February 27, 2006
Bush did not lie...
Here's a good editorial in Investor's Business Daily, on the Saddam tapes:
...Inconveniently for critics of the war, Saddam made tapes in his version of the Oval Office. These tapes landed in the hands of American intelligence and were recently aired publicly.The first 12 hours of the tapes — there are hundreds more waiting to be translated — are damning, to say the least. They show conclusively that Bush didn't lie when he cited Saddam's WMD plans as one of the big reasons for taking the dictator out.
Nobody disputes the tapes' authenticity. On them, Saddam talks openly of programs involving biological, chemical and, yes, nuclear weapons.
War foes have long asserted that Saddam halted his WMD programs in the wake of his defeat in the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam's abandonment of WMD programs was confirmed by subsequent U.N. inspections.
Again, not true. In a tape dating to April 1995, Saddam and several aides discuss the fact that U.N. inspectors had found traces of Iraq's biological weapons program. On the tape, Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, is heard gloating about fooling the inspectors.
"We did not reveal all that we have," he says. "Not the type of weapons, not the volume of the materials we imported, not the volume of the production we told them about, not the volume of use. None of this was correct."
There's more. Indeed, as late as 2000, Saddam can be heard in his office talking with Iraqi scientists about his ongoing plans to build a nuclear device. At one point, he discusses Iraq's plasma uranium program — something that was missed entirely by U.N. weapons inspectors combing Iraq for WMD.
This is particularly troubling, since it indicates an active, ongoing attempt by Saddam to build an Iraqi nuclear bomb. "What was most disturbing," said John Tierney, the ex- FBI agent who translated the tapes, "was the fact that the individuals briefing Saddam were totally unknown to the U.N. Special Commission (or UNSCOM, the group set up to look into Iraq's WMD programs)."
Perhaps most chillingly, the tapes record Iraq Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz talking about how easy it would be to set off a WMD in Washington. The comments come shortly after Saddam muses about using "proxies" in a terror attack.... (my emphasis)
The idea that Saddam had lost interest in WMD's, and was not a danger, was always a shit-stupid one. Now all sorts of information is oozing to the surface. The people pushing the "Bush lied" line were either liars themselves, or people who desperately didn't want to know. The truth is painful, and all sorts of pacifist fairy-tale castles and bureaucratic empires are endangered by it.
Posted by John Weidner at February 27, 2006 08:26 PM"Shit stupid." I like the term, and plan to use on an as-needed basis in the future. As for the substance of your story, why doesn't the President hold a press conference and play a translation of the tape? I'm tired of this rope-a-dope routine.
Posted by: PDS at February 28, 2006 07:27 AMMe too. And mystified. I would have expected us to be publishing Iraqi documents like mad within weeks of hitting Baghdad. Not to mention dropping paratroops on various Iraqi buildings to preserve all possible documentary evidence...
I can understand us not wanting to embarras the Russians, who may have helped hide WMD's--we want their support against Iran. Other than that the whole thing bewilders me.
Posted by: John Weidner at February 28, 2006 07:57 AM
For me there are just too many “shit-stupid” aspects of this thing to be believable.
1. MSM is sitting on the story
2. The administration is tongue-tied.
3. The Russians helped move the WMDs out of Iraq.
4. They went to Syria and Lebanon and what? Disappeared.
5. There has been a political shake-up in Syria/Lebanon.
Where are the WMDs?
6. Tariq Aziz is in on many of these tapes. He’s been in
custody for over a year. Has he verified? Why not?
I’m willing to believe a couple of these, but all of them are too much to swallow. Something is wrong with this picture.
1. MSM sits on lots of stories
2. Administration is often tongue-tied (I wish I knew why)
3. We know that Soviet WMD-assistance to 3d World countries included advice on making them "disappear." So post-Soviet Russian help is not totally unbelievable.
4. WMD's were moved seems at least as likely a story as that known WMD's just sort of fizzled-out and melted away. And if moved, it's got to be to Syria, or somewhere in the Iraq desert.
5. Assad's still in power. And he certainly wouldn't want the secret let out, except as a last bargaining chip.
6. The tapes don't mention, I think, hiding WMD's before OIF--just earlier deceptions. Aziz might not be in on the secret. We know that most top Iraqis thought they had WMD's...
I don't feel comfortable with the many stories by people who claim to have been scorned and squelched by the CIA or other officials or the media. Yet we seem to have too many of them to ignore. Way way way too much "don't want to know" stuff going on.
Posted by: John Weidner at February 28, 2006 10:36 AMWhat about the possibility that we know exactly where they are? Immediately after the invasion, there were unconfirmed reports of two WMD burial sites in Syria, and possibly one in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.
If we know where they are, we want them to stay where we can watch them. We don't want to spook Assad into moving them. We don't want to lose track.
Iraqi documents, Russian defectors, or satellite photos that confirm the whereabouts of buried WMD would therefore be discouraged. The admonistration would strategically admit that it was wrong, and would expect to be vindicated ultimately, post-Assad.
Further speculation. There may be a hidden dimension to the Russian involvement. Russians are playing both sides in the global War on Terror. They may have supplied the US with coordinates and ongoing surveillance. Under such circumstances, this administration would have a strong incentive to keep the fog machine running.
Posted by: lyle at March 1, 2006 04:14 AMThose are interesting possibilities. They fit.
Posted by: John Weidner at March 1, 2006 06:28 AMlyle does make some good points. That might also explain why the administration is not just indifferent to, but is actually foot-dragging ( according to Stephen Hayes-Weekly Standard) on getting tons - literally - of Saddam's documents translated. We know the bastard kept good records, so "the truth is in there" somewhere.
Posted by: Frank at March 1, 2006 09:51 AM
