– “In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.”
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members … It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
Now given everything you said about Bush lieing, can be past onto the lies of the Clinton administration also and how they determined a set policy of regime change. If so how is it Bush lied, based on what was handed to him as policy. Do you except that all parties lied?
After the WTC attacks, expediting that change was apparent and was not based on trump up intell by Bush, the bases for such a move was set by Congress during the Clinton administration based on 1990’s intell. Both Bush and Clinton all said, it was all about the UN resolutions and Bush’s pecking order in the WOT. Wich began with Iraqs violations, anything after that fell under Resolution 1441. You want the burden of proof to be on Bush, yet you leave out Clintons policy. Carefull your bias is showing….:)
However saddam’s burden of proof that he disclose and destroy everything. The all incomposing cease fire agreement and subsequant resolutions for 12 years, states saddam is to fully disclose and disarm. He never did. Not to mention the foiled plot to assassinate Bush’s dad was an act of war in my opinion. These tapes prove Clintons policy and Bush’s action upon such policy, was definetly the right move and saddams violations and deceit was accurate.
BigDog – We keep coming back to a few actual facts.
Clinton sent a cruise missle into Afghanistan after Bin Ladin. He missed.
Bin Ladin struck the US with a major attack using Sadi Arabian terrorists and Bush attacks IRAQ?
End of facts-
I’m currently compling a list of people Clinton fired because they disagreed with him and placing them on the Left. On the Right will be all the people Bush fired.
I thought about listing people who Clinton fired who then wrote a book showing how screwed up the Clinton Administration was vs the Bush book writers. But it wouldn’t be fair to list one book vs six. Especially since the one was an Economist who had to watch the US pile up the largest surplus in history, while the six have a terrific track record of predicting the future, both in Iraq and in the Economic dept.
WOW observer thank you for dismissing the actual facts i posted. The majoritive fact is the ceasefire; resolution 687. Everything else is secondary, according to both Clinton and Bush when outlining Iraq’s threat. Forgive me for bringing up something so important in regards to US policy towards Iraq, set well before Bush ever took office.
Observer, it’s fair to makethat comparison, but don’t forget to also list the number of Clinton affiliates that are DEAD versus those of Bush