Given its context of being posted immediately after a notice of an earthquake in Iran (an "earthquake prone" region), it looked a good deal as though you ascribed it to an act of god. That would indeed by hilarious, both because it would suggest that "god" cares whether or not the Persians have a nuclear weapons program, and because you profess to be a Buddhist.
The Saddam Tapes and Media Distortion
By Bill Tierney <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=3595>
FrontPageMagazine.com <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=21774> | March 24, 2006
Media outlets invested in our defeat in Iraq have put forth serious efforts to discredit the reasons for going to war. One only need hear the absolute certainty in Tim Russert's voice to know that the liberal media considers the Iraq WMD issue over and done with. After countless repetitions of “no WMD,” you would think that people were thoroughly trained. It comes as no surprise that when the Saddam Tapes came to light, they had to be dealt with.
The first salvo in the liberal media’s unsuccessful attempt to deep-six the tapes came from Newsweek, when they published “The Saddam Tapes, What They Don’t Prove” a week before the presentation of the tapes. The writers, Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff, stated the tapes were taken without permission from an FBI-run translation center. They never asked the government why they gave the CD an UNCLAFFISIED label and shipped it out to a translation agency without knowing what was on it. It was from there that the CD ended up at my front door. They could have seen the canceled checks for services rendered had they asked.
Newsweek then trotted out the “years old" response. According to this argument, since the tapes are years old, they are insignificant. The only relevant issue is whether the discussions took place during the time frame when Iraq said it was complying with UN resolutions. All the discussions cited took place during this time frame.
Next came ABC’s World News Tonight broadcast and Nightline segment three days before the presentation at the Intelligence Summit, a private conference where intelligence professionals and concerned citizens can discuss intelligence and national security matters away from the normal bureaucratic constrictions. To ABC’s credit, they did play a segment on Hussein Kamel stating how Iraq did not tell UNSCOM everything about their weapons program. However, on the discussion between Saddam and Tariq Aziz, they jumped to a suspect conclusion.
This contentious section can be read either that Saddam had our best interests in mind two years before the war, and warned both Britain and us of an unspecified future WMD attack, or musings on how an attack could be conducted through proxies. Would Saddam have told a US or British Ambassador that there was going to be a WMD attack by unspecified parties on Washington, but not provide any detail? How did he know?
In preparation for their story, ABC interviewed a native Iraqi that not only knew Tikriti dialect, military and Baath Party jargon, but had actually addressed Saddam in similar meetings, General George Sada. According to General Sada, ABC asked him to listen to the tapes, and he stated that Saddam was probably discussing an attack through third parties to set up plausible denial if he were accused. He suggested that Saddam made the outburst of “terrorism is coming” during Tariq Aziz’s briefing, then realized he was on tape and came up with the "warning” to cover himself. This possibility adds yet another layer of complexity. Brian Ross went on to interview General Sada for forty minutes, attempting to get a sound bite to dismiss the tapes. The general knew his intention and didn't oblige; so this man, probably the most qualified man in the world available to the media, was omitted from ABC's story.
Early on Saturday February 18th, the morning of the presentation, CNN ran a special on how the inspectors found nothing in Iraq. Later that day, they ran a television piece which filled the time focusing on their strenuous efforts to translate the tapes, and then in their television piece, reported only the Saddam – Aziz conversation. Apparently, status reports on rebuilding the chemical and nuclear weapons programs were not worth the cut.
A common media dismissal technique is to state that the tapes don’t prove that WMD was in Iraq at the time of the invasion. Since none of the tapes date from the time period immediately prior to the war, this is an irrelevant point. The tapes do show that the Iraqis had weapons programs; they had an intensive concealment mechanism; and that Saddam stated the war was ongoing. Iraqi press throughout the Nineties took the view that the U.S. was at war with Iraq, so it is up to the skeptics to show where Saddam, in a fit of conscience, gave up his weapons program before the war, after successfully removing the inspection teams in 1998. Just when did Saddam’s change of heart take place, and where is the evidence?
The liberal media’s wishful thinking extends to print media also. On January 7, 2004, the Washington Post printed Barton Gellman’s story ”Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper.” In this article Gellman cites a letter supposedly written six days after a senior Iraqi official, Hussein Kamel, defected, which stated that “destruction of the biological weapons agents took place in the summer of 1991.” However, in 1995, UNSCOM forced the Iraqis to admit they had a facility used to produce biological weapons, which was destroyed in 1996. Are we to assume that they had a bioweapons facility between 1991 and 1996, but didn't produce any bioweapons? After Hussein Kamel's defection, the Iraqi’s initial spin was that Kamel had a secret weapons program that he kept hidden from the rest of the Iraqi government. The Saddam Tapes include a briefing of a coordinated response system if there were a biological outbreak. The Washington Post article failed to mention that Iraq finally admitted to producing ricin in September of 1995, after numerous previous opportunities to do so. The Iraqi Survey Group concluded that the Iraqi Intelligence Service produced ricin during the Nineties, and tested it on political prisoners.
With the posting of the documents and tape transcripts to the Foreign Military Studies Office site at <http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm> Fort Leavenworth <http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm> , it didn’t take long for AP to run a story stating Saddam was frustrated that no one believed he had given up his WMD. The story quotes extensively from the transcripts, but makes no mention that the speakers are rehearsing their version of events for the United Nation. They could be expected to say ”We told the U.N. we have no weapons.” This is no guarantee of ground truth. At least eight of the tape transcripts focused on negotiations with the U.N., and must be understood in this context.
The Iraqis had provided the U.N. with declarations on their chemical and missile program, and were confident that they had handled all the technical questions on verification. However, they acknowledged numerous times on the tapes that the biological declaration had so many gaps that their allies on the Security Council, France and Russia, couldn't make arguments to close the biological file. The focus in these discussions is not the actual weapons program, but on how to end the inspection program. Also missing from these discussions were any problems arising from defector reporting. What Tariq Aziz tries to dismiss as traps by Rolf Ekeus (then UNSCOM Director) were probably reports on the WMD program from defectors.
The AP story quotes Hussein Kamel as stating “We played by the rules and paid the price.” The immediate context is his reiteration of this statement from the foreign minister as a response to the United Nations. He later states on page 6 of DOCEX Saddam 030306:
“It is possible, Sir, they have a problem that is a great deal bigger than the biological file: The types of weapons, the materials we imported, the product which we told them about, and the degree of their use. All of that was not correct. And all of them do not know. We did not say that we used them against Iran and we did not say the amount of chemical weapons we produced. We also did not say anything about the type of chemical weapons and the important materials in reality.”
On page 7 of the same document:
“On the nuclear file, Sir, we are saying that we disclosed everything? No, we have undeclared problems in the nuclear field, and I believe that they know them. Some teams work and no one knows some of them. Sir, I am sorry for speaking so clearly. Everything is over. But, did they know? No, Sir, they did not know; not all the methods, not all the means, not all the scientists, and not all the places.”
In this section, Hussein Kamel apologizes for speaking clearly, implying that the members of the Revolutionary Command Council were aware they were being taped and guarded their speech accordingly. By "everything is over," does he mean that the program is finished? If so, why are there still "undeclared problems with the nuclear file?"
Saddam makes an interesting comment in another taped meeting (ISGQ-2003-M0004444 page 5) prior to the presidential site inspections:
“When they pass Tikrit they are going to Al Makhoul. This we are learning from experience, between Tikrit and Makhoul the distance is 70 km, so we will know when they leave. We know that is a real complication, there is a complication... we do not need to divulge our position. I will tell them to please come in...this is what we have... we are going to move them during the week, take the entire Makhoul area...we don’t want to give up our position and don’t need to… the targets that we want them to deploy…we exhaust them so the real targets get lost.”
Intelligence from 1997 indicated that prohibited items were being held at Makhoul, and it was the only presidential site where an inspection was originally requested. It must have been understood among the attendees what "them" was going to be moved. We are left to guess at its meaning, but it’s a safe bet it was something Saddam wanted kept away from the Special Commission.
Another intriguing tape is ISGQ-2003-M0007133. It discusses retaining the expertise in PC-3, the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, by dispersing the engineers throughout other ministries and adjusting their pay and benefits so they will be available when needed. Near the beginning of the meeting, one of the speakers states:
“. . . The decision was made that this project should be included in the Industrial Military Organization, with confirmation from you, Sir, that the preservation of the unity of this project is a must. Because it is a unique experience.”
If Saddam really had a change of heart, and completely complied with U.N. resolutions, then why are they speaking of preserving the unity of the nuclear weapons project by hiding the technicians in other ministries? This fits nicely with the account of the scientist burying uranium enrichment material in his garden.
The writer of the AP story, Charles J. Hanley, is firmly in the "no weapons" camp. Although he states with assurance that all the weapons were destroyed in 1991, in a September 5, 2005 article he wrote that: "In April 2002, workers in the western desert were busy smelting down the last gear from a long-defunct uranium-enrichment project.” Why wasn‘t this destroyed in 1991 like everything else? How does Mr. Hanley know it was long-defunct? Did he or the government investigators take the Iraqi story at face value?
The liberal media will continue to dissect any further information on the Iraqi weapons program according to their template that “Bush lied, people died.” With the continuing release of documents, it will be interesting to see how long they can keep it up before they finally admit "We were all wrong."
The Paper Trail - Emerging evidence of Saddam's terror ties.
By LAURIE MYLROIE
March 27, 2006 Wall Street Jounral
After substantial prodding -- including from this paper -- the U.S. government has finally begun to release its captured Iraqi documents and is posting them at the Web site of the Army's Foreign Military Studies Office. This material will take considerable time to absorb and analyze, but it may yet contribute significantly to our understanding of the nature of the threat Saddam Hussein posed.
Most dramatically, an Iraqi intelligence report, apparently written in early 1997, describes Iraqi efforts to establish ties with various elements in the Saudi opposition, including Osama bin Ladin. Until 1996, the Saudi renegade was based in Sudan, then ruled by Hassan Turabi's National Islamic Front. One of Iraq's few allies, Sudan served as an intermediary between Baghdad and bin Ladin, as well as other Islamic radicals. On Feb. 19, 1995, an Iraqi intelligence agent met with bin Ladin in Khartoum. Bin Ladin asked for two things: to carry out joint operations against foreign forces in Saudi Arabia and to broadcast the speeches of a radical Saudi cleric. Iraq agreed to the latter, but apparently not the former, at least as far as the author of this report knew. Notably, the report also states, "we are working at the present time to activate this relationship through new channels."
This one report hints at the extensive international presence that the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) maintained. Iraq's ambassadors to Sudan and Yemen were intelligence agents, suggesting that those two countries were major centers of IIS activity. The report also mentions IIS stations in Islamabad, New Delhi and New York.
Another newly released document bears the name of Abu Musab al Zarqawi. It is a flyer from the "Committee for Arab Liaison with the Islamic Emirate" (i.e., Afghanistan) for recruiting volunteers in Iraq to fight in Afghanistan. It explains that the "Arab brothers" who wish to go there should send a written proposal "so that we can know him and his needs." Zarqawi is among six people listed as individuals to contact.
How close were relations between Iraq and the Taliban, a regime officially recognized by only three countries? The answer is necessary for understanding the nature of any ties Iraq may have had with al Qaeda or other Afghan-based Islamic groups. Hopefully, other documents will emerge to shed light on this question.
The formal cease-fire to the 1991 Gulf War required Iraq to recognize Kuwait and release the Kuwaiti hostages it had seized. Iraq did neither. On March 4, 2003, with war looming, Saddam's son, Qusay, ordered 448 Kuwaiti prisoners taken to sites the United States would likely attack. Nothing of their fate has been reported, and they may well have died. Iraq formally recognized Kuwait in 1994, but the official stationery of the Fedayeen Saddam in 2001 shows a map of Iraq that includes the state.
Other documents from this database were leaked some time ago. Perhaps because their provenance was not understood, these 30 pages did not receive the attention they merited. Particularly notable is an order issued by Saddam on Jan. 18, 1993: "hunt Americans on Arab territory, particularly in Somalia."
Most of these documents deal with terrorism and date from January to May 1993. They suggest that in early 1993, Saddam began to move actively to revive terrorist programs that had been established three years before, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Responding to a request from Saddam, Iraqi intelligence produced a six-page report, listing the names and nationalities of 100 Arab "martyrs" whom it had trained in the fall of 1990.
Another report explains that the IIS had reached an agreement with the deputy head of Sudan's ruling National Islamic Front "to use the Islamic Arab elements that had been fighting in Afghanistan and now have no place to go and who are physically present in Sudan, Somalia and Egypt." The IIS also agreed with Khartoum to renew its relationship with Egyptian Islamic Jihad -- headed by Ayman al Zawahiri, familiar as al Qaeda's most prominent contemporary spokesman.
Still another report describes Iraq's earlier agreement with Islamic Jihad, concluded on Dec. 24, 1990, as the start of the Gulf war loomed. Iraq was to provide training, financing and supplies to the organization "to execute martyr operations" against the members of the U.S.-led coalition, of which Egypt was a key Arab member. However, as this document explains, those operations stopped immediately after the cease-fire.
In 1993, Iraq was cautious about backing Egyptian terrorists, more so than the Sudanese. When Khartoum informed Baghdad that it was sending an Islamic Jihad leader, who had been based in Afghanistan and then lived in Sudan, to Iraq on a Sudanese plane carrying meat (this exemption from the general ban on flights to Iraq was granted by the U.N. Security Council), the IIS asked that the visit be postponed. Sudan insisted, and the IIS approved on condition the visit be kept secret. Subsequently, the IIS recommended that assistance to the Egyptian group be limited to financial support.
Two documents relate to Iraq's proscribed WMD programs. One is a table, providing details of a Sept. 6, 2000, contract for the production of "the malignant pustule" -- the Pentagon official who leaked these documents believed it referred to anthrax -- along with earlier contracts for sterilization and decontamination equipment. Another table describes an Aug. 21, 2000, contract for the production of mustard gas and earlier contracts for protective equipment. Small amounts of material are mentioned: three ampules of "the malignant pustule" (an ampule is a small, sealed glass vial) and five kilograms of mustard gas. These contracts could have represented test runs, or, as a former U.N. weapons inspector suggested to me, the material could have been intended for terrorism.
Many more documents are to be released in the coming months. Quite possibly, they will vindicate the decision to undertake the Iraq war; help maintain public support for fighting it; and radically change our understanding of Saddam's role in international terrorism.
Ms. Mylroie is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America" (AEI, 2001).
The British press painted the trip as Straw bringing his girl home to meet the folks, aided by comic strip-style photos with speech bubbles and a much-used picture of Straw with his hands on Rice.
"Jack 4 Condi", read the Sunday Mirror's headline. "He tried diplomacy, but wants special relationship.
"He had discovered his perfect woman -- not only was she a terrific looker, she also had a politician's brass neck."
"Fancy a nightcap back at my place?" Straw asked in the tabloid's version of events.
"I'm not that kind of girl, Jack, it'll take more than a bunch of flowers." read the reply in Rice's speech bubble.
The Sunday Telegraph's Elizabeth Day said: "The normally buttoned-up Mr Straw alternated between looking like a proud father bringing his daughter into the office for work experience and an adolescent schoolboy with a hopeless crush on the head girl."
The News of the World weekly said Rice had won over local Muslims at her meeting with them. Rice called the talks "stimulating, interesting and candid".
One of the local leaders, Kam Khotia, said they had had a "good dialogue" but he realised it would not change American foreign policy overnight.
Many British papers chided Rice for not knowing the reference to "4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire" in the Beatles song "A Day in the Life". (Pop quiz answer: a reported census of local potholes).
On a trip designed as diplomatic flattery, Rice also managed to make some unwanted headlines with an admission at a foreign policy forum Friday that the United States had made "thousands" of tactical errors in Iraq.
"We're going to urge that the negotiations be wrapped up," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew overnight to the Iraqi capital for meetings with the current interim government and ethnic and religious power brokers.
The violence came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made a surprise visit to press Iraqi politicians to speed up the formation of the government.
Rice, Straw in Iraq to break govt deadlock
Sun Apr 2, 2006 4:45 PM BST
By Sue Pleming and Mariam Karouny
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw flew in secret into Baghdad on Sunday in a dramatic bid to break a deadlock over forming a unity government that can halt a slide to civil war.
Pressure on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari looked almost irresistible as a leader of the biggest party in his ruling Shi'ite Alliance joined others in publicly breaking ranks and calling on him to step aside in the name of national consensus.
Though they refused to say so in public, it was a message certainly conveyed, too, by Rice and Foreign Secretary Straw.
Minority Sunni and Kurdish leaders insist they will not join a cabinet under Jaafari and want a different Shi'ite nominee.
At stake is the future of an Iraq that Rice said remained "vulnerable" to sectarian civil war three years after the U.S. and British invasion. Insurgents probably shot down a helicopter in which the U.S. military said the two crew were presumed dead.
The chill was palpable when Rice and the embattled Jaafari exchanged small talk on a rainstorm raging outside as reporters looked on. The smiles were frosty, the body language awkward.
"The fact that we're going out to have these discussions with the Iraqi leadership is a sign of the urgency which we attach to a need for a government of national unity," Rice told reporters who travelled with the two ministers from Britain.
No breakthrough is likely to be announced during the two-day trip, officials said -- both Iraqi leaders and their visitors are anxious not to give the impression that Washington and London are imposing a new leader over the elected Jaafari.
Jaafari has condemned U.S. "interference" in Iraq's new democracy and an aide said he was ready to fight "to the end".
SCIRI REJECTION
But his days in office look numbered. For the first time, a leader of the biggest party in the Alliance bloc that nominated him to a second term said publicly he should go: "I call on Jaafari to step down," Jalal al-Deen al-Saghir said.
"The candidate ought to secure a national consensus from other lists and also international acceptance," he told Reuters. "This is just the beginning and the other calls will follow."
SCIRI, under Alliance leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, had kept up a solid front in public behind Jaafari since, with support from Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, he beat SCIRI's candidate by a single vote in an internal ballot in February.
But privately the party has been looking for ways to oust Jaafari without breaking up the Alliance created under guidance from the top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Rice met Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, the losing SCIRI candidate in February and a possible replacement for Jaafari. "It's wonderful to see you," Rice said, the tone clearly warm.
As he flew with Rice from Liverpool following two days of meetings in his home region, Straw was asked if the plan was to force Jaafari to step down. He said: "We will recognise and respect whoever emerges as the leader through this system."
"Our concern, however, is that they have to make swift progress," he added. The election was nearly four months ago.
Privately, U.S. and British officials make little secret of their misgivings about Jaafari, a soft-spoken Islamist physician, long exiled in London and with backing from Iran.
In talks with President Jalal Talabani, Rice and Straw said they hoped to see a prime minister who could unite Iraqis and said Jaafari did not fit the bill, Iraqi political sources said.
MECHANISMS
It is not clear how Jaafari may be replaced or by whom.
One possible contender, Fadhila party chief Nadim al-Jaberi, told Reuters Jaafari was resisting efforts to persuade him to go gracefully. If the Alliance itself remained divided, it might take the risk of setting a choice of leaders before parliament.
A British embassy official said the ministers were not expecting to hold a news conference in Baghdad until Monday. They were meeting Shi'ite, Sunni, Kurdish and secular leaders, both bilateral and, over dinner on Sunday, as a full group.
With congressional elections in November, President George W. Bush's administration is keen to show progress in Iraq and to start bringing American soldiers home. A sharp increase in sectarian bloodshed in the six weeks since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra has cast a cloud over those prospects.
Some two-to-three dozen bodies are turning up every day in Baghdad alone, showing signs of death-squad killing.
Former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein's lawyers are likely to be informed this week that he and others will face trial as early as next month on a charge of genocide for the first time, arising from a campaign against Kurds in the late 1980s.
Saddam's first trial, for crimes against humanity in the town of Dujail, is due to resume on Wednesday in Baghdad.
(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Terry Friel, Ahmed Rasheed and Alastair Macdonald)
My original second recommendation was inform the new Iraq government to organize by a specified deadline or we shall cease protecting them in the green zone as well as everywhere else.
