Posted on 03/11/2006 12:24:01 PM PST by wagglebee
I don't know if I have any readers devoted enough to remember what I wrote in my column here on Jan. 7, so I'm not above telling you myself: I predicted we'd be learning that Saddam Hussein's WMDs were "slipped across the border into Syria."
Now, it's just a few weeks later, and we have in fact learned that was the case. I'm neither prophet nor genius on this stuff, and if I was catching on long before the first days of January, so were other people. Now we have enough increased evidence and detail to declare mystery solved.
The new mystery is why the politicians and the news media are taking scant notice.
If what's being learned isn't news, well what is? Even rumors about this would deserve notice bigger than these facts are getting. Has the definition of news become just the bits that fit an ideological agenda? Are raw facts off the menu?
By now, of course, you've heard of the verified audio tapes revealing Saddam Hussein in his palace meetings discussing his WMDs and ways to hide evidence and smuggle them over the Syrian border in the final weeks before the U.S. military came calling in earnest.
What? No! Don't tell me you haven't heard!
Right now, if I needn't say this to you, there are lots of people who do need to hear it from you. The truth is, a recently commissioned poll by the respected TIPP organization shows that no more than 20 percent of the public are even aware of the existence of these tapes showing that pre-war intelligence about Saddam's WMDs was correct all along!
Why aren't we hearing playback with voice-over translation and maybe some artsy graphics as we did with certain past events in Iraq that had the major media frenzied? My hunch is that it relates to there being no kind of pornographic element to juice the story. Then again, those old Nixon White House tapes and these recent pre-Katrina tapes evidencing too-casual official preparedness had none either – yet they got plenty of broadcast repetition. So is this story beyond big media's appetite just because its bad guy Saddam doesn't happen to be anybody they're itching to bring down?
OK, so we have only audio of Saddam's conferences, no video. But just put it on TV with graphics or stock footage and folks will watch – and appropriately watch in some shock and awe!
This is of pivotal historic importance (especially if you take seriously the idea that "Bush lied" as some of the media have all but engraved in stone), and what "everybody" knows someday (after enough exposés by the likes of The History Channel) won't help a citizenry who need to know right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees something catastrophically wrong here, and we'd better make some loud noise and make it immediately. Contacts with elected representatives, rage calls to corporate media switchboards, talk radio, letters to the editor …all will count for something now.
Facts known are growing more numerous, and from reputable sources, but they now include:
It's not my point here that I (along with countless others) was right about Saddam slipping WMD evidence across the border into Syria. – As I wrote here months ago, "It doesn't take a genius to figure that out." No, the louder discussion now needs to be about the neglect of this new information in our public discourse. Both the mainstream political leaders and the mainstream media are oddly muted or downright silent about the details we're learning.
Why? By now, does anyone still imagine that ignoring inconvenient facts can make them just go away?
The conventional wisdom has been settled around the idea that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, so President Bush now has only the good riddance of Saddam and the better life of Iraqis left as a way to justify the decision to make war back in 2003. And this has made "Bush lied, people died" seem just a tad less loony a mantra for copyright by the left.
Amazingly, given what's being revealed, nobody has yet laid a glove on the conventional wisdom. But people do catch on and make up their own minds about things like this. If you check the percentages of Americans who believe Lee Harvey Oswald was not JFK's lone assassin or that UFOs are indeed extraterrestrials' vehicles, it's obvious that the "official line" on a subject does not always become what "everyone knows."
But what "everyone knows" doesn't matter; it' the way everyone acts, and this is a dreadful problem if failure to act risks our national security. If the president and members of the Congress timidly act as if the justification for making war on Saddam was only that the Iraqi people are better off now, public debate will be distorted. It is the mainstream news media's duty to point unblinkingly to the fact of Saddam's WMDs being smuggled into Syria. If they in their wisdom prefer – for whatever imaginable combination of reasons – to soft pedal the information, then we "small fry" are duty-bound to bellow about it as I do here and now.
A nation may survive or succumb based on its conventional wisdom. And each of us has a personal part in shaping it just by what we bother to mention, or refuse to let go by unchallenged, in our passing conversations with random fellow citizens. This is an art not to be forgotten as we accept life within urban masses as more likely for most of us than life in any sort of Mayberry. Can you respectfully tell a fellow traveler, say, on a commuter bus or awaiting service at a deli counter, that you've heard contrary to what you just heard him mention? DO IT!
On Manhattan subways, when I was a Columbia undergraduate, it often impressed me when my fellow "strap hangers" would do this back in the late '50s. It remained friendly, but it was authentically spirited. This kind of open exchange between strangers is one of the "vital signs" of a healthy free society. May God bless all who keep this sport participatory, and let's you and I work to keep ourselves counted among them.
In the days ahead, the erroneous conventional wisdom about Saddam's WMDs needs to be squarely in our cross hairs. Tell your friends and neighbors. "THERE WERE WMDs IN IRAQ!"
What is not said in this article is "WHEN" they were moved. And remember, we said we knew where they were.
I wonder what WND pays.
Assuredly most of the WMDs are still well hidden IN Iraq. Saddam may have outsourced some of his nuclear program to Libya, but he would not let his biol and chem weapons get away. The Russians had many other things to move out (under the OBVIOUS watchful eyes of our satellites) than Saddam's WMDs. The WMDs are most likely in southern Iraq in those bunkers that one would have to divert rivers and canals to open.
As far as Saddam's plans to attack the United States, it was by surrogate only. Very dangerous.
Sady the american public in general could care less. Bush lied , people died. thats all most morons remember. Facts just ruin the fun
20% of people know about Saddam's tapes? OMG
Things are worse than I thought. Much worse. Please folks - can't we get some activism going on this site and make calls to our Congressmen and encourage them to discuss these tapes publicly?
Oh - but we don't want to offend poor Russia! Why, Putin might even cry or something!
Remeber that "retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney has been quoted as believing the Bush administration needs Russia's involvement now in halting Iran's rush toward nuclear armament and so must resist information damning to Russia."
Really, where's your sense of diplomacy?
You said -- "I'm also a little curious in all of this. Remember how Putin revealed that Saddam Hussein had plans to attack the United States and US targets post-9/11? Why would he come public with this knowing that eventually he would probably be busted for helping smuggle weapons out of the country? And why would he allow weapons to be smuggled out of the country in the first place?
This might have been a sort of a deal worked out with the U.S. and Russia. It could have been something explicit -- or maybe something implicitly allowed by the U.S. It could have been that Russia may have wanted to cover up some involvement in those WMD and helped Saddam Hussein get them out of the country and over to Syria -- with the U.S. knowing that this was going on -- but not wanting to say anything about it.
This way the U.S. troops would not be facing any WMD during the invasion. And also the U.S. may have tracked them, as they left the country and went into Syria, so that they could follow up later, after things settled down in Iraq and at such a time as they want to go after Syria.
So, perhaps the reason why the U.S. Administration has not made a strong case for the fact that the WMD was really there in Iraq, is because then they would be required to explain where they are now. Perhaps the U.S. does not want the "cat out of the bag" as to the fact that they know exactly where the WMD is now. They want the WMD to stay in place, in Syria, until such a time as they are ready to "move on it."
I think that's much more plausible a scenario in explaining this whole thing with WMD in Iraq (and Russia's involvement and why the U.S. does not seem to be making a big deal out of the fact that they were actually there).
Just my idea about the whole thing.
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "I just wish the Bush would go on prime time TV and announce this to the entire world."
There are reasons for leaving it the way it is right now. And I think, since that Bush Administration is *not* bellowing this out to the world -- shows that there *are reasons* why it does not want the world to really pay attention to this fact.
I think they have always known where they have been, and are waiting for another time to deal with them.
See post #53.
Regards,
Star Traveler
That's an interesting theory, I think you may be on to something.
mmmmmmmmmmmmm you got me thinking.
And just perhaps Mr. Bush doesn't care to offend his friends in Syria for whatever reasons.
bookmark
It is maddening hence the President must have more compelling reasons for not doing so than our wishes.
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Another History Channel coup...
The Man Who Predicted 9/11: RICK RESCORLA, ..R.I.P.
http://www.RickRescorla.com
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24361
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