Posted on 03/12/2006 10:29:27 PM PST by smoothsailing
Tapes reveal WMD plans by Saddam
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published March 13, 2006
Audiotapes of Saddam Hussein and his aides underscore the Bush administration's argument that Baghdad was determined to rebuild its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction once the international community had tired of inspections and left the Iraqi dictator alone.
In addition to the captured tapes, U.S. officials are analyzing thousands of pages of newly translated Iraqi documents that tell of Saddam seeking uranium from Africa in the mid-1990s.
The documents also speak of burying prohibited missiles, according to a government official familiar with the declassification process.
But it is not clear whether Baghdad did what the documents indicate, said the U.S. official, who asked not to be named.
"The factories are present," an Iraqi aide tells Saddam on one of the tapes, made by the dictator in the mid-1990s while U.N. weapons inspectors were searching for Baghdad's remaining stocks of weapons of mass destruction.
"The factories remain, in the mind they remain. Our spirit is with us, based solely on the time period," the aide says, according to the documents. "And [inspectors] take note of the time period, they can't account for our will."
The quote is from roughly 12 hours of taped conversations that unexpectedly landed in the lap of Bill Tierney, a former Army warrant officer and Arabic speaker who was translating for the FBI tapes unearthed in Iraq after the invasion.
Mr. Tierney made a copy, which he provided to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee in turn gave a copy to intelligence analysts who authenticated the voice as that of Saddam.
Mr. Tierney said that the quote from the Saddam aide, and scores of others, show Saddam was rebuilding his once-ample weapons stocks.
"The tapes show...
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Quote taken from the speech to the nation by Bill Clinton on December 16, 1998.
WMD ping
I keep hearing of these satellite photos of trailer truck convoys going into Syria just before the American invasion .Why cant we see these photos?
They're classified, of course.
I see that someone said the photos are classified.
That's not quite correct. Colin Powell showed them to the UN Security Council in the fall of 2002 and they were viewed on live television.
This made for a nice front-page headline while browsing at the local 7-11 this morning.
That doesn't mean that they aren't still classified.
In many cases, the classification depends on the resolution of the photograph. A low resolution version might not be classified, but a high resolution version will almost certainly be, if only for the fact that the degree of resolution reveals as much about our capabilities as they do about the actual subject of the photo.
Pictures of trucks don't mean much unless you also have pictures of identifiable material being loaded into the trucks or being unloaded at the destination. In the months leading up to the invasion, you can be darn well sure we were doing every possible form of satellite surveillance of Iraq. The pictures we would really want to see almost certainly exist and are guaranteed to be classified. Powell would have never had these photos at the UN.
Having said all that, always remember-this is the government. Logic need not apply.
Which, BTW, is an act of war in most people's eyes. Just MHO.
That's true.
When does this white house start playing the tapes of Yariq Aziz spilling his guts on everything Sadam was up to.This slow dip info could take years.Aziz knows it all.Get him front and center before the msm and be done with it.
dems are slowing fanning their fingertips on their bottom, drooling lip:
Dems: "Oh yeah? Well whadabout Cheney shootin' that guy in Texas!!! Impeach him! :)
Then something happened that Col. McMaster had not planned for: Politicians in Baghdad forced a delay of three more days, apparently concerned about civilian casualties.
Ware says to the soldiers, he was with it looked like the delay gave al Qaeda time to escape.
"The al Qaeda presence in Tal Afar was surrounded. And the attack was primed. And then it was stopped dead in its tracks. And so, as the troops I was with battled throughout the day and into the night with al Qaeda fighters so close you could throw a stone and hit them, when we woke up the next morning — poof — they were gone!" says Ware.
This is why Iraq is a mess, and because of politicians it is why we havent won a real "war" since ww2.
"This is why Iraq is a mess, and because of politicians it is why we havent won a real "war" since ww2."
Not sure why you replied as you did. But, thought I would make a remark about our occupation and its conduct. I'm reading a book by an former military intell officer who aptly remarked that the civilian leaders (i.e. undersecretaries) with no prior military experience that are running the show are like "virgins writing sex manuals."
If there were no Stockpiles, then Bush lied, and troops died.
Page 32Z?
If there were no Stockpiles, then Bush lied, and troops died.
Three questions:
Are you saying Saddam was innocent if he had moved his stockpiles?Do you think his capabilities and plans for future WMD's, when the coast was clear, were irrelevant?
And, do you also believe the "Oil-for-Food" money bought food for starving women and children?
Instead, if we want to discuss boring stuff like WMDs, let's talk about how Bush and Cheney lied and illegally exposed Valerie Plame...
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