New Documents Reveal Saddam Hid WMD, Was Tied to Al Qaida

newsmax ^

[digital-olive]

Reprinted from NewsMax.com

Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005 12:15 p.m. EST New Documents Reveal Saddam Hid WMD, Was Tied to Al Qaida

Recently discovered Iraqi documents now being translated by U.S. intelligence analysts indicate that Saddam Hussein's government made extensive plans to hide Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 - and had deep ties to al Qaida before the 9/11 attacks.

The explosive evidence was discovered among "millions of pages of documents" unearthed by the Iraq Survey Group weapons search team, reports the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes.

In the magazine's Nov. 21 issue, Hayes reveals that the document cache now being examined contains "a thick stew of reports and findings from a variety of [Iraqi] intelligence agencies and military units."

Though the Pentagon has so far declined to make the bombshell papers public, Hayes managed to obtain a list of titles on the reports.

Topics headlined in the still embargoed Iraqi documents include:

• Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001)

• Formulas and information about Iraq's Chemical Weapons Agents

• Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map)

• Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs

• Ricin research and improvement

• Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam

• Memo from the [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997)

• Iraq Ministry of Defense Calls for Investigation into why documents related to WMD were found by UN inspection team

• Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment

• Correspondence from [Iraqi Intelligence Service] to [the Military Industrial Commission] regarding information gathered by foreign intelligence satellites on WMD (Dec. 2002) • Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals

...continues

[Imperialist]

Where in Syria they may have went:

http://www.2la.org/syria/wmd.html

[abigailsmybaby]

This Hayes fellow was on Rush's show this week talking about this. He said the amount of info is staggering and is being translated still. Once it's all translated it then must be declassified.

I got out of my truck at that point so I missed the rest of Mr. Hayes phone call.

[al_again]

Iraq was a real threat to our security.

I disagree - I don't think Iraq was a threat to the US when we invaded. However, that is besides the point. Iraq was obligated to allow weapons inspectors free access as a term of the first wars cease fire.

The US had reason to believe they were a threat and no way to verify that they weren't. As Iraq was in violation of the cease fire, the US had justification to resume the original conflict.

I agree with you in the fact that I also think Iraq would have resumed their WMD program once the UN sanctions were disregarded, became unenforceable, or otherwise removed. However, as stated previously, they were not a significant threat at the time of the invasion.

[al_again]

I have a very hard time believing that. If the Bush administration had proof of WMD's - it would be out there by now.

[Leatherneck_MT]

No it wouldn't necessarily be out there. Especially if the way the information was gained was highly classified. KNOWING that we have this information could, possibly, tip off the enemy that a part of their secrecy has been broken and prompt them to change methods.

It's SOP in the Intel world.

I'm not saying it IS, but I am saying it is a good possibility. Only time will tell in the long run.

[al_again]

The one item I found really disturbing about the whole Iraq situation was the claim that the US had rock-solid intel on the WMD's but, for security reasons, etc..., the administration could not share the details. I fully appreciated this fact and took this statement as fact. Now, my idea of solid intel might be different, but I assumed the administration had incontrovertible proof that Iraq had WMD and active WMD programs; incontrovertible proof being pictures or something along that line.

Now, I am much more skeptical of this type of claim. I also think that if the Bush administration had this proof, they would have found a way to get it out there.

A quick point of clarification - I still think the US was justified in going to war with Iraq - see prior posts for reasoning.

[sandbar]

I love what Newsmax has to say, most of the time anyway. I just don't always trust them. They tend to do alot of vague reporting and don't list many sources, if any at all.

[Wissa]

I disagree - I don't think Iraq was a threat to the US when we invaded.

I'm not sure if we're really in disagreement or not. The status before we went in was that Saddam was not going to do anything on a short-time basis to delay sanctions from getting lifted, and they weren't going to be lifted until some time after the date we chose to get rid of Saddam so I'll certainly go along with saying that Saddam wasn't necessarilly a threat on the day we attacked. If you disagree that the sanctions would have eventually been lifted, well, that's where we'll disagree.

If his regime was left in place with no sanctions (and along with that no UN review of his weapons), he would have resumed his WMD programs and his war against the US, fought by way of supplying weapons and funding to terrorist groups.

Back before we attacked, if you accept that the inevitable future is that Saddam will acquire WMD's and use them against our interests, the time to alter that future is while it can still be altered (and before he actually GETS the weapons, ala North Korea). In 2002 and before, there was already discussion of lifting sanctions. We chose the correct time to attack. Any delay would have put us at greater risk, since the momentum was toward lifting sanctions, and the farther down that path we went, the more difficult it would have been to prevent it.

[Leatherneck_MT]

I can well understand your skepticism.

I think we had to go to War against Iraq. Not, however, for any real or alleged WMD's.

He had violated the cease fire agreement that he had with us by refusing to be fully forthcoming in his dealings with the weapons inspectors and for the fact that he had, long before the invasion, begun to fire at our planes.

This alone was reason enough for us to go kick his arse back into the stone age. That is the only argument I have ever made for us going back into Iraq. Those things are public knowledge and proveable.

The ONLY thing I think we did wrong here was this.

There was NO Congressional Declaration of War, and there by god should have been.

[al_again]

I don't disagree with you at all about the sanctions. France and Russia were actively working to break the sanctions - either through getting them lifted or by just simply disregarding them.

[FreeAtlanta]

Who really knows? Why was Able Danger covered up? I am at the point where I think Washington is truly run by crooks, dumbnuts, and traitors. The good guys don't have much of a chance because they are so outnumbered by those first 3 categories.

[CALawyer]

"Because it's NewsMax".

A Pulitzer may be waiting for the person who breaks this story if it's true, which should make all of us wonder why it's appearing on NewsMax. I hope it's true, but I'm not holding my breath.
This reminds me of the FOX reporting early on in the Iraq war, where the reporter would breathlessly state that U.S. military officials "believe" that they "may" have uncovered a bunker that "possibly" contains WMDs. With all of these caveats, the odds were probably whittled down to the range of 5% or less.

[Peach]

I read the other day that the person in charge in 2003 of finding WMD in Iraq told his staff they didn't have time to read documents and were only looking for the actual WMD.

I think it was Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard (who has been doing the best investigative work of anyone in the country these last several years) who reported that.

[Iowa Granny]

thanks, Peach.

[Andrew_Kalionzes]

I'm not at liberty to mention specifics... due to a friend who is a CIA/NSA analyist showing me something he shouldn't have shown me, and the fact that he will do life++ if he was caught. The photos exist. I asked why they are not released and was told that he was wondering the same thing. The photos showed close up detail of the military truck traffic going into Syria from Iraq, as mentioned in the Duelfer Report. And showed missiles, rockets, and artillery shells being incinerated in the Bakarra valley. They were very very detailed. I wish i could provide more, but unfortunately I cannot, and will not.

I can only hope this administration will get its head out and declassify them.

[AmeriBrit]

bttt [article from 2005]

[RightWhale]

Better ask Saddam about this.

[Paulus Invictus]

Re the MSM's and the RAT's constant rant about "Bush's lies" re the WMDs in Iraq:

"There is no nonsense so gross that society (especially the MSM and the RATs), will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity." (Robertson Davis quote plus my additions).

In today's paper there were four letters calling for Bush's impeachment for "his lies about the WMDs." The writers and the MSM daily prove the quotation is correct--many Americans, mostly RATs, are purely stupid.