U.S. lawmakers study Saddam tapes for clues on WMD

[ECH1969]

Members of a U.S. Government panel are studying audio recordings between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his top advisers in a bid to unearth new clues on the controversy surrounding weapons of mass destruction (WMD), The New York Sun reported on Tuesday.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has already confirmed that the recordings of Saddam's voice in the tapes are authentic, the committee's chairman, Peter Hoekstra, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. However, he did not go into detail about the nature of the conversations or their context.

The tapes were provided by John Loftus, a former federal prosecutor who says he received them from a former American military intelligence analyst. Loftus, who will make the tapes available to the public on February 17, claims they "will be able to provide a few definitive answers to some very important and controversial WMD questions."

The tapes are part of a renewed effort by the intelligence committee to answer the question of whether Saddam had biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, which American inspectors were unable to find.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-02/07/content_4149234.htm
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They don't quit do they.

[sasha031]

1. I always expected them to plant the weapons in Iraq

[sabra]

2. is this connected to the book from a former Saddam general

who said that they flew the WMD on planes to Syria before the war?

This is getting ridicuolos...

[underpants]

6. NY Sun-not a real paper

recreated in 2004 as yet another piece of the noise machine.

[LynnTheDem]

3. There is NO controversy; as bush's own personal inspectors reported

NO WMD since the early 1990s; it was all destroyed.

[ECH1969]

4. Wait until the 'tapes' are released

They will probably say that Saddam was having group sex with Osama and Zarqawi on top of vats of VX.

[LynnTheDem]

5. ORAL sex, I betcha. I say IMPEACH em all!!!

Heh.

No "wmd" since the early 1990s. And summat the US "msm" never did bother to point out is the wee fact that Iraq NEVER had a nuke. Not one. Not even a wee dinky teacup nuke.

Saddam Hussein told the truth.

bush lied.

It's really that sickeningly disgustingly simple.

[wookie294]

13. True

President Bush’s “Iraq Survey Group” (ISG) finished searching for WMD in 2004 and found none. Here’s what they reported:

No nuclear weapons program: “Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war.”

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap4.html#sect1

No chemical weapons program: “ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter….”

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5.html#sect0

No biological weapons program: “ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes.”

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/chap6.html#sect0
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/

[kittenwithmittens]

7. My winger brother sent me this article this evening

Here's the link to the Sun article:

http://www.nysun.com/article/27110

He's having W-gasms over it.

[leesa]

11. Your brother still holdin' out for the WMDs, huh? Sad.

[Roland99]

8. This is complete and utter BULLSHIT! Here's the proof >>>

This line from the article:

"Mr. Hoekstra has already met with a former Iraqi air force general, Georges Sada"


Stop the presses right there. Sada is a Chalabi-lite. A worthless POS toadie who'll say anything the neocons want him to.

[Roland99]

14. Plus, the NY Sun is owned and operated by associates of the Vulcans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ny_sun

The paper's owners include Hollinger International, the company once led by Conrad Black, and a group of New York City businessmen, as well as the paper's two founding editors. According to an article in the Boston Globe, the paper's staff include many well-known political conservatives. Its president and editor in chief is Seth Lipsky and its managing editor Ira Stoll. The Sun is widely speculated to be losing money due to low circulation.

The Sun was created to establish a quality broadsheet with free market principles in New York, where the only other broadsheet is the New York Times, which has a liberal viewpoint, and to establish in the city a paper that would make its center of gravity New York City's own story at a time when the New York Times was moving to national circulation and with it a national focus. One of the founders, in fact, previously established and edited a website devoted to issuing a daily critique of the Times. Like the Washington Times, which is valuable for its insight into US Republican Party congressional circles, the Sun makes a point of including neoconservative newsmakers at home and abroad as well as liberals and others in its survey of the news. The ideological view of the Sun in its editorial opinions is probably closest to The Weekly Standard magazine or the Jerusalem Post.

Yes, Conrad Black and Hollinger. Ring any bells? Perle is involved in that scandal, too.

[Roland99]

15. And here's the BS article from the NY Sun from a couple weeks ago re: Sada

http://www.nysun.com/article/26514

The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.

"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."

...

Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.

"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.

Trouble is:


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/26/122548/904

First of all, in evaluating this claim, we have to take into account things that don't fit the facts. First of all, we don't even know what these WMD's supposedly were. How would we be able to fit them into a Boeing plane? If we are talking massive rockets or tubes, then it would be impossible to fit them into a commercial airliner, because the doors would simply not be wide enough for them to fit inside of a commercial airliner. Remember that Sada alleges that these were civilian aircraft.

Secondly of all, there were only two aircraft being used and 56 total flights (supposedly) between the two of them. It defies reason to suggest that merely 56 flights would be enough to get a whole country's WMD program out of Iraq into Syria without detection of any kind. Given the massive nature of the WMD program that Bush and Powell so hyped up, it would be impossible for Saddam to smuggle all of the evidence for his programs in just 56 flights in aircraft not designed for the purpose.

Thirdly of all, this tall tale defies the laws of physics. How could you smuggle these labs, alumunum tubes, rockets, and other such WMD's out of Iraq without weighing down the plane so much that it could not fly?

...

Eyewitnesses:

None. As noted above, Mr. Sada had no direct involvement in this. The Sun article notes that there were ground convoys of trucks -- but fails to say whether the trucks went to Syria or whether they loaded the WMD's on the plane. That brings up another reason to disbelieve these claims -- the smuggling was done in the Summer of 2002, right as the US and the UK were stepping up their bombing campaigns in advance of their invasion of Iraq in 2003. If our forces had detected convoys of trucks that large, they would have been bombed.

It would stand to reason that if there had been such an attempt by Saddam, there would have been scores of eyewitnesses on both sides of the border who could come forward and verify that Mr. Sada's account is true. But the fact is, there are none. The burden of proof is on the right-wingers to come up with the evidence, not for us to disprove it.

And:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/27/112247/570

So the #2 man in Saddam Hussein's Air Force knows for sure that 2 Boeing aircraft had their seats removed and the planes filled with unspecified WMD in yellow barrels in 2002.

Georges Sada is an Assyrian Christian who was born in Iraq. It's true he was once a high-ranking officer in Saddam's Air Force but he retired in 1986.

In 1990, Saddam hired him back (right before the Persian Gulf War) because of his "ability to organize the air force" but Sada was fired less than a year later. Got it? He was not an official in Saddam's military, government or anything else after 1990.

Sada is basing his statement on un-named pilots who allegedly flew these two airplanes in 2002. And you can be sure he will never name them. It's the allegation that's the thing.

As I've said, this is all complete and utter bullshit. Incredibly lame and insulting.

[Rex]

9. Controversy?

Did the CIA F I N A L L Y get those darm WMD planted? Took em long enough!

[Laughing Mirror]

16. yeah, WHAT controversy?

There is no controversy. The WMDs did not exist.

[leesa]

10. IDIOTS.

[Mithras61]

12. Betcha they "find out" that...

Saddam sent them in trucks over the border to Iran just before "Shock & Awe" happened...

Hey, don't ask ME why he'd do something so blatantly stupid. I don't believe he really had them since about Desert Storm. I'm just saying I think the PNAC/neoconjobs will CLAIM this...

[Exiled in America]

17. Who cares? WMDs don't make the invasion and occupation right.

That's what it seems like people keep forgetting. I wasn't suprised when there was no evidence of stockpiles of WMDs, yet if there were that still wouldn't have been sufficient legal justification for invasion.

We have WMDs.

In fact we have more WMDs than anyone else on the planet. Does that mean the rest of the world should form a "coalition of the willing" and invade us? Oh, I'm sorry - does might make right?

The issue is not WMDs the issue is "immanent threat." My reason for opposing the Iraq invasion - one of them - is because I categorically oppose the bush concept of preemptive war, and I strongly support international law (which that so-called "doctrine" laughs in the face of.) Saddam was not an immanent threat to the United States nor to his neighbors. By all accounts he was contained.

Now, I don't like the way we contained him - our economic sanctions had the effect of doing more harm to his people that I can stomach in good conscience. Nevertheless, there remain much more effective ways to deal with removing Saddam from power other than a full-scale invasion which focused more on securing the country's oil assets and infastructure than it did on "liberating" its people.

Reasons to oppose the iraq invasion (note that none of them have anything to do with whether Saddam at one point did have WMDs):

-- no immanent threat to the United States or Allies
-- unilateral action in the face of international law and without international support was a mistake
-- failure to exhaust other diplomatic options (given that we were not facing an immanent threat) which could have possibly brought about a satisfiactory resolution without the loss of almost 2,500 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis
-- The masking of the real motivations for invasion: oil, regional military supremecy, hegemony and imperialism
-- The mountain of lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie that was fed to the american public by its leaders about the need for war. I never support a military action built on a foundation of goverment lies to the public.

These are just a few. None of them have anything to do with whether or not Saddam possessed some WMDs like we do.

[Lasher]

18. Here's a list of nations who have had chemical & biological weapons

http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/possess.htm#78

Looks like the list needs updated, as they say Iraq is known to posess these agents, but has not since the early 1990s.

But let's see, based on King George II's so-called justification in invading Iraq (which turned out to be a lie), who do we attack next? Just going with the 'knowns' on the list, and ignoring the other categories, we need to invade Iran, Lybia, North Korea, Russia, and Syria.

But wait, there's more! Nuclear weapons are the ultimate WMDs. Don't we need to hit every nation that has them? What's next, do we nuke ourselves? :nuke: